Der Stein der Schildkröte

When her aunt in Melbourne dies unexpectedly just before their long-planned journey together, Claudia decides to make the trip through Australia alone. On the road, she discovers her late aunt's diary and begins to piece together an old family secret hidden for decades. Along the way she falls for David, an intelligent, magnetic businessman — who then disappears without explanation, leaving Claudia to search for him even as the deeper mystery around her family draws her in further.

At the center of it all is a stone given to her by an Aboriginal elder, an object tied to unsettling, cryptic dreams that seem to point toward the truth Claudia is chasing across the continent.

Susan de Winter, a travel journalist, sets the novel against real Australian locations she visited herself while researching the book, detailed further in an appendix. "Der Stein der Schildkröte" is a self-contained romantic adventure novel.