The Lioness: A Novel
Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A luxurious African safari turns deadly for a Hollywood starlet and her entourage in a riveting historical thriller the New York Times calls "Wildly entertaining." - From the bestselling author of The Flight Attendant. "The best possible combination of Hemingway and Agatha Christie...Impossible to put down." --Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were HereTanzania, 1964. When Katie Barstow, A-list actress, and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision giraffes gently eating leaves from the tall acacia trees, great swarms of wildebeests crossing the Mara River, and herds of zebras storming the sandy plains. Their glamorous guests--including Katie's best friend, Carmen Tedesco, and Terrance Dutton, the celebrated Black actor who stars alongside Katie in the highly controversial film Tender Madness--will spend their days taking photos, and their evenings drinking chilled gin and tonics back at camp, as the local Tanzanian guides warm water for their baths. The wealthy Americans expect civilized adventure: fresh ice from the kerosene-powered ice maker, dinners of cooked gazelle meat, and plenty of stories to tell over lunch back on Rodeo Drive. What Katie and her glittering entourage do not expect is this: a kidnapping gone wrong, their guides bleeding out in the dirt, and a team of Russian mercenaries herding their hostages into Land Rovers, guns to their heads. As the powerful sun gives way to night, the gunmen shove them into abandoned huts and Katie Barstow, Hollywood royalty, prays for a simple thing: to see the sun rise one more time. A blistering story of fame, race, love, and death set in a world on the cusp of great change, The Lioness is a vibrant masterpiece from one of our finest storytellers.
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Community Reviews
Bestselling author Chris Bohjalian says his inspiration for The Lioness was movies. He loves them. One day in 2019 he found himself wondering why he had never written a Hollywood novel or a book set in the era in which he grew up, the 1960's and 70's. He had to think of a locale to which he could transport Hollywood people and put them in jeopardy. In the 1960's, the Simba rebellion was unfolding as East Africa sought to escape from colonialism, ...read more
Content warning for death, murder, mutilation, graphic descriptions, kidnapping, threats, and related topics. I kept waiting to connect with this book, but it didn't happen for me. I think it was the massive cast of characters, and the shifting narration style didn’t work for me. I felt like I was starting and stopping throughout the whole novel, especially with the inclusion of new clippings about the narrators and the jumping between the past a...read more
When Hollywood's darling, Katie Barstow, marries her childhood friend, she decides to take her 5 closest friends, including her brother and pregnant sister-in-law, along on their honeymoon safari in the Serengeti. But when the party is kidnapped, who is the real target? And how many of them will make it out alive?
The chapters rotate among the kidnapping victims, including one of the safari porters. Each chapter is a small frame, beginning and ...read more
The chapters rotate among the kidnapping victims, including one of the safari porters. Each chapter is a small frame, beginning and ...read more
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