In their 16th outing, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue a prize into the Great Southern Ocean.
The story takes Maturin to South America. Caught up in a failed coup, he flees across the Andes. Aubrey makes a desperate voyage in a open boat, but both survive and are reunited.
'The best chapter yet in the continuing saga of life in Nelson's navy.' (Publishers Weekly)
From the Compact Disc edition.
The 15th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series.
This splendid installment in Patrick O'Brian's widely acclaimed series of Aubrey/Maturin novels is in equal parts mystery, adventure, and psychological drama. A British whaler has been captured by an ambitious chief in the Friendly Isles (Tonga) at French instigation, and Captain Aubrey, R.N., is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order. But stowed away in the cabletier is an escaped female convict. To the officers, Clarissa Harvill is an object of awkward courtliness and dangerous jealousies. Aubrey himself is won over and indeed strongly attracted to this woman who will not speak of her past. But only Aubrey's friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, can fathom Clarissa's secrets: her crime, her personality, and a clue identifying a hightly placed English spy in the pay of Napoleon's intelligence service.
In a thrilling finale, Patrick O'Brian delivers all the excitement his many readers expect: Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise impose a brutal pax Britannica on the islanders in a pitched battle against a band of headhunting cannibals
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 Australia. A penal colony by charter, in fact a grim outpost of legalized slavery, conditions there exacerbate Maturin’s Irish temper and nearly provoke a diplomatic crisis. And an excursion into the bush ends in a close encounter of the final kind.
The 10th installment in the Aubrey/Maturin series
The War of 1812 continues, and Jack Aubrey sets course for Cape Horn on a mission after his own heart: intercepting a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. Stephen Maturin has fish of his own to fry in the world of secret intelligence. Disaster in various guises awaits them in the Great South Sea and in the far reaches of the pacific: typhoons, castaways, shipwrecks, murder, and criminal insanity.
Sent to rescue Governor Bligh, former captain of HMS Bounty, Jack Aubrey sets off for Australia in the Leopold with his friend Stephen Maturin and a hold full of convicts in this fifth of the Aubrey/Maturin series.
A beautiful and dangerous spy lurks among these prisoners, as does an even more lethal traveling companion, gaol fever, a treacherous disease that decimates the crew. With a Dutch man-of-war to windward, the under-manned, outgunned Leopold sails for her life into the freezing waters of the Antarctic. There in mountainous seas, the Dutchman closes.
'Good history, espionage, romance and an action at sea that for sheer descriptive power can match anything in fiction.' (The Guardian)
From the Cassette edition.
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 actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen’s past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance.
"They’re funny, they’re exciting, they’re informative. There are legions of us who gladly ship out time and time and time again under Captain Aubrey." –The New Yorker
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 province of his friend Stephen Maturin.Is Aubrey's humiliation and the threatened ruin of his career a deliberate plot?This dark tale is a fitting backdrop to the brilliant characterization and sparkling dialogue which O'Brian readers and listeners have come to expect.
