Michael Beashel
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Michael Beashel is a Best Selling Australian Historical Fiction Writer. Sydney born to Irish forebears who immigrated to New South Wales in the 1860s and settled in Millers Point. He is married and lives in Sydney’s inner west having spent his youth in Bondi. Beashel was head of Asset Development for a global accommodation services company registered on the NY Stock Exchange and has struck a blow at senior levels in some of Australia's iconic construction companies including a ten-year stint at Lend Lease. In Sydney, Government restorations to Customs House and the Town Hall accompany commercial buildings completed in the private sector. In South East Asia, Beashel managed a construction division building apartments and hotels in Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City.
This industry, its characters, clients, trades people, designers, and bureaucrats, have provided a rich material for his writing. He has an eye for the emergence of Sydney’s built form, from the early days of European settlement to the present, and a love of construction. He says about his writing, “it’s a passion and I revel in using the building industry as a tapestry to weave a great tale seasoned with historic facts and with memorable characters.” Beashel’s eight published novels and two novellas in The Australian Sandstone Series showcase 19 century Sydney from the ground up and have garnered critical review. Unbound Justice the first novel has won No 1 In Amazon Rankings in three countries. A contributor to The Last Post and Afloat Magazines and he has appeared on ABC National Radio celebrating his novels. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (Building) from Sydney’s UTS and is a member of Writing NSW. |
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Unbound Justice
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Australian Historical Fiction
A “get-even” story. Slow and deliberate revenge taken. A new, magnificent view of nineteenth-century Sydney from the ground up. John Leary boards ship in Ireland in 1850, a young immigrant carpenter ambitious for a new life in Australia. He sails with revenge--his beloved sister has been raped by her landlord, William Baxterhouse, who escapes with even grander plans for success in New South Wales. In Sydney, hard workers like Leary and ruthless newcomers like Baxterhouse find a city fired by the Gold Rush and dedicated to creating the finest buildings in the colony. Leary has a double motive to succeed: he has fallen in love with the beautiful Clarissa McGuire, whose family despise him, and Baxterhouse continues to rise in wealth and influence, untouchable. Meanwhile another woman, Beth O'Hare, is in love with John Leary, and he makes some hard choices--including a climactic showdown with Baxterhouse. The building industry becomes a metaphor for his chosen city, with its mixture of squalor and grandeur, of corruption and high ideals. The Australian Sandstone Series is an historical fiction book series drama with a rich cast of compelling characters. Each book can be enjoyed as a story by itself. 
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Unshackled
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Australian Historical Fiction
Sydney is booming in 1855 and life looks grand for John Leary: his construction dreams are coming true, his beloved wife Clarissa is expecting their first child, and, with his partner Sean Connaire, he has produced some of the city's significant buildings. But success provokes jealousy, and a mysterious rival sabotages a vital Leary site. John Leary cannot control his own company while his father-in-law holds a majority share, so he arranges a buyout on his own behalf--but this new, silent partner poses a serious risk to the harmony of his marriage. Meanwhile ex-convict Gerry Gleeson makes himself known to John as his uncle and helps him track down the saboteur. Raw ambition, guilty secrets, and undercover deals--will they bring the young builder to ruin or triumph? This is the second Australian Historical Fiction novel in The Australian Sandstone Series: a new, magnificent view of nineteenth-century Sydney from the ground up. 
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Succession
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Australian Historical Fiction
Leary Contracting has to build it--the tallest hotel Sydney has ever seen. At 55, John Leary employs both his sons in his construction company, but the one he favours is his first-born, Richard. Meanwhile Richard's half-brother, Brendan, gains the respect of the Leary workers because he has 'bricks in his blood'. John begins the massive hotel project, overcoming city red tape and the jabs of his fiercest competitor. The Imperial dwarfs all around it, with hundreds of workers busting their guts to finish the brutal program. Richard, charming but unreliable, marries well and dazzles the Sydney society of 1885, while Brendan proves himself tougher than he looks whenever real work is required. John must choose which of his sons will lead Learys into the next century. Only after the Imperial is completed does he make his decision. Succession is the third Australian Historical Fiction novel in The Australian Sandstone Series, a magnificent view of 19c Sydney from the ground up! 
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Bailed Up
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Australian Historical Fiction
To Irishman Gerry Riordan, a pint at the Drawbridge Hotel in Cork makes the ideal end to the working week, and one winter night in 1828 he has good reason to celebrate with his friend, Lawrence Toole—Gerry is now a certified stonemason. Next day he will deliver gold tabernacle doors to St Mary’s Cathedral and dare to ask the beautiful Anne Donovan to marry him. But by the next night the gold has been stolen, Lawrence Toole lies dead, and Riordan is accused of theft and murder. Anne, his boss’s daughter, is the only person who believes him innocent. Riordan escapes hanging but is transported to New South Wales. A convict in irons, with a flaming temper, he is forced to labour on the colony’s toughest project, the Great North Road. As he begins working in stone again, a charming young woman, an enigmatic overseer and two convict friends seek to open his eyes to a more promising future. Meanwhile, offenders who framed him for the crimes in Ireland are also in the colony. Is there really any hope for Gerry Riordan to rebuild his shattered dreams? 
