Conquerors of the Sky

A novel that crowns Thomas Fleming's forty-year career, Conquerors of the Sky takes readers on a gripping insider's journey into the lives and loves, the hopes and heartbreaks of the men and women who make America's planes. When Adrian Van Ness, the enigmatic chairman of Buchanan Aircraft, dies of a heart attack, a struggle for control of the aerospace giant erupts between burly Dick Stone, the tough-talking money man from New York, and Californian Cliff Morris, CEO and supersalesman. Sarah Morris, Cliff's estranged English-born wife, knows all the company's secrets. With her at the controls, Conquerors of the Sky becomes a time trip to the early years of the twentieth century, when flight was seen as spiritual ascent and idealistic Frank Buchanan began designing planes. New York aristocrat Adrian Van Ness is equally fascinated by these new machines--as a financial bonanza. In 1930, Adrian's amoral business genius and Frank's visions of ever swifter...