‘A master storyteller’ Sunday Times

‘No one does adventure quite like Smith’ Daily Mirror

‘Best historical novelist’ Stephen King

WILBUR SMITH RETURNS WITH A BRAND-NEW EGYPTIAN SERIES EPIC

Since his appointment as Nomarch of Memphis, by the God-Pharaoh Rameses, Piay has thrown himself into pulling the city back from the brink. The famous white city walls have been rebuilt, the once starving inhabitants fed and every day caravans have arrived from the desert wastes, filled with the many riches looted and hidden by the Hyksos. But when the body of a murdered scribe is found sealed inside the newly constructed city vault – the mark of Anubis, god of death, scrawled next to him in his own blood – panic sweeps the city. Only the wisest man in all Egypt can solve this mystery – Piay’s mentor, the great sage Taita.

Called from his place at the God-Pharaoh Rameses’ side, Taita’s arrival in Memphis calms the populace, but it isn’t long before the mark of Anubis appears again, and again. Taita and Piay are drawn into a battle of wits against a criminal mastermind turned warlord, his aim – with the demise of the Hyksos – to see the kingdom of the Red Pretender restored and the forces of Rameses crushed.
Will everything that Taita has fought for be torn asunder? Or will he and Piay finally reunite the two kingdoms? Only time will tell. And time is running out.

Book 4 in The New Kingdom Sequence and book 10 in the Ancient Egyptian series from the master historical adventure writer, Wilbur Smith.

‘A truly extraordinary detective story’ Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything

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One ancient language transformed our world. This is its story.

Star. Stjarna. Stare. Thousands of miles apart, people look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see.

Listen to these English, Icelandic and Iranic words and you can hear echoes of one of the most extraordinary journeys in humanity’s past. All three of these languages – and hundreds more – share a single ancient ancestor.

Five millennia ago, in a mysterious Big Bang of its own, this proto tongue exploded, forming new worlds as it spread east and west. Today, nearly half of humanity speaks an Indo-European language. How did this happen?

In Proto, acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney sets off to find out. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the Silk Roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings – the ancient peoples who spread these tongues far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists racing to recover this lost world. What they have discovered has vital lessons for our modern age, as people and their languages are on the move again.

Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

‘Lively and fascinating. I loved it’ David Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in your Ear?

Homer’s Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its dreadful consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. It was composed more than 2,600 years ago, but still transfixes us with its tale of loss and battle, love and revenge, guided throughout by the active presence of the gods. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving but great questions remain: where, how and when it was composed and why it has such enduring power?

In this compelling book Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a life-long love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date and a method for its composition, giving us a sense of alternative approaches and grounding his own in discoveries about long heroic poems composed elsewhere in the world, and the ever-growing evidence of archaeology.

Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world. Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. In this superbly written and conceived tribute, Lane Fox expresses and amplifies what old and new readers can find in it. It is pervaded, he argues, by a poignant hardness which is not just a poetic trick. It is a deeply held view of the world.

FROM THE RUINS OF BATTLE
A HERO MUST RISE
FOR THE GLORY OF EGYPT

Years of Hyksos rule have seen the plunder of once-mighty Egypt. Though the two kingdoms have now been reunited by the armies of the true Pharaoh, his position is perilous, his rule under threat from those who seek to take advantage of the turmoil created by the overthrow of the Hyksos. Desperate to keep Egypt united, Taita the Magus summons his protégé, Piay, to solve a millennia-old riddle which has the power to secure Egypt’s future forever.

But in the tumult of war, an evil has thrived. Malevolent followers of Seth, the god of chaos, are determined to claim this power and usher in a new age of darkness.

The fate of Egypt is at stake. Can Piay prevent their land falling into the hands of those who would see its ruin?

Book 3 in The New Kingdom Sequence and book 9 in the Ancient Egyptian series from the master historical adventure writer, Wilbur Smith. Don’t miss House of Two Pharaohs, the next action-packed Egyptian adventure from Wilbur Smith. Coming August 2025.

Homer’s Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its dreadful consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. It was composed more than 2,600 years ago, but still transfixes us with its tale of loss and battle, love and revenge, guided throughout by the active presence of the gods. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving but great questions remain: where, how and when it was composed and why it has such enduring power?

In this compelling book Robin Lane Fox addresses these questions, drawing on a life-long love and engagement with the poem. He argues for a place, a date and a method for its composition, giving us a sense of alternative approaches and grounding his own in discoveries about long heroic poems composed elsewhere in the world, and the ever-growing evidence of archaeology.

Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world. Thousands of readers turn to the Iliad every year. In this superbly written and conceived tribute, Lane Fox expresses and amplifies what old and new readers can find in it. It is pervaded, he argues, by a poignant hardness which is not just a poetic trick. It is a deeply held view of the world.

‘Clavell never puts a foot wrong . . . Get it, read it, you’ll enjoy it mightily’ Daily Mirror

This is James Clavell’s tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, SHOGUN is a stunningly dramatic re-creation of a very different world.

Starting with his shipwreck on this most alien of shores, the novel charts Blackthorne’s rise from the status of reviled foreigner up to the hights of trusted advisor and eventually, Samurai. All as civil war looms over the fragile country.

‘I can’t remember when a novel has seized my mind like this one. It’s irresistible, maybe unforgettable. Clavell creates a world so enveloping you forget who and where you are’ – New York Times