The Burning Shore
Centaine de Thiry grew up with privilege, wealth, and freedom on a sprawling French estate. Then war came crashing down around her, and a daring young South African aviator named Michael Courtney stole her heart amidst the destruction. But the tides of fate and battle sent the young woman on a journey across a dangerous sea to the coast of Africa.
When Centaine's ship is torpedoed and sunk, she is plunged into a shark-filled sea miles from the unseen shore. And when she reaches land, Centaine puts foot not in the lush world that Michael Courtney described to her, but on the edge of a burning desert--alone and fighting for her life.
In a strange world, under a great rushing sky, Centaine sets forth in the company of wandering Bushmen--and then into the arms of a renegade white soldier who may be her savior or destruction. As Michael Courtney's family searches for Centaine, she comes near her promised land--and the untold tragedy and riches that it holds...
Review
Praise for *Burning Shore*
'Wilbur Smith is an adept at thrilling and harrowing scenes, researches his facts, gets it all too horribly spot-on.' – The Sunday Times
'Wilbur Smith ... writes as forcefully as his tough characters act.' – Evening Standard
'A natural storyteller who moves confidently and often splendidly in his period and sustains a flow of convincing incident without repeating his excitements' – The Scotsman
' Wilbur has arguably the best sense of place of any adventure writer since John Buchan.' – The Guardian
‘An epic novel . . . it would be hard to think of a theme that was more appropriate today ... Smith writes with a great passion for the soul of Africa’ – Today
Praise for Wilbur Smith
“Smith is a master.” —Publishers Weekly
“One of the world’s most popular adventure writers.” —*The Washington Post Book World
“A rare author who wields a razor-sharp sword of craftsmanship.” —Tulsa World*
“Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared.” —The Times (UK)
"Best Historical Novelist--I say Wilbur Smith, with his swashbuckling novels of Africa. The bodices of rip and the blood flows. You can get lost in Wilbur Smith and misplace all of August."--Stephen King
"Best Historical Novelist--I say Wilbur Smith, with his swashbuckling novels of Africa. The bodices of rip and the blood flows. You can get lost in Wilbur Smith and misplace all of August."--Stephen King
"Action is Wilur Smith's game, and he is a master."--The Washington Post Book World
“The world’s leading adventure writer.” —Daily Express (UK)
"Wilbur Smith rarely misses a trick."--Sunday Times
“Smith is a captivating storyteller.” —The Orlando Sentinel
“No one does adventure quite like Smith.” —Daily Mirror (UK)
"A thundering good’ read is virtually the only way of describing Wilbur Smith’s books.” —The Irish Times
From the Back Cover
In a breathtaking adventure of love, war, and bitter revenge, New York Times bestselling author Wilbur Smith captures a courageous quest for survival against a country's greatest odds….
FROM THE FIRES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Centaine de Thiry grew up with privilege, wealth, and freedom on a sprawling French estate. Then war came crashing down around her, and a daring young South African aviator named Michael Courtney stole her heart amidst the destruction. But the tides of fate and battle sent the young woman on a journey across a dangerous sea to the coast of Africa.
ACROSS A BLAZING *AFRICAN *DESERT
When Centaine's ship is torpedoed and sunk, she is plunged into a shark-filled sea miles from the unseen shore. And when she reaches land, Centaine puts foot not in the lush world that Michael Courtney described to her, but on the edge of a burning desert--alone and fighting for her life.
A WOMAN DISCOVERS A WONDROUS LAND--AND THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL
In a strange world, under a great rushing sky, Centaine sets forth in the company of wandering Bushmen--and then into the arms of a renegade white soldier who may be her savior or destruction. As Michael Courtney's family searches for Centaine, she comes near her promised land--and the untold tragedy and riches that it holds...
"You can get lost in Wilbur Smith…with his swashbuckling novels of Africa."--Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly* *
FROM THE FIRES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Centaine de Thiry grew up with privilege, wealth, and freedom on a sprawling French estate. Then war came crashing down around her, and a daring young South African aviator named Michael Courtney stole her heart amidst the destruction. But the tides of fate and battle sent the young woman on a journey across a dangerous sea to the coast of Africa.
