Showing results by author "Morris West" in All Categories

In an impoverished village in southern Italy, the enigmatic life and mysterious death of Giacomo Nerone has inspired talk of sainthood. Father Blaise Meredith, a dying English priest, is sent by the Vatican to investigate. As he tries to untangle the web of facts, rumours and outright lies that surround Nerone, we are reminded how the power of goodness ultimately prevails over despair.

This is the story of Kiril Lakota, a cardinal who reluctantly steps out from behind the Iron Curtain to lead the Catholic Church and to grapple with the many issues facing the contemporary world. The pope is dead, and the corridors of the Vatican hum with intrigue as cardinals gather to elect his successor. The result is a surprise: the new pope is the youngest of them all - a bearded Ukrainian. The Shoes of the Fisherman is the moving story of Kiril I, recently released from 17 years in Siberian labour camps and haunted by his past.

Iron-fisted Pope Leo XIV emerges from open-heart surgery with the chilling realisation that his reforms have devastated the Church. As he struggles to overcome the policies he himself put in place, he must battle enemies from within the Vatican, as well as Islamic terrorists determined to assassinate him. Amid political intrigue and counterespionage, his brilliant Surgeon, Salviati, becomes a target, too, along with Salviati’s beautiful mistress, Tove, and her fragile daughter, as the plot builds to a dramatic climax.

Pope Gregory XVII has spent a lifetime quietly serving the church he loves - until he announces a prophecy so alarming that it threatens to tear the Vatican apart. Terrified, the Vatican cardinals imprison him in a monastery. Is he mad, as they believe, or is it all an elaborate plot? An old friend of the pope sets out on a risky quest to find out. On the way, he discovers the power of love and faith, while terrorists and politicians use every deadly and unholy means to stop him.

One of the most famous victims of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was the brilliant Dominican monk Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy in 1600. Morris West recreates a diary of Bruno’s intimate thoughts as he languishes in Rome’s worst prison for seven years. Bruno’s reflections and frank memories of his life reveal him to be both a fine thinker and a flawed priest - and a man willing to pay the highest price to be true to himself.

A famous writer travels to the remote, windswept islands of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides looking for peace of mind and a chance to dispel his inner demons. On the way, a car accident throws him together with the raven-haired Doctor Kathleen McNeil. He also falls in with the Red Wolf, a man who lives by the old codes - some of them violent. As a love triangle develops, the refined, civilised writer finds himself pitted against the rough-hewn man of nature.

As a young and outspoken priest, Luca Rossini was brutally tortured in an Argentine military prison, and then nursed back to health by the beautiful Isabel. Exiled to Rome to avoid scandal, Rossini becomes a cardinal and the pope's confidante. He is admired and feared by his colleagues, for he understands the Church and speaks frankly. When the pope becomes gravely ill and a successor must be chosen, Rossini takes a central role. In the midst of the political intrigue that surrounds the selection of a new pope, Isabel arrives in Rome - along with Rossini's daughter.

Set in pre-World War I Europe, The World Is Made of Glass is a powerful novel of love, sexual obsession, murder and guilt. A cryptic and mysterious case history appears in the autobiography of pioneering Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung: ‘A lady came to my office. She refused to give her name. What she had to communicate to me was a confession. Some 20 years ago, she had committed a murder.’ Jung’s encounter with the woman had an explosive effect on him and brought him very close to total breakdown.

I 1970'ernes Italien er der for nu relativt rolige forhold, men lige under overfladen ligger en intens politisk magtkamp og ulmer. Folk fra både højre og venstre på den politiske skala er mere end klar til opgøret, der indledes, da planerne om et statskup afsløres og flere højtstående personer bliver fængslet. Den australske forfatter Morris L. West (1916-1999) voksede op i Melbourne som den yngste af seks børn. Som 14-årig blev han en del af en munkeorden.

I den fattige italienske region Calabrien har en landsbys befolkning ønsket, at en afdød ophøjes til helgen. Derfor sender Vatikanet en lærd og fornem monsignore ud for at se tingene an og vurdere situationen. Men kort efter ankomsten viser det sig, at landsbyen ikke er så uskyldsren som først troet. Alle har noget at skjule, og ingen ønsker, at deres hemmeligheder nogensinde ser dagens lys. Den australske forfatter Morris L. West (1916-1999) voksede op i Melbourne som den yngste af seks børn. Som 14-årig blev han en del af en munkeorden.

