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

In this, the twentieth installment of the Aubrey/Maturin series, Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace takes on an ugly complexion for Captain Jack Aubrey: the desertion of nearly half his crew; and the sudden dimming of his own career prospects in a peacetime navy. To...

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...

Jack Aubrey and his old friend Dr Maturin are sailing on a secret mission with a hand-picked crew, most of them shipmates from the adventures and lucrative voyages of earlier years.

Life ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey in The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O'Brian's best-selling novel and eighteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the admiralty by his erratic voting as a member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbor, a man with strong navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates.

In The Mauritius Command, Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half-pay without a command until his friend, occasional intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope under a Commodore's pennant. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains: one a pleasure-seeking dilettante, the other liable to provoke the crew to mutiny. Based on an actual campaign of 1810 in the Indian Ocean.

While Captain Aubrey worries about repairs to his ship, Stephen Maturin assumes the centre stage; for the dockyards and salons of Malta are alive with Napoleon's agents, and the admiralty's intelligence network is compromised. Maturin's cunning is the sole bulwark against sabotage of Aubrey's daring mission. All of Patrick O'Brian's strengths are on parade in this novel of action and intrigue, set partly in Malta, partly in the treacherous, pirate-infested waters of the Red Sea.

Jack Aubrey returns from his duties protecting whalers off South America and is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make investments in the City on the strength of supposedly certain information. 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?

Captain Jack Aubrey sails away from the hated Australian prison colonies in his favourite vessel the Surprise, pondering on middle age and sexual frustration. He soon becomes aware that he is out of touch with the mood of his ship: to his astonishment he finds that in spite of a lifetime's experience he does not know what the foremost hands or even his own officers are thinking.

It is still the War of 1812 and Jack Aubrey - with his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin - has set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them.

Captain Jack Aubrey, a brilliant and experienced officer, has been struck off the list of post-captains for a crime he did not commit. His old friend Stephen Maturin, usually cast as a ship's surgeon to mask his discreet activities on behalf of British intelligence, has bought for Aubrey his former ship the Surprise to command as a privateer, more politely termed a letter of marque. Together they sail on a desperate mission against the French, which, if successful, may redeem Aubrey from the private hell of his disgrace.

Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes.

Botanist, explorer, President of the Royal Society and one of Australia’s founding fathers. Sir Joseph Banks was among the most influential figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a young man he accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage of discovery to Australia, in later years he...

At the opening of a voyage filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are in pursuit of a privateer sailing under American colours through the Great South Sea. Stephen's objective is to set the revolutionary tinder of South America ablaze to relieve the pressure on the British government which has blundered into war with the young and uncomfortably vigorous United States. The shock and barbarity of hand-to-hand fighting are sharpened by O'Brian's exact sense of period, his eye for landscape and his feel for a ship under sail.

For those who dare, things often go wrong on the sea. Deep Blue offers some of literature's greatest stories about the ocean and the people who risk its wrath. Castaways, pirates, and victims of shipwreck all fight to survive in far-flung places and under harrowing circumstances. Together, these works offer a convincing reminder of the sea's dangers and mysteries.

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...

El título no se escoge al azar. "La fragata Surprise" narra sobre todo la vida en un barco, los lazos de unión, de solidaridad y de amistad que van estableciéndose a bordo de una nave y cómo éstos vínculos hacen que el barco acabe por cobrar vida propia y sea capaz de superar las adversidades más terribles.

El capitán Jack Aubrey, R. N., llega a las Indias Orientales Holandesas para encontrarse a sí mismo nombrado al mando de la fragata más rápida y mejor armada de la Armada. Él y su amigo Stephen Maturin toman el paso a Inglaterra en un barco de despacho. Pero la Guerra de 1812 estalla mientras están en camino. Las acciones sangrientas los precipitan en escenas nuevas e inesperadas donde las actividades pasadas de Stephen como agente secreto regresan sobre él con una venganza.

Los días de Stephen Maturin en la inteligencia británica lo han metido en un lío de problemas en "The Surgeon's Mate", séptimo libro de la serie de aventuras Aubrey-Maturin de Patrick O'Brian. Jack Aubrey y Stephen Maturin son ordenados a casa por el buque de despacho para llevar la noticia de su última victoria al gobierno. Pero Maturin es un hombre marcado por los estragos que ha causado en la red de inteligencia francesa en el Nuevo Mundo, y la atención de dos corsarias pronto se vuelve amenazante.

La emoción continúa en Post Captain, la segunda entrega de la aclamada serie "Aubrey-Maturin" de Patrick O'Brian, después de "Master" and "Commander". En 1803, Napoleón destroza la Paz de Amiens, y el capitán Jack Aubrey, refugiándose en Francia de sus acreedores, está internado.

El capitán Jack Aubrey, R. N., en tierra después de un exitoso crucero, es persuadido por un conocido casual para hacer ciertas inversiones en la ciudad. Esta decisión inocente lo atrapa en la clandestinidad criminal de Londres y en el espionaje del gobierno, la provincia de su amigo Stephen Maturin. ¿Es la humillación de Aubrey y la ruina amenazada de su carrera un complot deliberado? Esta oscura historia es un telón de fondo apropiado para la caracterización brillante y el diálogo brillante que los lectores de O'Brian han llegado a esperar.