Explore my literary world
Welcome to the world of Susan Wyld. As an author from Tasmania, Australia, I invite you to explore my collection of self-published books, each a blend of mystery and drama. From historical sagas to contemporary family dramas, with characters full of individual foibles and the complexities of human nature.
Every book has started with a dog walk, and been written over many hours spent staring out of the window. The earlier titles were initially read by a very obliging step-mama, sister and best friend. The later titles by my husband. I thank them all.
Currently I spend a lot of time staring at this view, a sunset over Hobart's River Derwent. I walk along its beaches, swim in the seas, and watch the dog roll in the sand. And characters come to a life of their own until all I have to do is write it down.
My journey in words
Dive into my literary journey, spanning decades of storytelling. Here you'll find highlights from my collection, including my personal favourite, Diamond Nights, and other compelling narratives that have captivated readers with their depth and intrigue.
Born as the Nazis began, and a child as the Chancellor took hold of her homeland, Cassie Muller once had a happy life in a small and insignificant village near the Swiss border. The daughter of an American mother and German father who opposed the regime, she followed their lead to fight for those she loved.
Along the way she lost her parents, her home and her reputation. She was blackmailed into working for SS Captain Rudolf Heini. She was befriended by a shadowy agent, Henri, who came to help the local Jewish population but stayed for her. Along the way she changed them both. One small story, in one small place, of how and why one girl decides to turn away from her country, her culture, her friends and her classmates, and sacrifice all in defence of those she does not know.
Pages: 739. Available on Amazon: AUD $38.50 or on kindle
The war is over. Cassie has gone, Germany is in tatters and ex SS Major Rudolf Heini has nothing left but a stolen home and a shattered country. With no other option he sets off for Munich, hoping to find his missing family and somehow start again. Along the way, camping in the woods, he meets a young refugee with tattooed numbers on her arm. Scared into silence, he calls her Kate, and takes her with him to find her some help.
Slowly these two unlikely companions begin to lean on each other, as post-war poverty bites deep and the American Military Government tries to impose order without themselves becoming Nazis. Into the ruins left behind, life gradually starts again, but a long buried secret threatens all Rudy’s efforts to live with the loss of everything.
Pages: 442. Available on Amazon: AUD $26.40 or on kindle
Carl Salzer, self-described writer, journalist and reprobate about town, first met Cassie Muller in 1941 (in Diamond Nights) when she was just seventeen years old. In spite of her reputation as an immoral farm girl, in spite of being an unmarried mother and the mistress of SS Captain Rudolf Heini, he found her intriguing.
The war’s end sees Carl working as a labourer amongst the ruins created by the relentless bombing. His baby is barely a year old, his wife is pregnant again, and the supplies he had stockpiled for his family are fast running out. Then early one morning he is summoned to see a Colonel of the American Military Government, who in a roundabout fashion shows him a file from British Intelligence detailing the activities of their agent Diamond Night. Cassie Muller.
This meeting turns his life around as he is allowed back into journalism, but no matter how much time passes the obsession with her story remains quietly bubbling away until, down a very long road and many years later, the old compatriots meet again in Israel.
Pages: 116. Available on Amazon: AUD $13.42 or on kindle
Beth Kliner was seventeen and impatient to start life. She was in love with a young Catholic boy who loved her right back, but it was 1939 in Warsaw and Catholic boys did not marry Jewish girls. Then the Nazis crashed into her life, the boy went to defend the nation and never came back, her family all died, and the Jews were squeezed into ghettos. Struggling to survive the loss of everything, Beth became an angel in the ghetto, going out with the sewer rats to trap German soldiers and supply the Jewish army with their guns. And falling in love again. Right up until she was caught and sent to a concentration camp.
The war’s end found Beth friendless and alone. She’d survived beatings, multiple rape and the loss of her baby son. All that had kept her going was her lover from the ghetto, a Jewish man who had come to Warsaw from Germany looking for a baby, then returned again to love Beth. She did not know his name, his age or how to find him again. She only knew that he’d had papers for Palestine, and worked for a shadowy agent named Henri.
Lost and traumatised, she gets on a bus with other young survivors and makes her way south, little suspecting the family just waiting to find her, and the man who would change and shape her life; brother to her lover and Henri’s second in command, David Samuels.
Pages: 416. Available on Amazon: AUD $26.29 or on kindle
Emma Cameron is a Melbourne doctor juggling a busy career and a crumbling marriage. Then one day she goes to visit her parents after work and finds her father dead and her mother beaten and shocked into silence. Police suggest a possible connection to two recent attacks on elderly men. It all seems utterly unreal.
On the day of the funeral a stranger attends, and reveals that her South African father had actually been a German soldier in the war. Jacob Rabin, a lawyer, Nazi hunter, and the son of a survivor with his own connection to William Brock, persuades Emma that there are enough differences between her father’s case and the killer the police are tracking, to warrant a trip to Europe and a search back through time.
Between the remnants of the French Resistance, British Intelligence and the German Army, Emma and Jake unravel a world where allies could betray you while enemies became friends. Slowly, as William Brock’s life becomes clearer, an enemy appears out of the shadows who may now threaten Emma’s own safety.
