River God

Ancient Egypt. Land of the Pharaohs. A kingdom built on gold. A legend shattered by greed... Now the Valley of the Kings lies ravaged by war, drained of its lifeblood, as weak men inherit the cherished crown.

City of Thebes. The Festival of Osiris. Loyal subjects of the Pharaoh gather to pay homage to their leader, but Taita a wise and formidably gifted eunuch slave sees him only as a symbol of a kingdom's fading glory. Beside Taita stand his proteges: Lostris, daughter of Lord Int...ef, beautiful beyond her fourteen years and Tanus, proud young army officer, whose father was betrayed by Lord Intef, Chief Vizier of Egypt whose power is second in wealth only to the Pharaoh.

Tanus and Lostris are deeply in love, but unbeknown to them, their union is an impossibility. Taita is the slave of Lord Intef. It was Intef who had Taita gelded as a young boy after he found that he had slept with a young slave girl. Together Taita, Lostris and Tanus share a dream to restore the majesty of the Pharaoh of Pharaohs on the glittering banks of the Nile.

Through the voice of the incomparable Taita, Wilbur Smith draws the reader irresistibly into the daily lives of his characters - their hopes, their fears, their passions.

A glorious civilisation. An epic journey. A heroic battle. An enduring love. Here is a magnificent, richly imagined saga that explodes with all the drama, mystery and rage of a bygone time.

Eagle in the Sky.

Young David Morgan, gifted heir apparent to a South African fortune, rebels against the boardroom future mapped out for him with sickening predictability by his family. Drawn to the sky as though to his natural element, he trains to become a brilliant jet pilot and fleeing from his home and all it stands for, sets out to make his own life.

But after meeting Debra, an attractive young Israeli writer and university lecturer, once more free choice seems his no longer. Drawn to Jerusalem to find her, he is straightway plunged into Israel's nerve-snapping struggle for survival.

Mirage pilots as skilled as he are at a premium, and both memories of his own mother and his growing passion for Debra make involvement with this new country's cause inescapable.

But excitement and exhilaration are checked by a violent reality, as the war which has drawn David and Debra so close, threatens to tear them apart.

The story of David's anguished fight to preserve their love from the destruction and mutilation of war, and replant it in the relative if not wholly unbroken peace of the remote South African wilds, ensures this novel a place among the Wilbur Smith greats. It is a haunting and irresistible read.