D. Manning Richards has lived and worked in Sydney, Australia, three times for a total of nearly nine years. After earning degrees in Landscape Architecture and City Planning, he traveled around the world studying cities and worked professionally in Sydney, Australia, from 1973 to 1975. Returning to Washington DC, he worked as a city planner for The National Capital Planning Commission, as the vice-president of an office building developer, and then as a principal of Richards Development Company. But it was his interests in cities, history, and the writing of short stories and poetry that drew him back to Sydney to attend the 2000 Summer Olympics and to begin researching the history of the city. In late 2003, he returned to Washington DC to write an epic family saga about convicts, Aborigines, and Chinese embroiled in the birth and development of Sydney. DESTINY IN SYDNEY begins in 1788 with the founding of a British penal colony in Sydney and ends in 1902 with federation of Australia and women's suffrage. GIFT OF SYDNEY continues the three-family saga through two world wars and the Great Depression until a multicultural, world-class city was assured in 1981. A future third novel will complete the three-book series about Sydney, Australia. He is currently living in St. Germain, Paris, France, writing PARIS IN RUINS: A Novel of Passion and the French Résistance (about love and valor during the “Battle for Paris” in 1944).