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About Graham Spence
He has co-written three non- fiction books with conservationist Lawrence Anthony: Babylon's Ark, The Elephant Whisperer and The Last Rhinos.
He has also written fiction - The Apocalypse Chase, an eco-adventure; and Keepers of the Flame, a novel about the existential struggle for the Western World in the war against terror.
His website is www.grahamspence.com
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When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them.
In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.
The Elephant Whisperer is a heartwarming, exciting, funny, and sometimes sad account of Anthony's experiences with these huge yet sympathetic creatures. Set against the background of life on an African game reserve, with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, it is a delightful book that will appeal to animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.
The astonishing story of the soldiers, conservationists, and ordinary Iraqis who united to save the animals of the Baghdad Zoo
When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals. Working with members of the zoo staff and a few compassionate U.S. soldiers, he defended the zoo, bartered for food on war-torn streets, and scoured bombed palaces for desperately needed supplies.
Babylon's Ark chronicles Anthony's hair-raising efforts to save a pride of Saddam's lions, close a deplorable black-market zoo, run ostriches through shoot-to-kill checkpoints, and rescue the dictator's personal herd of Thoroughbred Arabian horses. A tale of the selfless courage and humanity of a few men and women living dangerously for all the right reasons, Babylon's Ark is an inspiring and uplifting true-life adventure of individuals on both sides working together for the sake of magnificent wildlife caught in a war zone.
An inspiring story of conservation in the face of brutal war and bureaucratic quagmires, The Last Rhinos will move animal lovers everywhere.
Conservationist Lawrence Anthony's South African wildlife reserve protects elephants and many other animals, including several endangered Southern White Rhinos. When he learned that the Northern White Rhino was on the very brink of extinction--courtesy of a flourishing black market for rhino horns in the Far East--he knew he had to act. If the world lost the sub-species, it would be the largest land mammal since the woolly mammoth to go extinct.
The Northern White Rhino's last refuge was in an area in the Democratic Republic of Congo controlled by the infamous Lord's Resistance Army, one of the most vicious rebel groups in the world. In the face of unmoving government bureaucracy, Anthony made a perilous journey deep into the jungle to try to find and convince them to help save the rhino.
Joanne Greene, a former Playboy Bunny, and Penny Koncz, an award winning Michigan body builder, watched with horror as almost the entire pet population of one of American’s most iconic cities was abandoned and some even shot in the aftermath of the third most powerful Atlantic storm in history.
While humans were ordered to evacuate New Orleans in 2005, no provision was made for the estimated 300,000 pets. Many were left in homes with a bowl of food and water, as their owners expected to return soon. No one was prepared for the apocalypse looming on the horizon.
As the levees broke, thousands of animals had no choice but to sink or swim. Even more, locked in homes, drowned as the raging waters burst through buildings, flooding rooms up to the ceiling. Tragically, even more who survived marathon swims to dry land, or who could flee to roofs and attics, later perished drinking toxic water from the city’s ruptured sewers and petrochemical industries.
Unable to stomach what was happening, Joanne and Penny dropped everything and reported to the Lamar Dixon Animal Rescue Center at Gonzales, Louisiana. Every day they travelled into the wreckage of New Orleans to rescue terrified animals, many now semi-feral after the horrors they had been through.
They waded through foaming polluted waters, crawled under homes knowing there were venomous snakes slithering nearby, stepped on bodies and bones, gagged on the stench of corpses rotting in sub-tropical heat, saw horror and honor in equal measures … and witnessed firsthand an unconquerable will to survive by even the humblest of creatures.
It was not just the field rescues they were involved in. After bringing animals to safety, they worked tirelessly to reunite them with their owners.
What these gallant people did is now a blueprint for domestic animal rescue in disaster zones. Hurricanes will come and go, but it is unlikely that defenseless creatures will ever again be so callously abandoned by bureaucratic collapse as they were during Katrina.
This book is a tribute to all animal rescuers, the unsung heroes of America’s most famous natural disaster is only now being fully told. Written by best selling author of The Elephant Whisperer, Graham Spence.
What would drive a man to ‘smuggle’ rhino horn back into Africa at great risk to himself? This is just one of the situations Fowlds has put himself in as part of his ongoing fight against poaching, in order to prove a link between southern Africa and the illicit, lucrative trade in rhino horn in Vietnam.
Shavings of rhino horn are sold as a snake-oil “cures,” but a rhino’s horn has no magical, medicinal properties whatsoever. Yet it is for this that rhinoceroses are being killed at an escalating rate that puts the survival of the species in jeopardy. This corrupt, illegal war on wildlife has brought an iconic animal to the brink of extinction.
