London, 1969 – and the headstrong and beautiful Isabella Courtney dazzles all.

Yet the years that follow will test Isabella to the extreme of her endurance.
They will be years of hardship and bitter pain, hidden behind the masks of affluence and success. It will be a time in which brother is pitted against brother, as they are drawn into the lair of the golden fox.
Golden Fox irresistibly sweeps the reader through the heart of London society, the grandeur of Europe and the searing heat of a divided Africa.
Once again, Wilbur Smith combines his unique talents for electric story-telling, meticulous research and compassion for places and their people in a novel of adventure, romantic obsession, deceit and desire, in a world where betrayal demands the ultimate sacrifice...
This is the fourth volume in the Courtney series, Second Sequence

TTC - Between the Rivers: The History of Ancient Mesopotamia

What pieces of a distant past drift before our mind's eye when ancient Mesopotamia is mentioned?

Do we see the temples known as ziggurats, thrust toward the sky by stepped platforms that would bring worshippers closer to the gods they honored? Entire populations paralyzed by fear before a dreaded invader, their dreams haunted by images of their own severed heads held aloft? Priests making sacrifices to the gods who ruled over and protected their city? Or the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon, their terraces as shadowed by mystery as they are set alight by color?

Any of these, of course, may come to mind. Perhaps all of them. And with the exception of Babylon's fabled gardens, whose existence has never actually been confirmed, they are all true—each a part of the legacy of a region from which our own culture has drawn so many essential aspects, including writing, the first code of law, the idea of cities, and even the first epic poem. All cultures lie in the shadow of Mesopotamia.

The planet Komarr is undergoing centuries-long terraforming when one of the orbiting mirrors crucial to the effort is smashed by an off-course ship. Miles Vorkosigan is sent to Komarr to investigate the incident; once there, he becomes embroiled in political and scientific battles. To make matters worse, the name Vorkosigan is anathema on Komarr. But our intrepid hero can't be put down easily. While trying to save Komarr, he manages... maybe... to find true love at last! Bujold's original and intelligent blend of politics, science, and cliffhanging-good space opera makes this book a satisfying adventure and a charming romance.

Finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards.

Miles Vorkosigan faces more than his share of troubles as the protagonist in Mirror Dance. Not only is he deformed and undersized but he has a cloned brother who gets into a jam in the free enterprise plague spot known as Jackson's Whole. Miles tries to help his brother but ends up injured, placed on cryogenic suspension and then lost in intergalactic limbo. And that's just in the first 100 pages. The following 300 pages add a wealth more to this fantastic tale that's both humorous and finely written.

Mirror Dance won the 1995 Hugo Award for Science Fiction.

Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child Victor grew up while going from one foster home to another. Victor's mother was found to be unfit to raise Victor. Several times throughout his childhood his mother would kidnap him from his foster parents. They would eventually be caught and he would again be remanded over to the government child welfare agency.

In the present day setting of the book, Victor is now a man in his mid-twenties who left medical school in order to find work to support his mother who is now in a nursing home. He cannot afford the care that his mother is receiving so he resorts to being a con man. His "con" is to go to restaurants and midway through his meal, he forces himself to choke on his food.