Pages: 192. Available on Amazon: AUD $16.88 or on kindle
Maggie Kirkwood was a policewoman until one too many women bled to death in her arms. After a break she returns to Melbourne and quickly gets sucked back to the seedy side of life. After one case to help a friend, the lack of resources and a possible tax problem steers her towards an investigation firm with all the contacts and technology required. And a case just waiting for her.
Louise Roland is a madam operating a run down and illegal brothel. One of her girls went off to do a couple of films and turned up dead in the Yarra River. Now a second girl is missing, having returned safely from one film, and time is running out.
With the help of old police contacts, and undercover officer Richard Ellis, Maggie digs underneath and finds a dirty little world of rich men making films for their own entertainment. Top of the heap, running the organisation is a man known as Henry, or Harvey. Find the H man, and she’ll find both the motive and the girl. Preferably before the H man finds her.
Pages: 230. Available on Amazon: AUD $16.85 or on kindle
Rob Jamison is, in his own words, a bit of a disaster. A marriage too young that ended up in court, a daughter he had to fight to see, and a history of depression that forever drags at what little self-esteem he has. He has a job he hates, a girlfriend he’s not entirely sure he deserves, and parents who ever so faintly disapprove.
One morning, fighting against the urge to skip work by staying in bed, he hears the sound of crying from the flat next door. Not so unusual, as his neighbour has a little girl. It is only when he finally makes it to work, just about on time, that he realises the mother’s car had not been in the car park. He returns home to find the little girl scared and hungry and left on her own, so calls the police.
When police suspicion falls on Rob he has no choice but to drag himself into life to defend himself. Slowly, with the help of a journalist, he untangles a tale of blackmail, greed and political hypocrisy, all centred around a right wing politician who preaches family values while hiding a taste for hookers and rough sex.
Pages: 200. Available on Amazon: AUD $16.44 or on kindle
Tommy Barwick is the gregarious son of an Italian immigrant and a nurse by profession in a Melbourne hospital. Content within himself and untroubled by being bisexual, he’s prone to falling in and out of bed at the drop of a pair of knickers without too many heartbreaks or much beyond laughter.
Leon Harris is a PhD student and a university tutor. Introverted, uncommunicative and resistant to life beyond the soothing calm of academia, he nonetheless finds Tommy an irresistible force. However his own emotions, locked up by the death of his parents before he was old enough to know them, quickly create issues that risk breaking them apart.
Nessa Kilburn is a schoolgirl struggling against parental addiction and domestic violence. Her only key to escape the dragging poverty is university. It is her over-riding goal, but for every step she takes away from her parents, she slides two back into the damage they’ve created. Slowly but surely, bad choice after bad choice, her world crumbles until her very life is at stake.
As the two men try to find a balance between Tommy’s extroverted cheer and Leon’s quiet reserve, Nessa is sliding into a helpless addiction of her own. Chance meetings come and go, barely noticed, but something keeps Tommy’s attention. With one last chance left, he risks everything to kidnap her away from her life and show her an alternative. But is he too late? Or can the three of them work out a way to create their own family, and their own home?
Doing the research, otherwise known as having a holiday. The following photos are not the precise locations of any of the books, merely a personal flavour. 2014 The mountains of southern Germany around Rauhkoph. Setting for much of the Diamond Nights series. 2008 The sea walls of St Malo, France, for part of Past Unravelling. 2009 Sculpture outside the Arts Centre in Melbourne, Australia, The H Man. 2007 Sailing near Bruny Island, Tasmania, the closest thing I have to a home state and setting for Seat of Family Values.
Main Characters
Diamond Nights
Cassie Muller: Born 1924 in Schenberg, a Catholic village in southern Germany. 9 to 21 years old. Her parents were a Socialist father, a teacher at the local school, and American housewife mother. They teach her both a belief in democracy and the strength to live by her beliefs. Loyal and fearless, as the Nazis arrive and destroy her home, she’ll do whatever is required to protect her loved ones, regardless of the consequences.
SS Captain Rudolf Heini: Born 1914 in Berlin, Germany, moved to Munich as a baby. 20 to 30 years old. His parents are an authoritarian Nazi father who directed him into the SS, and a housewife mother who supported her husband. Bored with life, his posting to a rural village quickly sends him into the nearby towns for women and alcohol, while his biggest problem is controlling the wilful Cassie Muller.
Henri: Born 1916 near Galilee, Palestine Mandate, Jewish. 19 to 28 years old. A shadowy agent and a man of the holy land, found by Heinrich Muller and described by Cassie as wild and savage and gentle and free. He came with his brother to rescue German Jews. He lost his brother, but found friends everywhere. He stayed because of Cassie.
Rudy's Story
Rudolf Heini: Born 1914 in Berlin. 30 to 35 years old. Having found his conscience by the end of the war, he returns to Munich to rebuild his life in the city’s ruins. Torn between friend and foe of both the military government and his own family, he has to overcome bitterness and grief and find a way to atone for the hurt he had once caused.
