‘Thorn Birds’ author dies

Australia’s Colleen McCullough, whose "The Thorn Birds" novel sold 30 million copies, died at age 77.

Colleen McCullough

 McCullough wrote 25 novels, the 25^th was "Bittersweet" in 2013. 

Her first novel "Tim" was published in 1974 and became a movie starring Mel Gibson as a young, intellectually disabled handyman who had a romance with a middle-aged woman.

Her second novel was "The Thorn Birds," published in 1977. It became a U.S. television mini-series in 1983 starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Christopher Plummer. 

The Outback melodrama about a priest's struggle between church and love won four Golden Globe awards.

McCullough was born in Wellington in New South Wales state but spent her last decades on Norfolk Island, a remote Australian outpost in the Pacific.