About the Author: Colleen McCullough
Colleen Margaretta McCullough was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds and Tim.
Raised by her mother in Wellington and then Sydney, McCullough began writing stories at age 5. She flourished at Catholic schools and earned a physiology degree from the University of New South Wales in 1963. Planning become a doctor, she found that she had a violent allergy to hospital soap and turned instead to neurophysiology – the study of the nervous system's functions. She found jobs first in London and then at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
After her beloved younger brother Carl died in 1965 at age 25 while rescuing two drowning women in the waters off Crete, a shattered McCullough quit writing. She finally returned to her craft in 1974 with Tim, a critically acclaimed novel about the romance between a female executive and a younger, mentally disabled gardener. As always, the author proved her toughest critic: "Actually," she said, "it was an icky book, saccharine sweet."
A year later, while on a paltry $10,000 annual salary as a Yale researcher, McCullough – just "Col" to her friends – began work on the sprawling The Thorn Birds, about the lives and loves of three generations of an Australian family. Many of its details were drawn from her mother's family's experience as migrant workers, and one character, Dane, was based on brother Carl.
Though some reviews were scathing, millions of readers worldwide got caught up in her tales of doomed love and other natural calamities. The paperback rights sold for an astonishing $1.9 million.
In all, McCullough wrote 11 novels.
Source: http://www.people.com/article/colleen...
Other books by Colleen McCullough
Find the best price forThe Independence of Miss Mary Bennet
Colleen McCullough
Goodreads rating: 
Paperback, by Harper
ISBN10: 0007271840 | ISBN13: 9780007271849
Page count: 467
Twenty years after Pride and Prejudice closes, the Bennet sisters have another remarkable story to tell.
Mary Bennet, of the atrocious voice and staid bent of mind, has been weighed down with family obligations. Her sisters have made lives of their own: Jane is happily married, Elizabeth finds being a Darcy brings unwelcome social pre-eminence, Lydia's still entranced by soldiers, and Kitty's a star of London's fashionable salons. But Mary has had to wait for her moment to claim her liberty.
Once she is free, Mary resolves to publish a book about the plight of England's poor. Plunging from one pedicament to another, she embarks upon a mission of investigation that eventually leads her into mortal danger. But having tasted independence, Mary resolves to keep it - and she will let nobody, whether family, suitor or enemy, take it away.
Warm, witty, tragic and eminently satisfying, The Independence of Mary Bennet is a novel for every woman who has yearned to make her mark upon the world, from a master story teller.
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