From the author of "The House at Riverton" comes a story of outer and inner journeys as "Nell," abandoned as a child, leaves her adoptive parents in Australia and travels to England to trace her story, to find her real identity--a quest that ultimately leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family.

"A novel set on a remote Australian island, where a childless couple live quietly running a lighthouse, until a boat carrying a baby washes ashore"--

Scottish-born Alexander Kinross writes home from the gold fields of 1860s Sydney for a bride and marries young cousin Elizabeth, who struggles with Alexander's rowdy ex-madam mistress and illegitimate son.

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long...

Liza McCullen will never fully escape her past. But the unspoiled beaches and tight-knit community of Silver Bay offer the freedom and safety she craves -- if not for herself, then for her young daughter, Hannah. That is, until Mike Dormer arrives as a guest in her aunt's hotel. The mild-mannered Englishman with his too-smart clothes and distracting eyes could destroy everything Liza has worked so hard to protect: not only the family business and...

Determined to forget a follish love affair, Cassandra Clark throws herself into her job as the first woman with the Australian Flying Doctor Service.