Growing up on a farm in the eastern Cape of South Africa, Grant developed a deep love of nature, turning his back on hunting to focus on saving wildlife of all kinds and the environment that sustains both them and us. He is a passionate conservationist who puts himself on the front line of protecting rhinos in the wild—right now, against armed poachers—and in the long term, through his work with schoolchildren, communities, and policymakers.
But he wants to fish with a difference. He wants to catch fish that have seldom, if ever, seen humans before. To do so, he has to fish in the most dangerous places in the world.
What follows is a roller-coaster adventure, from being hijacked by a murderous gang in South Africa, kidnapped by Marxists in Colombia, escaping Islamic fundamentalists in Chechnya and finally fighting for his life in the far outbacks of Canada.
Along the way he unwittingly embarks on a journey of discovery and romance far removed from the concrete confines of his previous life. He meets an array of people; outlaws living on the hard edges of society, revolutionaries who believe it’s more fun to be Che Guevara than Bill Gates, outdoorsmen who live the ‘soul’ of the planet, and beautiful women who, like him, are running from reality.
Some are honorable; some despicable. But none are boring.
Alaskan adventurer Chris Stone’s future sister-in-law Josie Gordon, a game ranger, has been kidnapped in South Africa by a murderous gang of rhino poachers. She was investigating the illicit horn trade, now among the most lucrative crimes in the world, and was on the verge of exposing the international wildlife mafia.
With the help of a South African private detective and a Vietnam veteran Green Beret, Chris and his fiancé Debra vow to find her.
They follow Josie’s trail, from South African hunting reserves that are little more than drug-fueled bordellos in the bush to Ho Chi Minh City, where ground rhino horn is regarded as a wonder cure for anything from cancer to impotency.
The final showdown is back in Africa, where game rangers using ancient bolt-action rifles take on the heavily-armed mercenaries of the wildlife mafia.
With the rhino fast facing extinction, the author of the international bestseller The Elephant Whisperer explores the scourge of wildlife smuggling in this searing novel taken from today’s headlines.
The Author
Born in Africa, Graham Spence was a journalist for more than 20 years reporting on the turbulent apartheid era.
He now lives in Berkshire, England with his wife and two sons and is a full time writer. His previous three non-fiction books, The Elephant Whisperer, Babylon’s Ark and The Last Rhino, written with his brother-in-law Lawrence Anthony, are all bestsellers. Lawrence Anthony, who died on 2012, was known as the ‘Indiana Jones of conservation’.
Spence has written one other novel, The Apocalypse Chase, a thriller about fishing in the world’s most dangerous places.
Al-Shabaab terrorists raid an idyllic Kenyan beach resort, kidnapping a British diplomat’s daughter.
An American special forces soldier uncovers plans to cause global mayhem and bloodshed building radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs in uranium-rich West Africa.
Alaskan adventurer Chris Stone is dragged into this murderous imbroglio with his partner Debra Gordon and Delta Force operators Carl Wilson and Nick Landry. Last time they teamed up was tracking rhino poachers slaughtering Africa’s most endangered species, whose horns today are more valuable than gold.
This time the stakes are even higher as a terrifying new front in the undeclared global terror war erupts.
As chilling as today’s headlines, Blood Brothers weaves fiction with reality in a white-knuckle tale of modern terrorism.
Blood Brothers is the Graham Spence’s third novel, following The Apocalypse Chase and Bloodhorn. All are exhaustively researched, effortlessly blending fiction with reality culled from today’s headlines.
Spence’s non-fiction books, including The Elephant Whisperer which he co-wrote with Lawrence Anthony — ‘The Indiana Jones of Conservation’ — have received widespread international claim.
But these are not the usual narcos; hardscrabble criminals such as Pablo Escobar and El Chapo who fought and murdered their way to the top. This is the new generation known as el hijos – the sons. Instead of emerging from ghetto barrios or peon hill farms like their families, they are billionaire playboys born into a life of inconceivable luxury. They live for drugs, women and in the case of the Cartel de Tijuana, surfing. Along the California border, the hijos spread more terror than their fathers.
With Alaskan adventurer Chris Stone, Kelly and Carl penetrate the world of the new narco ‘royalty’. A world of unimaginable opulence and random cruelty, where a gangster ‘brat pack’ has an iron grip on America’s increasingly violent and volatile border.
The most powerful hijo is Miguel Guerra, whose father is the jefe of the Cartel de Tijuana. To take him on, Carl and Kelly have to break into Miguel and his beautiful sister Teresa’s inner circle. To do so, they not only have to fight in a drug war, they have to go up against the most lethal group of gangsters in the Americas.
This is the fourth thriller in the Chris Stone series. As with the others, Spence blends fact and fiction in a blistering action-adventure saga that is frighteningly real and in tune with the times.