ACROSS A BLAZING *AFRICAN *DESERT
When Centaine's ship is torpedoed and sunk, she is plunged into a shark-filled sea miles from the unseen shore. And when she reaches land, Centaine puts foot not in the lush world that Michael Courtney described to her, but on the edge of a burning desert--alone and fighting for her life.
A WOMAN DISCOVERS A WONDROUS LAND--AND THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL
In a strange world, under a great rushing sky, Centaine sets forth in the company of wandering Bushmen--and then into the arms of a renegade white soldier who may be her savior or destruction. As Michael Courtney's family searches for Centaine, she comes near her promised land--and the untold tragedy and riches that it holds...
"You can get lost in Wilbur Smith…with his swashbuckling novels of Africa."--Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly* *
Vampire Chronicles 2: The vampire Lestat
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Returning to the hypnotic world she so brilliantly created in **Interview with the Vampire**, Anne Rice demonstrates once again her power to enthrall. With the same richness of drama, atmosphere and incident, she tells the fantastic story of the vampire Lestat, whom we first perceived as the seductive devil-vampire of **Interview with the Vampire** and whom we now follow through the ages as he searches for the origin and meaning of his own dark immortality. And who, more and more, engages our sympathy until he stands revealed as a questing romantic, a vampire-hero with his own strange and passionate courage and morality.As the novel opens, Lestat, having risen from the earth after a fifty-five years' sleep, and infatuated with the modern world, presents himself in all his vampire brilliance as a rock star, a superstar, a seducer of millions. And, in this blaze of adulation, daring to break the vampire oath of silence, he determines to tell his story, to rouse the generations of the living dead from their slumbers and to penetrate the riddle of his own existence.As he speaks we are plunged back into eighteenth-century France, into the castle where we meet the young Lestat: child of impoverished aristocrats, heroic hunter of wolves, at odds with his tyrannical father, running away to join a traveling troupe of actors. We see him in the licentious Paris of the day, first apprentice at a boulevard theater, then its most celebrated actor, idolized, adored by many and--night after night--watched by one . . . until, in a sleep filled with dreams of the wolves he killed as a boy, he is shocked awake by a dark figure and suddenly, horribly, eternally joined to the unholy brotherhood.We follow Lestat as he searches for others like him--in churches and brothels, in gambling houses, huts and palaces--sometimes joined by the vampire-angel Gabrielle, who is bound to him both by blood and by passion; sometimes traveling with his adored Nicolas, the violinist whose music and beauty are equally transcendent. We follow Lestat as he travels from the snowcapped mountains of the Auvergne and the primeval forest of ancient Gaul to Sicily, Istanbul, Venice and Cairo, searching for his origins, sometimes finding clues to the birth of the vampire race, knowing always that the central truth eludes him.But all the while, throughout his travels, through many lands and many times, Lestat has made enemies among his brethren--vampires who are in terror of his questions, who fear he will disturb the uneasy balance in which they exist with the mortal world, and who suspect in him a desire to rule. And when, in the caves below a craggy Greek island, in a sanctuary whose walls are covered with gold-flecked murals, the very first of the living dead awake, the truth at the heart of his quest is at last revealed. Ancient forces held immobile through the ages are irreversibly set in motion, and as the novel rushes to its stunning climax, Lestat's vampire foes converge in pursuit of him on the demonic freeways of the twentieth century.
Vampire Chronicles 4: The Tale of the Body Thief
SUMMARY: "A wonderfully mesmerizing adventure, delving into the convoluted mind of one of modern fiction's most famous anti-heroes, the vampire Lestat. Rice's writing is elegant and thought-provoking and her story is a gem."THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNEFor centuries Lestat has been a courted prince in the universe of the dead. Now he is alone and everything he once believed in seems false. So he embarks on a dangerous journey to destroy his doubts and loneliness forever....