Wilbur Smith's writing captivates his listeners with tale full of passions, rage, and glory. In Birds of Prey, he sets the scene for 1667 when Sir Francis Courteney and his son Hal are on patrol in their fighting caravel off the Agulhas Cape of South Africa. They are lying in wait there for one of the treasure-laden galleons of the Dutch East India Company returning from the Orient. So begins a quest for adventure and the spoils of war. They are swept...

It is the dawn of the eighteenth century. At the farthest edges of the known world, the mighty Honourable East India Trading Company suffers catastrophic losses from pirates of the high seas. After four years away from service, master mariner Sir Hal Courtney prepares for his latest and most dangerous voyage -- a death or glory mission in the name of the Empire and the Crown. But Hal must also think about the fate of his four sons. All are very different...

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,

One of the greatest fighter pilots of the Great War, Michael Courtney is saved by the French noblewoman Centaine de Thiry when he crashes near her home. When Michael is killed, Centaine is determined to live out the future they had dreamed of and sets out alone to travel across the ocean to join his family in South Africa. But no journey is ever simple, and a pregnant Centaine finds herself shipwrecked in shark-infested waters off Africa's notorious...

Sean Courtney returns from the African wilds to find war has been declared between the British Empire and the Transvaal Republic. Not only that, but a rivalry is growing, between the cruel, obsessive son who bears his name, and his elder, secret son, whom he cherishes deeply. The Boer War will take from Sean, in both blood and gold, but the conflict and its consequences will also offer him everything a man could want. Sean must now decide: with both...