Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough was an Australian author who trained as a neurophysiologist before turning to fiction. She is best known for The Thorn Birds, which sold more than 30 million copies and was adapted into a television miniseries, and for the Masters of Rome novels, including Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. Her first novel, Tim, appeared in 1974 while she was working at the Yale School of Medicine. She moved to Norfolk Island after The Thorn Birds and wrote 25 novels there until her death in 2015.