Erak's Ransom

Winner of the Australian Book of the Year Award for Older Children, John Flanagan has sold millions of his popular Ranger's Apprentice series. A fledgling Ranger, Will has walked along many a dangerous path, but none more treacherous than the one before him now. Following Araluen's truce with the Skandians, a desert tribe captures the Skandian leader. The Rangers are sent to free him, but the searing desert has swallowed whole more than one brave adventurer.

In the wake of Araluen's uneasy truce with the raiding Skandians comes word that the Skandian leader has been captured by a dangerous desert tribe. The Rangers - and Will - are sent to free him. But the desert is like nothing these warriors have seen before. Strangers in a strange land, they are brutalized by sandstorms, beaten by the unrelenting heat, tricked by one tribe that plays by its own rules, and surprisingly befriended by another. Like a desert mirage, nothing is as it seems. Yet one thing is constant: the bravery of the Rangers.