An imaginative portrait of Theo Miller and his infatuation with the seemingly glamorous figures of Sylvie de Croy and her lover a rich reimagining of a colonial Eden in which multitudes of serpents lurked Sunday Times

Just the thing to read while sipping a cocktail or two iPaper

A gloriously dark tale, packed with heat and glamour LIZA KLAUSSMANN

Sweeping, evocative and sumptuously told, The Hunters is a dramatic coming-of-age story, a complex portrayal of first love and family loyalty and a passionate reimagining of the Happy Valley set in all their glory and notoriety.

Theo Miller is fourteen years old, bright and ambitious, when he steps off the train into the simmering heat and uproar of 1920s Nairobi. Neither he, nor his earnest younger sister Maud, is prepared for the turbulent mix of joy and pain their new life in Kenya will bring.

Their father is Director of Kenyan Railways, a role it is assumed Theo will inherit. But when he meets enchanting American heiress Sylvie de Croy and her charismatic, reckless companion, Freddie Hamilton, his aspirations turn in an instant.

Sylvie and Freddies charm is magnetic and Theo is welcomed into the heart of their inner circle: rich, glamourous expatriates, infamous for their hedonistic lifestyles. Yet behind their intoxicating allure lies a more powerful cocktail of lust, betrayal, deceit and violence that he realises he cannot avoid. As dark clouds gather over Kenyas future and his own, he must find a way back to his family to Maud before it is too late.