Lost Pilots

The Sahara Desert, February 1962: the wreckage of a plane emerges from the sands revealing, too, the body of the plane's long-dead pilot. But who was he? And what had happened to him?

Baker Street, London, June 1927: twenty-five-year-old Jessie Miller had fled a loveless marriage and was longing for adventure. At a gin-soaked party, she met Bill Lancaster, fresh from the Royal Air Force, his head full of a scheme that would make him as famous as Charles Lindbergh, who had just crossed the Atlantic. Lancaster wanted to fly three times as far - from London to Melbourne - and he immediately knew that Jessie Miller would be the perfect co-pilot.

By the time they landed in Melbourne, the daring aviators were a global sensation - and deeply in love. Keeping their affair a secret, they toured the world until the Wall Street Crash changed everything. Bill and Jessie - like so many others - were broke. And it was then, holed up in a run-down mansion on the outskirts of Miami and desperate for cash, that Jessie agreed to write a memoir. A ghostwriter, Haden Clarke, was despatched from New York, but the toxic combination of a handsome interloper, bootleg booze and jealousy led to a shocking crime. The trial that followed put Jessie and Bill back on the front pages and drove him to a reckless act of abandon to win it all back.

Full of adventure, forbidden passion, crime, scandal and tragedy, The Lost Pilots is their extraordinary story, brought to vivid life by Corey Mead. It is a masterly piece of narrative non-fiction - and one that firmly restores one of aviation's leading female pioneers to her rightful place in history.