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Quest at Golden Hall
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Australian Historical Fiction
Mysterious strangers. A mansion under scrutiny. Love reappears as a 19c woman boldly breaks moulds. John Leary’s mansion would be a lonely place after the death of his clever and beautiful wife, Clarissa but for his little son, Richard. The tall, handsome widower spends more time entertaining Richard than he devotes to his successful business, Leary Contracting, and his partners and family are worried. Is John losing his edge in 1850s Sydney’s highly competitive building industry? However, just as rivals are about to take advantage of John’s indifference, his spirits start to awaken. More than one person is watching his house, Golden Hall, and he suspects their motives. True, Golden Hall with its magnificent views from Point Piper is an enviable abode. And the widow Mary Harrigan, who once lived there, could be forgiven for hanging around it. But John is convinced that she and another suspicious character are after one thing: gold. And they seem to think it’s hidden in John’s house. When Mary Harrigan enlists the lovely Catherine Ryan in her quest, John shakes off his lassitude and springs into action. He has a quest of his own, that will affect both his home and his future happiness. 
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Rough Currents
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Australian Historical Fiction
Nature Unleashed. Love rediscovered and Convict violence. To Jess Walsh, keeping the inn at Wiseman’s Ferry alongside her husband means coming to terms with the Hawkesbury River. It brings travellers to their doors because the ferry provides the only crossing for supplies and convict teams up to the civil engineering wonder of its time— the Great North Road. An ex-convict herself, working with her attractive daughter Deirdre beside her, Jess sees the riverside as home. Her only concern is whether Deirdre should marry stonemason Gerry Riordan and move to far-off Sydney Town. Inn owner Solomon Wiseman, whose house and gardens complete the little settlement, depends on the Walshes to manage food supplies for the Road. These are collected under the command of Lieutenant William Dodds, with whom Jess often clashes. He is an officer—one of the powerful class that cruelly banished her to Australia twenty-one years before. The river may bring good fortune, but it can also carry disaster and destruction, and the dense bush around Wiseman’s Ferry can hide desperate men. In 1831, death strikes close to Jess and the river becomes her enemy. Then, just as she begins to realise who her truest ally is, violence throws her life into question again, along with that of William Dodds. No sooner has life returned to Wiseman’s Ferry, when Jess is to discover the reason behind her father’s bankruptcy and tragedies, brought about by a person she holds dear. This is the story of a woman’s determination, nature’s fury, and love burgeoning beside a wild and majestic river in New South Wales. 
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Reputations
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Australian Historical Fiction
When Sean Connaire’s family moved from Ireland to Sydney in the 1840s, he left behind his best friend, Dermot Spiers, and the girl they both worshipped, Veronica Flemming. Three years later, Sean relishes his career as a carpenter and rejoices in a grand surprise—Dermot Spiers and Vonnie Flemming both reappear in New South Wales, and Vonnie is still unmarried. However, Sean’s old friend has hardly put his boots under the desk of a Sydney job when he makes a demand that rocks Sean to his core beliefs. Stunned, Sean says no and thus sets in train events that drive him to drink, grief and potential ruin. Accused of a crime he did not commit, he has to watch Dermot making capital out if his losses and becoming a devious rival in the fight for Vonnie. Only when the colourful British lawyer and fellow drinker, Albert Mangan, steps into the breach, do Sean’s fortunes begin to change. Albert tears into the labyrinthine darkness of Sean’s past and uncovers what has pushed him to the brink of disaster. But has Sean lost his last chance to claim the woman he loves? 
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Death on The Rocks
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Australian Historical Fiction
Publican Judith Sampson runs a tight ship at her New Liffey hotel. The Rocks, Sydney, in 1824 is not a place for the faint-hearted. Sharp eyes and quick wits are needed to survive in this boiling cauldron of new colonials. Judith is intrigued when a grain trader is murdered. Then, when her lodger is slain—a young and handsome American whaler—and nothing much is done, she is compelled to act. In the dangerous and debris-strewn lanes of The Rocks, street women and gamblers cross her path, but her investigation peels away the barnacles of lies and jealousy to uncover a shocking link between a pair of lovers and the murders of two men. Judith’s livelihood is attacked, and the constabulary tries to put this brave investigator aside, but she is determined on justice for the victims, whatever the cost to those left behind. 
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The Australian Sandstone Series Boxset, Books 1-3
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Australian Historical Fiction
Love Historical Fiction? Then this series is for you! Fans of Colleen McCullough, Ken Follett and C S Forester will relate to the Australian Historical Fiction, Unbound Justice, Unshackled and Succession, the first three books, which span 37 years of Sydney life in the second half of the 19 century. They follow the fortunes of 20-year-old John Leary, who in 1850 leaves his rural home in Ireland and sails as an assisted immigrant to the Colony of New South Wales. Thanks to his skill as a carpenter, his hard work and the labour shortage due to the Gold Rush, he rises quickly in the building trade. His ambition is to have his own construction company. This he achieves, but his ambition proves boundless, and we are witness to his ruthless progress to become the biggest and the best. The building industry becomes a metaphor for the growing city with its mixture of squalor and grandeur, of corruption and high ideals. These three books, both Australian historical fiction drama and family saga, paint a vivid picture of 19c Sydney. Love, revenge, and tragedy all play a part in the fortunes of John Leary and his family and the wide cast of friends and enemies. 
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The Australian Sandstone Series Boxset, Books 4-6
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Australian Historical Fiction
The Series continues! If you loved the characters in the first three books of The Australian Sandstone Series then get set to find out more of their lives AND also the lives of Gerry Riordan and others. John Leary is also featured again in Book 5 Quest at Golden Hall. Floods, fires, hidden gold, treachery and love all coalesce in these next three books as the characters experience the challenges of life. The box set is an ideal way to obtain three books at reduced prices compared to individual purchases. Go on…dive in! 
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