An extraordinarily beautiful Indian princess and a white Englishman fall in love but suffer deeply because of their feelings. Set mostly in Central America in the 1870s, this is one of Haggard’s more interesting romantic adventure novels in which the protagonists ultimately journey to an inhabited ancient city hidden in the mountains (perhaps in Guatemala). “…crypto-metaphysical work, which is much removed from Haggard’s usual simple adventure stories… Rich in detail, ingenious and well plotted, but weak in characterization at times. The moral message is powerfully conveyed, as is the sense of tragedy. There are occasional minor supernatural elements, but the major prophecy turns out to be false.”

Allan Quatermain is confronted with the legend of the Heu-Heu, a monster who eats humans, while sheltering from a thunderstorm in the Drakensberg mountains. The legend appears to be reality as Quatermain is to find out after arriving in Zululand and being summond by Zikali, a Zulu Sangoma of indeterminate age. Together with his trusted companion, Hans, Quatermain is sent on a mission by Zikali. This mission is, firstly to procure a potent herb which Zikali needs and which happens to originate from a tree in the Heu-Heu’s garden. Secondly, it is to overthrow the Heu-Heu at the behest of Issicore, a noble from the tribe Walloo, the worshipers of Heu-Heu, who has travelled to Zikali to ask for assistance.

Quartermain (the main character from the many adventures found in the Alan Quartermain series) was a progressive Victorian big game hunter in Africa who championed the cause of the natives. Although Haggard often portrays Quatermain as being racist (at least in the light of our modern thinking), this short story gives us the full strengths, weaknesses, vision and prejudices of our adventurer, showing that his outlook to the locals is perhaps not quite what you’d expect.

The story which is narrated in the following pages came to me from the lips of my old friend Allan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, his old fellow-voyagers, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now utterly vanished into the dark heart of Africa. He is persuaded that a white people, of which he has heard rumours all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return. One letter only have I received from the old gentleman, dated from a mission station high up the Tana, a river on the east coast, about three hundred miles north of Zanzibar. In it he says they have gone through many hardships and adventures, but are alive and well, and have found traces which go far towards making him hope that the results of their wild quest may be a “magnificent and unexampled discovery.” I greatly fear, however, that all he has discovered is death; for this letter came a long while ago, and nobody has heard a single word of the party since. They have totally vanished.

To return to old Magepa. I had known him for many years. The first time we met was in the battle of the Tugela. I was fighting for the king’s son, Umbelazi the Handsome, in the ranks of the Tulwana regiment–I mean to write all that story, for it should not be lost. Well, as I have told you before, the Tulwana were wiped out; of the three thousand or so of them I think only about fifty remained alive after they had annihilated the three of Cetewayo’s regiments that set upon them. But as it chanced Magepa was one who survived.

Allan Quatermain has determined to go farther afield than he had ever traveled before, into the depths of the African jungle – on a march inland to the hills between lands controlled by the chiefs Wambe and Nala. Quatermain has heard of the elephants dwelling in the dense forests at the foot of the mountains edging Wambe’s lands – and also stories of Wambe himself, so ruthless a ruler he murdered in cold blood an entire party of English party who, seven years before, entered his country to hunt elephants. Quatermain determines to go elephant-hunting all the same. Before he has gone far, however, he faces rebellion among his own men, unexpected dangers from massive beasts of the jungle – and then receives from an old friend a strange message, hidden within a bowl of bartered food.

Before there was Indiana Jones there was Allan Quartermain: the original explorer, treasure hunter, and adventurer. The Quartermain books have captivated readers for more than a century, spawning more than a dozen movies and a host of imitators. Here is the story of Allan’s first true love, Marie Marais. Famed explorer Allan Quatermain finds himself facing down the most formidable adversary he has ever encountered: an irresistible woman for whom he is willing to fight to the death. The Marie of the title eventually wins the upper hand, and Quatermain makes her his wife. Will the pair beat the odds and live happily ever after?

Haggard’s penultimate novel! His cousin Algernon was different indeed. To begin with, his attire was faultless, made by the best tailor in London and apparently put on new that moment. Within this perfect outer casing was a short, pale-eyed, lack-lustre young man with straight, sandy hair and no eyebrows, one whose hectic flush and moist hands betrayed the mortal ailment with which he was stricken, a poor, commonplace lad who, loving the world and thirsting for its pleasures, was yet doomed to bid it and them an early farewell.

