Showing results by author "Patrick O'Brian" in All Categories

We join Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, captain in the Royal Navy and surgeon/intelligence agent respectively, where we left them at the end of The Thirteen Gun Salute: shipwrecked on a remote Dutch East Indies island. Employing great enterprise, Aubrey secures a new ship and sails for...

Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a dispatch vessel. But the War of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody...

The 11th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., ashore after a successful cruise, is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make certain investments in the City. This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage--the...

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home to bring news of their latest victory. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he caused to the French intelligence network in the New World and the British packet carrying them is shadowed by two American privateers. The chase that follows...

On foreign shores, and far from home, a friend can become a foe in a heartbeat. Shipwrecked on an uninhabited island in the Dutch East Indies as the Napoleonic Wars rage on, circumstances look far from promising for Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew. And yet, having overcome the odds and...

With factions on board, and multiple enemies to contend with, only the most careful navigation will save them. As he sails away from Port Jackson, Captain Jack Aubrey feels nothing but relief at leaving the penal colony and its inhabitants far behind. But, unknown to him, hidden among his crew...

On dry land, having been drawn into the half-worlds of London’s criminal underground and of government espionage, Jack Aubrey faces perhaps the greatest challenge of his life. With rumours of peace running rampant, Captain Jack Aubrey chances his luck on the stock exchange. However, when his...

Napoleon has escaped from Elba – the Hundred Days have begun. The war is over, the armies dispersed, and the former Emperor of the French has been consigned to a Mediterranean island, yet now he is marching again on Paris with an ever-growing army. Commodore Jack Aubrey and his convoy are...

Loving someone, in a time of war and divided loyalties, can be the greatest risk of all. Ordered home by despatch vessel, Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin have been tasked with bringing the news of the latest victory in the war with America back to the government in...

An enemy frigate is outward bound to play havoc with the vital British whaling trade, and must be stopped at all costs. Racing against time, Captain Jack Aubrey and his crew must chase the USS Norfolk as she rounds Cape Horn, pursuing her into the Great South Sea and beyond. Following the...

The 12th installment in the Aubrey/ Maturin series. The time is the early 1800s, and the British Navy stands as the only bulwark against the militant fanaticism of Napoleonic France. Jack Aubrey, a brilliant and experienced officer, has been struck off the list of post-captains for a crime...

Entrusted with a secret mission, the perils of the South China Sea await. In the fight against the French, a treaty with the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, a piratical Malay state, may prove decisive. Captain Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, along with a hand-picked crew, must survive...

Thrown out of the navy for a crime he did not commit, Jack Aubrey has lost everything he held most dear. In command of his beloved Surprise, but in a civilian capacity, Jack Aubrey must navigate a world apart from anything he has previously known, his friend Stephen Maturin at his side. Together...

Summoned from his medical practice in China by a bevy of anxious aunts, Alain Roig returns to his Catalan hometown to discover he has been nominated by family members with vested interests in the ancestral property to prevent an impending marriage between his cold, ascetic cousin Xavier and Madeleine, a quiet, introspective village girl of unusual beauty. As Alain seeks to understand his cousin's complex motivations for wooing the unhappy girl, he is slowly drawn into Xavier's dark crisis of faith, the well-worn pattern of the sleepy Catalan days and the tight circle of village gossip.

For a man of war, peacetime is the ultimate challenge. Leaving behind them a Europe still taking stock after the definitive battle of Waterloo, Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin set sail for Chile. But even with the newly minted peace, life at sea remains beset with danger and imminent...

Malta, in 1813, is ostensibly a safe harbour, yet the island is a nest of French spies, and even those in authority are not to be trusted. As Captain Jack Aubrey cools his heels in a Maltese harbour, awaiting repairs to his ship, war rages on. Fearing that hostilities will end before he has any...

This riveting collection of adventure writing includes the work of The Perfect Storm author, Sebastian Junger. Listen as men and women battle the elements, and often each other, to stay alive, confronting sharks, savage storms, rogue waves, mountainous icebergs, starvation, and their own fear and suffering.

There is a fine line between privateer and pirate, between friend and foe. With a beleaguered Britain already facing war on two fronts – against Napoleon’s armies in Europe but also against the young and vigorous United States – the objective of ship’s surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin is...

John Aubrey Pugh, an Oxford don who has given up his teaching post and come to live in a secluded Welsh valley, falls in love with Bronwen Vaughan, the wife of a young farmer who is his neighbour. She is estranged from her husband, an admirable man in many ways, but one who has compelled her to submit to some brutal sexual perversion. When a famous preacher, whose advances Bronwen has rejected with contempt, persuades the entire community that she has committed adultery with Pugh, a reckoning is inevitable.

The climb that went wrong: fighting blinding snowstorms and horrific avalanches; days spent tentbound running low on food, water and oxygen; surviving broken bones and shattered spirits. With writing from Greg Child, David Roberts, Stephen Venables, Alfred Lansing and others, Epic is a collection of the most memorable accounts of legend-making expeditions to the world’s most famous peaks, often in the worst possible conditions!