The Ballantyne Novels are a series of four novels published between 1980 and 1984 by Wilbur Smith. They chronicle the lives of the Ballantyne family, from the 1860s through until 1980’s. against a background of the history of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).A fifth novel published in 2005 seeks to combine the Ballantyne narrative with that of Smith's other family saga, The Courtney Novels.