Nada the Lily is the thrilling story of the brave Zulu warrior Umslopogaas and his love for the most beautiful of Zulu women, Nada the Lily. Young Umslopogaas, son of the bloodthirsty Zulu king Chaka, is forced to flee when Chaka orders his death. In the adventures that ensue, Umslopogaas is carried away by a lion and then rescued by Galazi, king of an army of ghost-wolves. Together, Umslopogaas and Galazi fight for glory and honour and to avenge their wrongs. With their fabled weapons, an axe called Groan-Maker and the club Watcher of the Woods, the two men become legendary warriors. But even these two unstoppable heroes may finally have met their match when the Zulu king sends his army of slayers to destroy them! Although he is more famous for his romances King Solomon’s Mines and She, the unjustly neglected Nada the Lily is one of Haggard’s finest achievements. Nada the Lily is a dazzling blend of adventure, romance, fantasy, and the Gothic, brilliantly weaving fiction and history into an unforgettable tale.

The last book published in Haggard’s lifetime is a standalone ancient-Egyptian fantasy. It opens at an almost breakneck pace, with Pharaoh deposed and killed, his wife and child in hiding, and the goddesses stirring. A secret religious order raises the Pharaoh’s daughter, and she meets and falls in love with the usurper’s disguised son. The climax features traditional adventure-fiction excitement (battle and torture).

Ayesha is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, a 2,000-year-old queen who rules a fabled lost city deep in a maze of African caverns. She has the occult wisdom of Isis, the eternal youth and beauty of Aphrodite, and the violent appetite of a lamia. Like A. Conan Doyle’s Lost World, She is one of those magnificent Victorian yarns about an expedition to a far-off locale shadowed by magic, mystery, and death.

Allan Quartermain – our hero – and Ayesha (that is, She Who Must Be Obeyed) share the limelight in this great adventure, but oddly enough considering the stars on stage, it’s Umslopogaas the Zulu who steals the show. A supernatural fantasy thriller featuring a magic token, telepathy, powers of the occult, and a people lost to time in the depths of ancient Africa.

Sitting beside entrancing Lady Ragnall while the smoke of an ancient Egyptian herb grows thick around them, Allan Quatermain finds himself departing the world he know and entering into his strangest adventure. In a mystic transformation, he comes to his senses in an earlier incarnation . . . as Shabaka, hunter of lions – scion of the rulers of ancient Egypt, and lover of the Lady Amada, the Priestess of Isis

Get set for adventure with this rip-roaring tale from action-fantasy master H. Rider Haggard. The Ivory Child sees intrepid explorer Allan Quatermain venturing into unknown territory to rescue a kidnapping victim. Along the way, he inadvertently stumbles into an array of thorny situations, including a tribal civil war. Will Quatermain triumph and make it back alive?

Leonard Outram, a young Englishman who’s just lost his fortune along with and his fiancee’s hand, makes an oath: he’ll win back his home and live happily ever after. Really! Well, sort of. Leonard ends up in Africa, which, at that point in history, was the place to win your fortune back for the gods of fate. Leonard rescues a maid from a slave-dealer – for a fee, of course! – and then falls in love with her, complicating the heck out of his situation. Oh well: a great adventure ensues, taking them to places no one has ever heard of, then or now – leading to narrow escapes, love, intrigue, and of course, high adventure.

Treasure and the occult are vividly blended in this stirring tale of Africa. Allan Quatermain finds a village in the middle of the Dark Continent ruled by a huge, pale man with a strange knowledge of future events. This is the last Quatermain book.

Three Englishmen, marooned on a mysterious South Sea island, learn of the islanders’ powerful god Oro, who has been sleeping for 250,000 years. They manage to wake him, along with his beautiful daughter, who is the spitting image of the hero’s dead wife, while he is a ringer for her lost love. Other residents of an ancient Atlantean civilization are also returned to life in this tale of spirit travel, reincarnation, occult powers, teleportation, a subterranean city, the elixir of life, and considerable mythic depth. One of the last novels from the author of King Solomon’s Mines.

In the fourth and final book in the She sequence, the beautiful and immortal Ayesha tells her tale of power, wisdom, love, and deception, in her own words. Arabian by birth, Ayesha’s natural beauty was the cause in her father’s kingdom of many wars and conflicts between jealous princes and suitors, leading to a rumor that she was cursed. Swearing an oath of celibacy, to serve Isis the Goddess of the Spirit of Nature and turn away from Aphrodite the Goddess of Love, she seeks to protect herself, until Greek soldier of fortune Kallikrates comes to her for sanctuary and her resolve weakens. But Kallikrates does not arrive alone—he is pursued by the Pharaoh’s daughter who is wildly jealous of Ayesha’s beauty and vows to destroy her. Only by staying true to Isis does Ayesha survive, and as a reward Isis leads her to the hidden kingdom of Kôr in Africa, to herald in a new Golden Age. The kingdom of Kôr hides many secrets, including The Flame of Eternal Life where ultimately Ayesha’s vanity, obsession, and desire lead to her downfall.