Wilbur Smith · 1980 · overland

Wilbur Smith's 1980 Ballantyne saga. In 1860, Dr Robyn Ballantyne and her brother Zouga sail for the Africa of their birth - she to fight the slave trade and find their lost explorer father, he to seek gold and glory. From Cape Town they voyage to the mouth of the Zambezi and plunge into the uncharted interior, toward the ancient kingdoms and hidden ruins of the far Zambezi lands.

1. 1
   Bristol

   From Bristol, Dr Robyn Ballantyne and her brother Zouga take passage for the Africa of their childhood - she to fight the slave trade and find their lost father, he to make a name and a fortune in the unmapped interior.

2. 2
   Cape Town

   They sail aboard the clipper Huron under the dangerous Yankee captain Mungo St John, whose ship Robyn suspects of slaving - a suspicion that curdles into obsession even as it draws her helplessly toward him.

3. 3
   Quelimane

   Put ashore near the mouth of the Zambezi on the Mozambique coast, brother and sister part ways - Zouga to hunt north and west for ivory and gold, Robyn to follow the rumours of her father Fuller Ballantyne into the interior.

4. 4
   Tete

   Robyn works up the Zambezi past the Portuguese settlement of Tete, into the country of the slave roads, where she finds the traffic in human beings at its cruellest and word of the father who vanished into it.

5. 5
   Great Zimbabwe

   Zouga's march brings him to a ruined city of massive stone walls, deserted and forgotten in the bush - and to the carved soapstone falcons that watch above it, one of which he carries away with him toward the coast.