Kate Heini: German Jew (assumed). Aged 20 by the end of the story. She’s a ragged urchin Rudy finds hiding in the woods on his way back to Munich. She has numbers on her wrist but remains silent. He calls her Kate and takes her with him to get help. With no name or age, as she grows up under his nose, her strength and sweetness gradually become central to Rudy’s home and happiness.
The Girl I Once Danced With
Carl Salzer: Born 1907 in Mannheim, Germany. 38 to 62 years old. Carl once described himself to Cassie Muller as a writer, journalist and reprobate about town. He is also a family man with a prickly wife, who’s grateful that the sacrifices made by Cassie took him out of post-war poverty. Over time, during a successful journalistic career, he keeps the flame slowing burning on his over-riding ambition to tell Cassie’s story.
From Warsaw to Home
Beth Kliner: Born 1921 in Warsaw, Poland, Jewish. 17 to 51 years old. Beth was growing up and falling in love within a very normal home. Then the Nazis came and her family dies. First she’s a soldier in the ghetto, then a helpless prisoner at the hands of a violent camp officer, but somehow she survives. Lost and alone, she sets off for Palestine, driven by the hope of finding again the man she had once loved. Instead she finds his brother.
David Samuels: Born 1923 in Schenberg in 1923, Jewish. 23 to 49 years old. Once a carefree child, during the war David became a fighter almost as ruthless as Henri, his commanding officer. His first hero was his brother, and after the war he honoured the promise he had made him to find the girl he had loved. Patient, calm and persistent, he brings Beth home, then quietly waits for her to be ready to make a home.
Cassie and Henri Cohen: 23 to 49, and 30 to 56 years old. Now married and living with Henri’s parents in Palestine, they welcome Beth into their home. As their own family grows, as Palestine becomes Israel, they help the traumatised young woman grow into herself, and into the life David increasingly hopes to build.
Past Unravelling
Emma Cameron: Born 1955 in South Africa. 35 years old. Emigrated to Melbourne with her family as a child. A GP in the Melbourne suburbs, caught in a rut between aging parents and a failing marriage. Then her father is murdered and his secrets come out. He is not South African born, but a German national. Determined to find out the truth, she sets off with Jake to discover the connections between her father’s past and his eventual fate.
Jacob Rabin: Born 1953 in Melbourne. 37 years old, Jewish. A child of a Holocaust survivor and his Australian wife, a lawyer by profession, ex soldier of Israel and Nazi hunter. He meets Emma at her father’s funeral, with a story that connects her father to his. Somewhat ruthless, he persuades her off on a fact-finding mission to Europe in case his own father is now under threat.
The H Man
Maggie Kirkwood: Born 1967 in Melbourne. 32 to 33 years old. Twice divorced and an ex-police officer, she leaves in disgust when the law finds itself unable to protect the women in its care against their violent husbands. Basically contented with life, she soon finds herself back in the grimy underbelly of Melbourne, pulled into the chase for a missing girl by a strong aversion to those who victimise young women.
Richard Ellis: Born 1968 in Melbourne. 32 years old. Undercover police officer investigating the same men Maggie is chasing. Also basically content, he joins forces with her, personally and professionally, to track down pimps, pornographers, paedophiles and a rather random stalker.
Seat of Family Values
Rob Jamison: Born 1964 in Hobart. 28 year old. First married at 20, divorced two years later. One daughter, one conviction for domestic violence. A breakdown at 24 and still suffers with depression. Lives with his girlfriend. When his neighbour is found missing then dead, he’s reluctant to get involved. As the threat level increases against those he loves, anger gradually overcomes his lack of self belief.
Angie Hewett: Born 1963 in Hobart. 29 years old. Prickly and unsentimental, has lived with Rob for over two years. Her straightforward practicality is a boon to his wayward emotions. She loves him, but won’t mother him or tolerate any sliding into immature behaviour. When their life together is threatened, her help is tinged with some necessary caution.
Dark Alleys of Home
Vanessa ‘Nessa’ Kilburn: Born 1972 in Melbourne. 10 to 24 years old. A child struggling in a household where alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence grinds everyone down into poverty. Her saving grace is her intelligence, but her desperate desire to get to university keeps being dragged back down until finally an addiction of her own threatens her life.
Tommy Barwick: Born 1959 in Melbourne. 27 to 38 years old. Son of an Italian immigrate mother and Australian father, a nurse at Melbourne Hospital. Chatty, sociable, happily bisexual, he falls for Leon but their differences send him off looking for more. Several affairs follow, and they muddle their way through. Then, in Nessa, he sees an image of a bright, smart, university student. Then he finds out the awful truth.
Leon Harris: Born 1960 in Melbourne. 25 to 36 years old. Orphaned at a young age, Leon finds solace in the academic life. Unsociable and uncomfortable, he nonetheless falls for Tommy. But he doesn’t know how to make the adjustments and compromises necessary to keep him. Then Nessa falls into their lives, and gradually the heart of the two men give a lost young woman a chance for a home.
Find your next captivating read
If you love a decent mystery or drama, filled with characters who reflect the strengths and weaknesses we all possess, then my books are for you. I invite you to pick up a copy, immerse yourself in a new world, and then let me know your thoughts. Your next great story awaits!