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Curse of the Jade Idol: Sierra Byrd's Airborne Archaeological Adventures Book 2

Curse of the Jade Idol: Sierra Byrd’s Airborne Archaeological Adventures Book 2

A race against time for youth.
By Luke Richardson

£10.00

A retired pilot is pulled into a deadly race to stop a megalomaniac from unlocking the secret to eternal youth.
Perfect for fans of Clive Cussler and Nick Thacker, this explosive archaeological thriller is Indiana Jones meets Top Gun.

📦 Free UK delivery over £20  ✏️ Signed by Luke  🔒Secure checkout   ↩️ Easy Returns

Please read before ordering:
Please be aware, I can’t compete with big stores when it comes to printing and shipping times. Your order may have to be printed once the order is placed. Including shipping, and depending on where you are in the world, it can take a couple of weeks. These books aren’t quick, but they sure are beautiful!

Import taxes:
Please be aware that you may have to pay a customs charge from your country when receiving parcels from me here in the UK. I know, it’s annoying for us all. The courier will email you about this, so please make sure your email address is filled in correctly when ordering and check your junk folder regularly. I know, it’s a pain. Ultimately, this is your responsibility, as they won’t even let me know the problem. If you’re unsure, please check before ordering.

If you have any question before or after ordering, please get in touch: hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com

Also available at:

Amazon
Amazon DE
Kindle
Audible
Waterstones

Book themes

Tropical Adventure
Pilot adventure
heroine
action adventure thriller
aviation thriller
conspiracy thriller
eternal youth secret
Race against time

Author's notes

Uncover the truth behind the book (contains spoilers)
Read Luke's notes

Description

A ruthless militia.
A terrifying ancient curse.
The world’s finest pilot will need all her wits to save a country.

✈️

Sierra Byrd should have known she wouldn’t be able to spend her time fixing up old planes, firing up her personal jukebox, and drinking cocktails on her beach for long.

When her old mentor Bourdell gets himself in trouble with the underworld, most people would walk away. But Byrd has never left a partner behind, and isn’t starting now—not with ancient curses, booby-trapped vaults, and a militia commander hell-bent on overthrowing a government standing in her way.

The key to everything is the Jade Idol — but to find it, Byrd must rely on Isabella, a young woman whose Taino heritage holds the secrets. As militia forces take control of Isabella’s homeland, Byrd and her team race to find the idol and break its curse.

From ancient tombs to high stakes flying, The Curse of the Jade Idol is an explosive archaeological thriller from Amazon Bestselling authors Luke Richardson and John Hopton.

Perfect for fans of Clive Cussler, Nick Thacker, and Wayne Stinnett. Indiana Jones meets Top Gun—where ancient mysteries and modern danger collide at 10,000 feet. Buy now to continue this thrilling new adventure series today!

🙈

While CURSE OF THE JADE IDOL has loads of conflict, aerial stunts, chase scenes, fighting and suspense, there’s no swearing, sex or gore.


Uncover the truth behind the book (contains spoilers)

Additional information

Weight 0.422 kg

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FAQ

What is The Shadow of the Sunstone about?

On a remote Caribbean island, two archaeologists make an extraordinary discovery — a Maya parchment buried with an ancient queen, pointing toward the location of the legendary Sunstone and the most health-giving plant ever known to exist. Before they can act on it, the parchment is stolen and one of them disappears.

Sierra Byrd, former US Air Force pilot and owner of a Caribbean flight school, finds herself pulled into the hunt — from the turquoise waters of the Caribbean to the jungles of Mexico — in a race against people who will do anything to control a discovery that could change the world.

The Mayan Sunstone is an ancient artefact said to reveal the location of Linium — a legendary plant, grown in a single hidden canyon, believed to hold the secret of human longevity. The inhabitants of the island where the parchment was found lived to extraordinary ages, and local stories passed down for centuries suggest the plant was the reason why.

The Maya civilisation, its glyphs, and its extraordinary astronomical and mathematical knowledge are entirely real. The idea of a lost Maya artefact encoding ancient botanical knowledge draws on a genuine tradition of Mesoamerican plant medicine that researchers are still working to understand.

The concept of a plant with extraordinary longevity-enhancing properties isn’t pure fantasy either — ethnobotanists continue to document plants in remote tropical regions with medicinal properties that science is only beginning to explain. The Caribbean island setting, the Maya queen whose tomb is discovered, and the Sunstone itself are fictional — but they are rooted in a world of genuine historical mystery.

If you’ve read the Eden Black series, you may already have met her. If not, allow me to make the introduction — because Sierra Byrd is one of those characters who demands a series of her own.

Nora ‘Sierra’ Byrd is a former US Air Force pilot with countless years of service and thousands of logged flight hours behind her, including several missions she still isn’t allowed to talk about.


