A Falcon Flies is the first best-selling novel in Wilbur Smith's epic tale of Africa, The Ballantyne Novels. In search of a father they barely remember, Zouga and Dr Robyn Ballantyne board Mungo St John's magnificent clipper to speed them to Africa. But long before they sight that mighty continent, Robyn knows that she and Mungo will battle with all the fury of natural enemies - and love with all the desperation of those unable to evade the commands of fate.

A lost civilisation. A curse reborn. Dr Ben Kazin has only a blurred photograph and a gut instinct that there is a lost city to uncover somewhere beneath the Botswana cliffs. Soon, a whispered curse and a chance encounter with a local tribe lead him to discover much more than city foundations. The curse, it seems, is real, and will link Ben, his oldest friend and the woman they both love with a forgotten leader from 2,000 years ago, in a city of glory and honour that subsequently disappeared without a trace.

Taita is a humble slave, an expert in art, poetry, medicine and engineering as well as keeping important secrets. He is the most treasured possession of Lord Intef. Yet when Intef's beautiful daughter, Lostris, is married to the Pharaoh, Taita is commanded to follow her and swiftly finds himself deeper than he ever could have imagined in a world of deception and treachery. But outside the palace, the great kingdom of Egypt is divided and in even greater danger. Enemies threaten on all sides, and only Taita holds the power to save them all....

After the death of his beloved Queen Lostris, Taita retreats into the forbidding deserts of North Africa to become a hermit. He devotes himself to the study of the occult and, armed with extraordinary powers, he gradually transforms himself into a warlock. After years of study, he discovers the divine purpose of his bereavement when he is called upon to save the dynasty of Lostris from the clouds of evil that loom over Egypt.

Bruce Curry is the leader of a mercenary band with the dubious support of three white officers. His mission is to relieve a mining town cut off by the fighting and to retrieve a priceless consignment of diamonds. Ranged against his ill-disciplined unit are bandits, guerrillas and hostile tribes that roam the land. But there is another, even deadlier enemy - one of his own men....

The son of a wealthy plantation owner and a doting mother, Mungo St John is accustomed to the wealth and luxuries his privilege has afforded him. That is until he returns from university to discover his family ruined, his inheritance stolen and his childhood sweetheart, Camilla, taken by the conniving Chester Marion. Fuelled by anger and love, Mungo swears vengeance and devotes his life to saving Camilla - and destroying Chester.

It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns. In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined.

The Syrian plane disintegrated, evaporating in a gush of silvery smoke, rent through with bright white lightning, and the ejecting pilot's body was blown clear of the fuselage. For an instant it was outlined ahead of David's screen, cruciform in shape with arms and legs thrown wide, the helmet still on the head, and the clothing ballooning in the rush of air.

Fortunes rise and fall in Wilbur Smith's tale of warring siblings and illegal diamond trading, The Diamond Hunters. The Van Der Byl Diamond Company, willed by its founder to his son Benedict, his sister Tracey and their estranged foster brother Johnny Lance, turns out to be a bequest of hatred. For it is couched in such terms as to offer Benedict the instrument of destruction of his bitterest rival. 'Destroy Johnny' is the old man's implacable message. And so, consumed with envy for Johnny, Benedict sets out in ruthless pursuit of this goal.

Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swales a stylish Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their cause. Striking a bargain with a beleaguered Ethiopian prince, the trio dares to run gauntlet, guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars in a final, desperate gamble for freedom....

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.

The hijacking of a jumbo jet off the Seychelles galvanises antiterrorist chief Peter Stride into the action for which he has spent a lifetime training. But even in the hail of bullets which follows, he knows that this is only the beginning of a nightmare. Stride is the one man who might find the twisted genius who holds the world hostage - if only his every move were not anticipated by the enemy....

Robbed of his wife and ousted from his huge shipping empire, Nick Berg is hell-bent on vengeance. It is the sea which gives him his opportunity. When his arch-rival's luxury liner is trapped in the tempestuous Antarctic, Nick stakes all to pit his powerful salvage tug, the Warlock, in a desperate race against time and the elements....

