The Lesotho Diamond

Lesotho, 1962.

A lie for survival. A diamond worth killing for. A love that could cost them everything.

When a forced landing in a snow-bitten valley throws Philippa Tremain back into the path of Stuart Price—the rugged charter pilot she's never forgotten—a reckless impulse takes hold. To secure shelter from an approaching storm, she tells their rescuers they are newlyweds. Stuart, horrified but protective, plays along. Their impulsive story, sealed with a celebratory photograph, should have vanished with the melting snow. It doesn't.

Months later in Cape Town, Philippa's life appears firmly on course. She's being courted by Matthew Myburgh, heir to a powerful diamond dynasty, and is poised to step into a future of privilege and security. But when that mountain photograph resurfaces in the hands of a ruthless criminal tied to a highland diamond syndicate, the lie becomes lethal leverage—threatening Philippa's glittering prospects and Stuart's freedom.

Drawn back to the stark beauty of the Maluti Mountains and the treacherous airstrips of colonial Basutoland, Philippa finds herself caught between a safe marriage and the man her lie has endangered. Stuart, already scarred by a past he can't outrun, is blackmailed into flying illegal diamond runs to the remote diggings at Letseng-la-Terai, where greed, desperation, and whispered talk of "medicine murders" turn the highlands into a powder keg.

As blackmail, illicit diamond deals, and political tensions swirl in the final years before Lesotho's independence, Philippa must decide what she's willing to sacrifice: the security she was raised to value, or the man who risks everything to do what's right. And when violence erupts on the mountain, one choice will determine whose lives—and whose futures—are saved.

Inspired by the author's own childhood in Lesotho and her father's real-life investigations into illegal diamond buying and ritual murder, The Lesotho Diamond is a sweeping African novel of love tested by secrets, loyalty corrupted by greed, and the courage it takes to claim your own destiny in a land on the brink of change.

Perfect for readers of Paula McLain's Circling the Sun and Jennifer McVeigh's The Fever Tree, where unforgettable heroines, rugged African landscapes, and dangerous entanglements of love, power, and empire collide.