For the first time since her hugely popular bestseller THE THORN BIRDS captivated millions of readers, Colleen McCullough returns to Australia with a breathtaking new historical saga. It was one of the greatest human experiments ever undertaken- to populate an unknown land with the criminal, the unloved and the unwanted of English society. Amid conditions of brutality that paralleled that of slavery, 'The First Fleet' was sent to a place no European but the legendary Captain Cook had ever seen. Left to live or die on the hostile Australian continent, these convicts and their equally isolated guards occupy the centre of McCullough's riveting new epic. Richard Morgan convicted felon and educated, intelligent, resourceful man finds the will to survive, experience the joys of love, and finally make an indelible mark upon the new frontier.