In German East Africa on the eve of the First World War, two freebooting adventurers - one a flamboyant Irish American, the other an impeccable young Englishman - pit their wits against the gross German Commissioner from whose territory they are making their living as game hunters and ivory poachers. But the outbreak of war gives the signal for their private skirmishing to flare into a relentless vendetta pursued with devastating violence by land and sea, so that what begins as a comic escapade gives way to chilling horror....

In Gold Mine, an exciting adventure from Wilbur Smith, ambitious and hard-living mining expert Rod Ironsides knows that the general managership of the Sonder Ditch gold mine is the chance of a lifetime. But the price of unquestioning obedience to the coldly obsessive genius of Dr Manfred Steyner proves impossible to pay. Both men are but unwitting tools of powerful people - for whom the control of a gold mine is only part of a dangerous plan which includes the destruction of the very mine itself....

Bruce Curry is the leader of a mercenary band with the dubious support of three white officers. His mission is to relieve a mining town cut off by the fighting and to retrieve a priceless consignment of diamonds. Ranged against his ill-disciplined unit are bandits, guerrillas and hostile tribes that roam the land. But there is another, even deadlier enemy - one of his own men....

A Penguin Classic. First published in 1938, this volume of stories collected with the encouragement of his longtime editor Pascal Covici serves as a wonderful introduction to the work of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world, these stories reflect Steinbeck’s characteristic interests: The tensions between town and country, laborers and owners, past and present.

This epic tale sweeps across continents and time, hovers over a key era in American history, and deftly realizes the humanity of a whole cast of characters. Told through flashbacks and alternating points of view, The Last Crossing is about redemption, about seeking and finding, about human feelings and strengths, about personal honor, and about that moment in life when we must decide to cross over and surrender to love.

Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.

The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even among Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savanna manor house until gossip subsides. Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society.

A moving love story set in the Canadian wilderness, Mrs. Mike is a classic tale that has enchanted millions of readers worldwide. It brings the fierce, stunning landscape of Canada to life and tenderly evokes the love that blossoms between Sergeant Mike Flannigan and beautiful young Katherine Mary O'Fallon.

Set in familiar Steinbeck territory, To a God Unknown is a mystical tale, exploring one man's attempt to control the forces of nature and, ultimately, to understand the ways of God.

Set against the colorful and magical backdrop of Ireland, The Grey Horse chronicles a time when the Irish people suffered under harsh English overlords who sought to destroy their culture and way of life. Into the Irish town of Carraroe, a magnificent, completely grey stallion appears. The horse brings with him the promise of better times and magical happenings, for he is actually the shape-shifted form of Ruairi MacEibhir, journeyed to a time of danger in order to win the hand of the woman he loves.

Wrongfully accused of murder, Dr. Catherine Bennett is destined to hang...unless she can disappear. With the untamed territory of Colorado as her most likely refuge, she packs her physician's kit and heads West. But even with a new life and name, a female doctor with a bounty on her head can hide for only so long.

After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she'd longed for is much changed. Her father's new companion - a strange, intolerant woman - has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites.

At 21 Queenie Hanlon has the world at her feet. Startlingly beautiful, wealthy and intelligent, she is the only daughter of Tingulla Station, the famed outback property in the wilds of western Queensland. At 22, her life lies in ruins. A series of disasters has robbed her of everything she has ever loved. Everything except Tingulla – her ancestral home and her spirit's Dreaming place. Now she is about to lose that too....

Chase Benteen Calder was bound to wrest a fortune from Montana land, where the whisper of riches swept across a sea of buffalo grass. With Lorna at his side, a woman who took the tough ways of the land as her destiny, he would breathe life into his dream. Through the treacherous Texas prairie, the perils of Indian country, and a bustling Dodge City, they forged their way to Montana. With Calder strength, they would harvest their fortune from the rich earth, on the sprawling plains of This Calder Range.