Having left the military on her own terms, she used her skills to set up a flight school on a sun-drenched Caribbean island. All Sierra really wants is to be left alone with her collection of vintage aircraft. She loves planes the way most people love other people — she loves flying them, fixing them, and generally admiring them. She loves everything fifties too: the rock ‘n’ roll, the Southern cooking, and the bouffant haircut she still sports, which takes some considerable stuffing into a pilot’s helmet.


Of course, she didn’t go looking for trouble when she left the Air Force, but trouble came looking for her all the same.


She’s sharp, sardonic, and entirely unflappable handy with a flight deck and handier still with her fists — the Southern cooking helps put a little extra weight behind the punches she occasionally has to deliver to international criminals and grave robbers. But her sharpest weapon is her tongue. One more thing: whatever you do, don’t call her Nora.

Both are strong, independent women who operate on their own terms and find themselves at the centre of ancient mysteries. Eden is a treasure hunter navigating secret societies and ancient relics on the ground. Sierra is a pilot whose world is defined by the sky, mid-century aviation, and the particular freedom of being airborne. Where Eden’s adventures tend toward the historical and conspiratorial, Sierra’s have more of a classic action-adventure energy — faster, funnier, and with considerably more aircraft. Readers who love Eden Black will find Sierra a natural companion read, and vice versa.

Bourdell is Sierra’s partner — an older former Air Force colleague who has been beside her since her military days. Where Sierra is sharp and impulsive, Bourdell is steady and warm, with the kind of calm authority that comes from decades of experience and three passed-over promotions. He is not a sidekick in the conventional sense — he is her equal, and in many respects her anchor.
It is a co-authored adventure thriller series following former US Air Force pilot Sierra Byrd as she trades military service for a Caribbean flight school — and finds that adventure has a way of following her wherever she goes. Each book combines fast-paced action, ancient mysteries, and vivid locations with a lead character defined by her love of flying and her inability to walk away from a fight. The series has a distinctive retro-adventure energy — think Indiana Jones with a female pilot at the controls.
The book is set primarily in the Caribbean — on Sierra’s home island of Isla de la Fortuna, and on the neighbouring Isla de la Vida Eterna, where the archaeological discovery is made. The action also moves to Cancun and the jungles of Mexico as the hunt for the Sunstone extends inland. For readers who enjoy adventure fiction set in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, the combination of turquoise water, tropical jungle, and Maya history makes for a vivid and distinctive backdrop.

Readers who love fast-paced adventure fiction with a strong female lead and a sense of humour will enjoy this book. Fans of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Clive Cussler and classic action-adventure will feel totally at home here.
If you’ve read my Eden Black series and are looking for something in a similar spirit but with a different energy, lighter in tone, faster in pace, and with the sky as its natural element, then jump in today!

It sits closest to the classic action-adventure tradition — Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, and the globe-trotting spirit of Wilbur Smith. The aviation angle gives it something genuinely distinctive within the genre. Readers who enjoy Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series — for the action, the exotic locations, and the love of vehicles — will find Sierra’s world immediately familiar, with the significant improvement of a far more compelling protagonist.
The series is action-packed with danger and tension throughout, but contains no gratuitous violence, explicit sexual content, or profanity. Like the Eden Black series, the focus is on adventure and character rather than shock.

The Sierra Byrd series is a collaboration between myself and John Hopton. Like me, John is an avid traveller and a thriller writer — best known for his Chris Collins CIA thrillers. Between us we’ve explored well over fifty countries, and we bring all of that experience to Sierra Byrd’s Airborne Archaeological Adventures.

John is a Yorkshire-born writer now based in Japan, whose background is about as well-travelled as Sierra’s own. Before turning to fiction he wrote a well-received travel memoir drawn from years of journeying through India, the Middle East, and East Asia. When he’s not writing, he’s exploring the lesser-seen corners of Japan in search of obscure local legends and reading books that make him miss his train stop. He is, in short, exactly the kind of co-author a series like this deserves.

I came to the collaboration as an Amazon bestselling author with a similar restlessness — it was a taxi ride through Mumbai at dawn that first pushed me to write seriously, and I’ve been setting stories in extraordinary locations ever since. Between John’s world and mine, Sierra Byrd is in good hands.

Yes — The Shadow of the Sunstone introduces Sierra, Bourdell, and their world from scratch, and the adventure is entirely self-contained. It is also the first book in the series, so it is naturally the starting point. Readers who enjoy it will find the series continuing Sierra’s adventures in new locations with the same energy and the same irresistible lead character.

Book Details

Endorsements

Here's what readers think:

Eden Black just gets better and better! I couldn’t put this series down. Nonstop action, lots of emotion, and lots of turning the page to see what comes next. Bravo!
Reader of the The Ark Files
Blow the bloody doors off! Luke Richardson has given me more shivers and jumped up shouting from my seat in this series than I care to talk about. I can't express how much I love the Eden Black series.
Reader of The Giza Protocol
Fans of Indiana Jones will love this book and series. I’m only disappointed that I have to wait for the next book to come out!
Reader of The Atlantis Agenda

Real Locations in This Book

Cambodia

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