American Ambassador Maxwell Gordon Amberley has a reputation as a tough negotiator. Yet when he is sent to Vietnam, the dilemma he faces throws him into self-doubt. He is made arbiter of his nation’s fate on the one hand and of the life and death of the ruling house of Vietnam on the other. Out of every international crisis comes at least one great story.

Big John Spada is a self-made millionaire. From his headquarters in New York, he directs enterprises around the world with military precision. Privately, Spada also funds Proteus, a clandestine movement that works to free political prisoners and combat tyrants wherever they may be. Then news arrives from Argentina that the Buenos Aires secret police have arrested Spada’s daughter, Teresa, a Doctor, after she performed emergency surgery on a man with gunshot wounds. They then take her husband, Rodolfo, whose outspoken editorials have angered the country’s fascist government.

In this inspiring autobiography, Morris West, aged 80, reviews the chronicle of his life and belief, offering a lyrical, intimate and affirming account of his pilgrimage as a 20th-century Christian. From the vantage point of his hard-won and deeply held faith, West shares a remarkable and moving journey, through doubting and questioning to ultimately embracing faith in God.

Winter, 1945. The Second World War is over, but it is a time of armistice, not peace. Austria is grieving its defeat and the loss of a generation of men; it is a land without leaders. To men like Major Mark Hanlon, Occupation Commander of the alpine town of Bad Quellenberg, falls the task of destroying the legacy of the Nazis once and for all. When his driver is murdered by an Austrian soldier, Hanlon is determined to bring the man to justice. But investigating the crime proves difficult in a community where nearly everyone has something to hide.

At high noon on a hot summer’s day, a beautiful young woman shoots the mayor dead. So begins a story of passion and betrayal in a quiet Tuscan village, leading to a sensational trial. The defence team, headed by the brilliant but unhappy Carlo Rienzi, uncovers a sinister conspiracy of silence that threatens to split the community. Can Carlo persuade the judge to grant clemency in what appears to be an open-and-shut case? Can the law intervene in the brutal tradition of vendetta?

Autumn 1990. The world is teetering on the edge of war in the Gulf, Germany is reunited and a crumbling USSR stares ruin in the face. In Japan, a group of powerful men and women gather to create a rescue plan that will bring all three countries together for the first time in 50 years. Polyglot international publisher Gill Langton is mediator-in-chief. Treading the highest wire of global power-broking, he alone can balance politics with intrigue, manoeuvre with counter-manoeuvre. But his love for the beautiful, enigmatic Martha could bring it all tumbling down.

Charles Parnell Cassidy is a powerful politician. Martin Gregory is his disenchanted protégé, who, having married Cassidy's daughter and become a success on his own terms, scorns his father-in-law. When the terminally ill Cassidy arrives in London to die, he makes Gregory the executor of his will and sets a complex trap by offering him the keys to a vast empire of wealth and corruption, spanning Australia and Southeast Asia.

An Italian general is found dead in his apartment. Next to his body is a small card inscribed with a salamander in a bed of flames. Is it suicide or murder? Dante Matucci, a captain in the Italian secret service, begins an investigation that leads him into a maze of political violence and intrigue. He meets the general’s former mistress, Lili Anders, and embarks on a dangerous affair with the beautiful onetime spy.

A journalist who uncovers a story which will overthrow a corrupt Italian politician but things become complicated when he falls in love with the politician's wife. Richard Ashley is a journalist who cares about the truth, and he's about to break the greatest story of his career. Italy's ruling clique is rotten to the core. A scandal centred around Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna, points to a web of corruption and deceit emanating from his estate in the south. But Ashley finds that the truth is not all it seems when he falls in love with Orgagna's wife.

A fast-paced tale of intrigue and murder in the international art world. When the daughter of an old Florentine family dies, she leaves a bequest to her lover Max Mather, an American art historian who has been managing the family's rare art collection. Mather is left with two priceless artworks by the great Renaissance master Raphael - without the family's knowledge. As Mather contrives to have the artworks discovered at auction in New York, big-time collectors, dealers and auctioneers are drawn into his game.