by Tony Park
As with some of my previous books, several fine people donated (in some cases, staggering) amounts of money to various charity auctions to have their names used as characters in the book. I'd like to publicly thank Fred Quilter for paying for his grandsons Tate and Braedan Quilter-Phipps to appear, via his donation to the Save Foundation (NSW), a charity dedicated to rhino conservation; and Sue Chipchase and Bev Poor for their contributions to Painted Dog Conservation INC for the respective inclusions of Victoria Reagan and Nicholas Duncan. Farina Khan's character was named in recognition of her support for The Grey Man, an NGO which rescues child prostitutes in South East Asia.
Thanks, as always, to my wonderful unpaid editors, my wife, Nicola, mother, Kathy, and mother-in-law, Sheila. I couldn't be doing any of this without you three.
My friends at Macmillan allow me to live a dream life and I hope no one ever pinches me and wakes me up from it. Thanks to Publishing Director Cate Paterson, Publisher James Fraser, Commissioning Editor Alex Nahlous, Senior Editor Emma Rafferty, Copy Editor Julia Stiles, and Publicist Louise Cornegé. Thanks, too, to my agent Isobel Dixon for her fantastic work in getting me known further afield.
And last, but not least, if you've made it this far, thank you.
www.tonypark.net
www.tonyparkblog.blogspot.com
MORE BESTSELLING FICTION FROM TONY PARK
The Delta
After a failed assassination attempt on the president of Zimbabwe, ex-soldier turned mercenary Sonja Kurtz is on the run and heads for her only place of refuge, the Okavango Delta in the heart of Botswana. She's looking to rekindle a romance with her childhood sweetheart, safari camp manager Stirling Smith, and desperately wants a fresh start and to leave her perilous warrior lifestyle behind.
But Sonja discovers her beloved Delta is on the brink of destruction. She is recruited as an ‘eco-commando’ in a bid to halt a project that will destroy forever the Delta's fragile network of swamps and waterways.
Soon Sonja finds herself caught in a deadly web of intrigue involving Stirling, the handsome Martin Steele – her mercenary commander – and TV heart-throb and wildlife documentary presenter ‘Coyote’ Sam Chapman who blunders out of the bush in a reality show gone wrong.
Instead of escaping her violent past, Sonja is now surrounded by men who are relying on her killer instincts to save the day. Where she came to find peace, she finds war … and it is not just the survival of the Delta that is at stake.
Ivory
Alex Tremain is a pirate in trouble. All he really wants is to re-open his parents' five-star hotel on the Island of Dreams, off the coast of Mozambique, but instead he's facing a mounting tide of debt, his crew of modern-day buccaneers is getting restless and he has just been dumped by not one, but two, women.
And as if he hasn't enough on his plate, a chance raid on a ship then sets the Chinese triads after him and, to add to his woes, corporate lawyer Jane Humphries lands, literally, in his lap …
Before he knows it, Alex is embroiled in two separate and equally risky pursuits – one takes him to South Africa's Kruger National Park and will pay enough for him to re-open his hotel, and the other involves the love of a lifetime. Can Alex pull off this one last heist and walk away with both prizes?
African Sky
Paul Bryant hasn't been able to get back in a plane since a fatal bombing mission over Germany. So, instead, the Squadron Leader is flying a desk at a pilot training school at Kumalo air base, Rhodesia.
Pip Lovejoy, a volunteer policewoman, is also trying to suppress painful memories. When Felicity Langham, a high-profile WAAF from the air base, is found raped and murdered, Pip and Bryant's paths cross.
Pip unearths a link between the Squadron Leader, the controversial heiress Catherine De Beers and the dead woman. What Pip thinks is a singular crime of passion soon escalates into a crisis that could change the course of the war.