Morris West has 19 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 10 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is The World Is Made of Glass.
The World Is Made of Glass
Summary
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. Morris West re-creates this episode in a gripping blend of truth and dramatic speculation. Set in pre-World War I Europe, The World Is Made of Glass is a powerful novel of love, sexual obsession, murder and guilt. It has been called Morris West’s finest creation of the imagination.
©1983 The Morris West Collection (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing
The Shoes of the Fisherman
Summary
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. Not only is he the leader of a fractured Catholic Church, but he also finds he must confront his inquisitor and tormentor in order to avert another world war. An international best seller, The Shoes of the Fisherman is one of the great novels of the 20th century and is still widely popular today. It is the first novel in Morris West's Vatican trilogy.
©1963 The Morris West Collection (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
Kundu
Summary
In the highland valleys of New Guinea a small colony of Europeans confronts the dark power of tribal sorcery. In a valley deep in the highlands of New Guinea lives a small colony of Europeans. One of them is Kurt Sonderfield, a doctor with a shady past who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. N’Daria is a hauntingly beautiful native girl whom Sonderfield has trained in the art of seduction. Kumo is a young sorcerer who has fallen under Sonderfield’s sway. Only two dare oppose Sonderfield: the old French missionary Père Louis, and Gerda, the wife Sonderfield has betrayed. As the passions and power plays of the Europeans collide with ancient highland magic, the beat of the kundu drums thunders through the valley, bringing the story to an explosive climax.
©1957 The Morris West Collection (P)2002 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Salamander
Summary
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. Soon he is drawn into the net of the great Salamander himself, millionaire industrialist Bruno Manzini, who is pitting his wits against the elaborate machinery threatening Italy’s government. In a game of high stakes, how much is Matucci prepared to pay to survive?
©1973 The Morris West Collection (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Navigator
Summary
The Navigator is a gripping tale of sea lore, shipwreck and moral courage. Son of a Norwegian master-mariner and grandson of Kaloni, the last of the great Polynesian navigators, Gunnar Thorkild is a man consumed by a dream. Convinced that the Polynesians’ legendary Island of the Dead is real, he risks his career, his life – and those of his fellow adventurers – to find it. Shipwrecked on the very island they seek, the castaways are forced to leave behind everything they know and rely upon. To survive in this lush tropical paradise, they must make new laws of power and property, of sex and marriage.
©1976 The Morris West Collection (P)2003 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Ambassador
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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. From the explosive, bitter and savage battlefront of Vietnam, Morris West's The Ambassador brings to life the early days of the Vietnam War and its backroom political dealings, foreshadowing the repercussions that continue today.
©1965 The Morris West Collection (P)2000 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Daughter of Silence
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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? An international best seller, Daughter of Silence is a gripping novel with a masterful twist at the end.
©1951 The Morris West Collection (P)2001 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Last Confession
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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. The Last Confession was West’s final novel, published posthumously. Composed with passion and compassion, this is a voice that mesmerises from the start.
©2000 The Morris West Collection (P)2001 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Proteus
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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. A scheme is hatched by Proteus to rescue them, but soon the enemies of Proteus begin to target Spada himself.
©1979 The Morris West Collection (P)2004 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Second Victory
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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. Morris West’s fast-moving story brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of occupation in a traumatised postwar Europe.
©1958 The Morris West Collection (P)2002 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Masterclass
Summary
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. In trying to out-deal the deal makers, he becomes embroiled in a tangled web surrounding the brutal murder of a promiscuous Manhattan painter, Madeleine Bayard. The two stories intertwine in this fast-paced tale of intrigue and murder in the international art world.
©1988 The Morris West Collection (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Lazarus
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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. Lazarus completes Morris West’s best-selling Vatican trilogy, following The Shoes of the Fisherman and The Clowns of God. It can also stand alone as a gripping exploration of Church politics in a world of crises.
©1990 The Morris West Collection (P)2002 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Concubine
Summary
When Irishman Mick McCreary is offered a job drilling oil on an Indonesian island, he discovers that the beautiful Lisette is not the last of the dangers he has to face. Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish. When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island - no questions asked - he thinks that luck is running with him once more. But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within 24 hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions.
©1958 The Morris West Collection (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
The Lovers
Summary
Morris West spins a glowing thread of love lost and regained, woven through a rich tapestry of intrigue, betrayal, suspense and murder. On Bryan Cavanagh's birthday, a sealed letter from Rome arrives, bearing the arms of the ancient house of the Farnese di Mongrifone. Affectionate, even imperious, it is a summons from the woman he loved - and lost - in the turbulent, opportunistic world of postwar Europe. Beset by his memories of an extraordinary voyage on a private yacht on the Mediterranean 40 years earlier, Bryan returns to Rome, where he discovers a closely guarded secret.
©1993 The Morris West Collection Pty Ltd (P)2018 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Clowns of God
Summary
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. The Clowns of God spent 22 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and is the second novel in Morris West’s Vatican trilogy.
©1981 The Morris West Collection (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Gallows on the Sand
Summary
A quest for buried treasure in a shipwreck in Australia's Great Barrier Reef turns into a race against a treacherous rival. Twenty chests of minted Spanish gold in a sunken galleon - this is the lure that brings historian Renn Lundigan to a tiny island off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Renn enlists islander Johnny Akimoto to teach him scuba diving but soon realises there's a far greater danger in the reef than the sharks. Gambling den owner Manny Mannix has followed him to the island, and now he threatens not only Renn and Johnny but also the beautiful young scientist Pat Mitchell. Gallows on the Sand is a fast-paced story of high adventure, with the rich characterisation that made Morris West one of the best-selling writers of his day.
©1956 The Morris West Collection Pty Ltd (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Summer of the Red Wolf
Summary
From one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and popular authors. 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. Summer of the Red Wolf is an epic story for a modern age - a fast-paced narrative in a rugged landscape, driven by the timeless themes of love and jealousy.
©1971 The Morris West Collection (P)2004 Bolinda Publishing
The Big Story
Summary
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. Everything is more complicated, more passionate, than before - and tainted by death. Suddenly Ashley's greatest story threatens to be his last.
©1967 The Morris West Collection (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
A View from the Ridge
Summary
A personal, inspirational and positive account of a 20th-century believer. 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.
©1996 The Morris West Collection (P)2000 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd