Justin Cartwright Books in Order

During the final period of the Shah of Iran’s rule, a KGB assassination plot brings competing covert operations into motion. The story follows an assassin and members of the Shah’s circle as their interests collide.

A journalist and filmmaker tries to unravel the mystery of his father’s ill-fated expedition to Africa in 1959. His search links a personal need to understand the past with the people and interests surrounding a journey that ended badly.

An escaped zoo animal devours an unemployed broker, setting the tone for a journey through 1990s London. People from finance, journalism, advertising, entertainment, and the criminal world cross paths in a city where a hungry lion remains a lurking threat.

Haunted by dreams of the Masai, Tim Curtiz travels to East Africa to research a screenplay. His subject is a French anthropologist whose work among the Masai before the war preceded her deportation to Auschwitz, connecting different histories of betrayal.

Against the backdrop of Nelson Mandela’s release, Anthony Northleach moves through what seems an ordinary London day. Thoughts about marriage, work, sex, rugby, and politics gradually give way to experiences that turn his familiar world into a nightmare.

Returning to South Africa to cover the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Justin Cartwright reflects on the country where he grew up. His travels combine personal memories, sporting observations, and encounters that illuminate a society undergoing profound change.

Dan Silas returns to America for a school reunion and discovers unsettling changes among old friends. A former girlfriend reveals a child was his, while his closest friend’s breakdown sends Dan searching through lives he thought he understood.

Recovering from a stabbing, government minister Richard McAllister travels to South Africa to research a relative’s history. News of his affair with an actress brings him back to London, where press attention, political pressure, and her husband threaten their relationship.

A motorcycle courier haunted by his son’s death returns to South Africa and buys a neglected farm. Hoping to build a refuge, he becomes entangled with a local woman, a family of squatters, and a captive baboon while confronting his past.

Charles and Daphne Judd’s family is still struggling with the disgrace of their daughter Juliet’s imprisonment for art theft. As her release approaches, an anticipated reunion exposes the tensions, disappointments, and wounds that have unsettled their lives in Cornwall.

Conrad Senior inherits papers connecting an Oxford philosopher to a German conspirator executed after the failed attempt to kill Hitler. His search for the film of the execution becomes an investigation into friendship, betrayal, and the limits of historical understanding.

After his wife’s death, retired newsreader David Cross privately discovers a new sense of freedom. His adult children face marital strain and a threatening former boyfriend, while the family’s separate secrets complicate their efforts to live with loss.

The Trevelyan family’s historic private bank is close to collapse, and arranging its sale requires concealing uncomfortable facts. As the patriarch remains incapacitated in France, those managing the crisis struggle to protect fortunes, reputations, and the family’s fragile sense of itself.

Following his late father’s fascination with Richard the Lionheart, Richard Cathar travels to Jerusalem and falls for journalist Noor. Her kidnapping in Cairo draws him toward a document that could reshape his understanding of the Crusades and his own family.

Cartwright revisits Oxford through conversations, college traditions, museums, gardens, and the books that have shaped its reputation. His account explores the distance between the university’s everyday realities and its powerful image as a place of privilege, learning, and continuity.

Wealthy expatriate Frank McAllister prepares to return to South Africa with his lover while awaiting his daughter’s arrival from rehabilitation. His cousin’s volatile life draws him into danger, confronting the family with violence, delusion, and the burdens of their shared history.