Robert Jackson Bennett makes a stunning debut with this deliciously dark tale sure to hold readers in its menacing thrall. The grinding poverty brought on by the Great Depression is nowhere more apparent than in the untold thousands looking for work along America’s railroad system. But one man haunting the rail camps has been moved by an entirely different brand of desperation: revenge.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Lily Chalmers wanted only two things from life: a farm of her own, and to find the sisters she hadn't seen since they were all little girls heading west on the orphan train. She certainly had no desire for a husband.

Taita is a humble slave, an expert in art, poetry, medicine and engineering as well as keeping important secrets. He is the most treasured possession of Lord Intef. Yet when Intef's beautiful daughter, Lostris, is married to the Pharaoh, Taita is commanded to follow her and swiftly finds himself deeper than he ever could have imagined in a world of deception and treachery. But outside the palace, the great kingdom of Egypt is divided and in even greater danger. Enemies threaten on all sides, and only Taita holds the power to save them all....

When Ann Waite discovers a shipwreck in Algoa Bay she is stunned to find survivors: a scarred sailor and a little boy. As the man walks away into the distance alone, Ann is left to raise the young child, Harry, in place of the baby she tragically lost at sea. Disaster and hardship befall Ann and Harry, and desperation drives them into the path of the mysterious shipwrecked man once more. Ralph Courtney has recently escaped Robben Island with two fellow prisoners and is destined to seek his fortune at Nativity Bay, the fabled place about which his father told him stories.

A Falcon Flies is the first best-selling novel in Wilbur Smith's epic tale of Africa, The Ballantyne Novels. In search of a father they barely remember, Zouga and Dr Robyn Ballantyne board Mungo St John's magnificent clipper to speed them to Africa. But long before they sight that mighty continent, Robyn knows that she and Mungo will battle with all the fury of natural enemies - and love with all the desperation of those unable to evade the commands of fate.

After the death of his beloved Queen Lostris, Taita retreats into the forbidding deserts of North Africa to become a hermit. He devotes himself to the study of the occult and, armed with extraordinary powers, he gradually transforms himself into a warlock. After years of study, he discovers the divine purpose of his bereavement when he is called upon to save the dynasty of Lostris from the clouds of evil that loom over Egypt.

The son of a wealthy plantation owner and a doting mother, Mungo St John is accustomed to the wealth and luxuries his privilege has afforded him. That is until he returns from university to discover his family ruined, his inheritance stolen and his childhood sweetheart, Camilla, taken by the conniving Chester Marion. Fuelled by anger and love, Mungo swears vengeance and devotes his life to saving Camilla - and destroying Chester.

Dr Daniel Armstrong, ecologist and documentary maker, has dedicated his life to protecting Africa's animals and rain forests. But when a gang of poachers murders his childhood friend, Chief Warden of the National Park, and steals the government-protected ivory stores, Daniel's quest of passion becomes one of revenge....

A lost civilisation. A curse reborn. Dr Ben Kazin has only a blurred photograph and a gut instinct that there is a lost city to uncover somewhere beneath the Botswana cliffs. Soon, a whispered curse and a chance encounter with a local tribe lead him to discover much more than city foundations. The curse, it seems, is real, and will link Ben, his oldest friend and the woman they both love with a forgotten leader from 2,000 years ago, in a city of glory and honour that subsequently disappeared without a trace.

In German East Africa on the eve of the First World War, two freebooting adventurers - one a flamboyant Irish American, the other an impeccable young Englishman - pit their wits against the gross German Commissioner from whose territory they are making their living as game hunters and ivory poachers. But the outbreak of war gives the signal for their private skirmishing to flare into a relentless vendetta pursued with devastating violence by land and sea, so that what begins as a comic escapade gives way to chilling horror....

Bruce Curry is the leader of a mercenary band with the dubious support of three white officers. His mission is to relieve a mining town cut off by the fighting and to retrieve a priceless consignment of diamonds. Ranged against his ill-disciplined unit are bandits, guerrillas and hostile tribes that roam the land. But there is another, even deadlier enemy - one of his own men....

Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, and now he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. From being attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, from getting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarious tunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death from crash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption through writing and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of his life that have been the raw material for his fiction.