Colleen Mccullough

Australian writer most noted for "The Thorn Birds," 1977, a huge sprawling novel that is easy to read and totally engrossing. Called the Australian "Gone With The Wind," it was translated into 15 languages and made into a TV miniseries. The hardcover publication sold over a half million copies and the paperback rights sold for $1.9 million, the highest price ever paid for a paperback. McCullough graduated from the University of Sydney and became a teacher in the Australian outback, a library worker and a journalist. Moved to America, she went to Yale School of Internal Medicine and became an associate in the research neurology department from 1967 to 1976. After 1976 she wrote full time. Her books include "Tim" 1974, "An Indecent Obsession," and "The Grass Crown." In the late 1970s, after stints in London and Connecticut, USA, she finally settled on isolated Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean, where she met her husband, Ric Robinson (then aged 33), whom she married on 13 April 1983 (she was aged 46). McCullough died on 29 January 2015 on Norfolk Island, aged 77, after suffering a series of small strokes. Link to Wikipedia biography