King--Of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure

Captain Athelstan King would rather study surgery than make small talk with fellow officers, a quirk that marks him as distinctly odd in the officer class of British India. But when the Khyber Rifles need a man who can think rather than bluster, King finds himself thrust into the turbulent borderlands where empires collide. His mission: navigate a viper's nest of tribal rebellion, political assassination, and an ancient vendetta that stretches back centuries. At its heart stands Yasmini, a woman of dangerous beauty and sharper intellect, whose motives remain as obscured as the mountain passes she calls home. Talbot Mundy crafts the colonial frontier as a place of perpetual tension where every handshake might hide a knife and every alliance a calculated gamble. The novel pulses with the machinery of World War I grinding abroad while Afghanistan's borders simmer with rebellion. This is adventure fiction at its muscular best: a story of honor purchased cheaply and paid for in blood, where a lone officer must outthink enemies who know the terrain far better than he ever could.