Showing results by author "Wilbur Smith" in All Categories

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.

From best-selling novelist Wilbur Smith, The Eye of the Tiger is an exciting adventure set amongst the peaceful islands of the Indian Ocean, where a man's past returns to hunt him down. Harry Fletcher, a man with a chequered past, has reformed and is making an honest living as a charter skipper fishing for big game in the seductive waters of the Indian Ocean. Suddenly men from the world of violence Harry has put behind him overturn his good intentions, involving him in a hectic race to recover a fabulous treasure from an ancient wreck.

Game of Thrones meets Ancient Egypt in this magnificent, action-packed epic. On the gleaming banks of the Nile, the brilliant Taita - slave and advisor to the Pharaoh - finds himself at the center of a vortex of passion, intrigue, and danger. His quest to destroy the Hyksos army and form an alliance with Crete takes him on an epic journey up the Nile, through Arabia and the magical city of Babylon, and across the open seas.

As a member of the remarkable Courtney family, Leon Courtney knows how quickly fortunes can be won and lost. Over the course of more than two centuries, generations of his family have risen and fallen with the tides of history. Leon, too, has experienced his own share of triumph and pain. In the wake of his beloved wife's death, the renowned big-game hunter is raising his young daughter, Saffron, alone in colonial Kenya.

It was in Mexico that he first learnt how to exploit his extraordinary good looks and to develop his natural winning ways with women. By the age of 17 his companions had nicknamed him 'The Golden Fox', and his reputation as an irresistible lover was established. Isabella, Shasa Courtney's beloved daughter, enjoys all the freedoms London in the '60s can offer. So when a beautiful, charming man appears and sweeps her off her feet, why would she resist?

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....

1774: Rob Courtney is growing up in Fort Auspice, Nativity Bay, a trading outpost on the east coast of Africa, and has always dreamed of going to sea. When his grandfather Jim Courtney dies and the mysterious Captain Marston calls into the fort, Rob's passion is ignited, and he stows away on Marston's ship as it sails to England. Arriving in London, Rob is seduced by its charms and makes friends with a group of fast-living men and ends up in terrible debt.

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.

Henry "Hal" Courtney has always lived at sea. He watched his own father executed during the Anglo-Dutch naval war, and spent his entire young adulthood avenging his father's death. Now a truce has been made between the warring countries and Hal is captain of his own ship - the Golden Bough. From the slave markets of Zanzibar to the pirate-riddled waters of the Indian Ocean, Hal leads his crew in and out of the waves of danger. But he soon realizes that just because the war is over, does not mean the battle is won, and the more a man achieves, the more he has to lose.

King and country. No matter the cost. With the backing of his uncle, General Penrod Ballantyne, young Leon Courtney joins the King's Rifles of Nairobi. When he becomes discouraged by the dishonesty of army life, his uncle recruits him for a special mission - spying on the Germans in East Africa, whom the General suspects are preparing for the Kaiser's war. Posing as a professional game hunter, Leon is tasked with gathering information on one of his clients, wealthy industrialist Otto Von Meerbach.

From the trenches of France, General Sean Courtney comes back to fame, fortune and a seat in the government. Mark Anders, the courageous young South African whom he has come to regard as his own son, returns to nothing, his grandfather murdered and his property seized by an unknown company. At the bottom of the mystery is Sean's son Dirk, the jealous, violent and power-crazed genius whose all-consuming hatred can only end in blood.... A Sparrow Falls is the thrilling third novel in the Courtney series, continuing from When the Lion Feeds and The Sound of Thunder.

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....

Shasa Courtney, heir to the Courtney fortunes, dreams only of uniting his divided, beloved country. Against all his principles, he allows his half brother Manfred to persuade him to join South Africa's right-wing National Party, hoping to moderate from within their dangerous policies of apartheid. But Shasa's wife is working against everything he's working for while Manfred has deadly secrets he cannot afford to be revealed, either to his family or the public who are on the brink of war.

In the city of Lahun, Hui lives an enchanted life. The favoured son of a doting father, and ruler-in-waiting of the great city, his fate is set. But behind the beautiful façades a sinister evil is plotting. Craving power and embittered by jealousy, Hui's stepmother, the great sorceress Isetnofret, and Hui's own brother Qen, orchestrate the downfall of Hui's father, condemning Hui and seizing power in the city.

Years of Hyksos rule have seen the ruin and suffering of a once-mighty Egypt. Though Pharaoh is now restored to his rightful throne, his power fragile as some seek to take advantage of the ensuing chaos following the overthrowing of the Hyksos. Desperate to unite the two divided kingdoms of Egypt under Pharaoh's rule, great mage Taita sends his protégé, Piay, to discover the answer to a millennia-old riddle which has the power to secure the fate of Egypt forever. But in the chaos of war, a dark evil has thrived.

1754. Inseparable since birth and growing up in India, Theo and Connie Courtney are torn apart by the tragic death of their parents. Theo, wracked with guilt, seeks salvation in combat and conflict, joining the British in the war against the French and Indian army. Connie, believing herself abandoned by her brother, and abused and brutalised by a series of corrupt guardians, makes her way to France, where she is welcomed into high society.

The Malabar coast is full of dangers: greedy tradesmen, fearless pirates, and men full of vengeance. But for a Courtney, the greatest danger might just be his own family.... Francis Courtney flees the comfort of his Devonshire estate when his stepfather's gambling debts leave him penniless and at risk. He sails to South Africa with revenge and fortune on his mind: his uncle Tom Courtney killed his father, and Francis intends to avenge his death and make his fortune in the process.

Years of Hyksos rule have seen the ruin and suffering of a once-mighty Egypt. Though Pharaoh is now restored to his rightful throne, his power fragile as some seek to take advantage of the ensuing chaos following the overthrowing of the Hyksos. Desperate to unite the two divided kingdoms of Egypt under Pharaoh's rule, great mage Taita sends his protégé, Piay, to discover the answer to a millennia-old riddle which has the power to secure the fate of Egypt forever. But in the chaos of war, a dark evil has thrived.