Susi Stitt

A beautiful, if ambitious and amoral, youth is tapped to become the lover of a powerful senator. The young man quickly realizes that he can hold this place, with all its perks, only as long as he is young. He has no other function than being young. With the help of an aged judge, the young man, referred to only as The Lover, contrives a plan to make a change in the way of the world, a plan that will take him years to realize. To succeed, he must manipulate, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the senator, his wife, the family chauffeur (who was, when young, a lover), and, by implication, the entire well-planned and controlling everlasting secret family.

Teenager Ellie is distressed by forces that threaten the special family holidays she shares with her widowed father. These threats are posed by a new coastal development and her father's new relationship with a local woman. Ellie desperately clings to memories and places that preserve the memory of her late mother.

In pre-WWII Australia, a love triangle develops between a man, his wife and the man's brother.

Park ranger Steve Mitchell is torn between Lee, a beautiful sly political aide from Melbourne who supports the government's decision to turn the local grazing areas into a national park, and his old flame Joanna, a rancher who opposes it.