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

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 tasked with destroying enemy shipyards along the Adriatic coast and cutting off the financial support from that quarter, in a fast and furious race to stop the Corsican from regaining all he’s lost.

As war with Napoleon seemingly draws to a close, opportunities for advancement are limited and Jack Aubrey faces the ultimate indignity – the possibility of being ‘yellowed’, or retired, and set aside with no squadron of his own. But the blockade of Brest presents dangers to equal those of the furthest shores.

"You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of the Endurance, stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps." It did not, however, get the ship's twenty-five crew members, all of whom survived an eight-hundred-mile voyage across sea, land, and ice to South Georgia, the nearest inhabited island.

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 contrived their escape, still further peril awaits in the fiercely tidal waters of the Salibu Passage and the penal settlements of New South Wales.

With rumours of peace running rampant, Captain Jack Aubrey chances his luck on the stock exchange. However, when his plans go awry, Marshalsea prison awaits. Can Stephen Maturin rescue his friend from a politically motivated trial and the enormity of being stricken from the Navy Lists? When the world has turned its back against you, friendship is all.

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 further opportunities for fame and fortune, Aubrey accepts several secret missions, but all is not as it seems.

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 Britain. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought upon the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers who pursue their ship soon become menacing.

Jack Aubrey y Stephen Maturin, veteranos ahora de muchas batallas, regresan en esta novela a los mares donde navegaron por primera vez como compañeros de barco. Pero Jack es ahora un capitán de alto rango que comanda un barco de línea de batalla en el bloqueo de toulon de la Royal Navy, y esta es una guerra más larga, más dura y fría que las acciones de fragata de sus primeros días.

Todas las fortalezas de Patrick O'Brian están desfilando en esta novela de acción e intriga, ambientada en parte en Malta, en parte en las traicioneras aguas infestadas de piratas del Mar Rojo. Mientras que el capitán Aubrey se preocupa por las reparaciones de su barco, Stephen Maturin asume que el centro del escenario para los astilleros y salones de Malta están vivos con los agentes de Napoleón, y la red de inteligencia del almirantazgo está comprometida. La astucia de Maturin es el único baluarte contra el sabotaje de la audaz misión de Aubrey.

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 disaster, and the political turmoil of the South American continent is equal to any threat they have yet faced.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Comisionado para rescatar al gobernador Bligh de la fama de Bounty, el capitán Jack Aubrey y su amigo y cirujano Stephen Maturin navegan el Leopard a Australia con un retén lleno de convictos. Entre ellos hay un espía hermoso y peligroso, y una enfermedad traicionera que diezma a la tripulación. Con un hombre de guerra holandés a barlovento, el leopardo descarnado y con armas de fuego navega por su vida hacia las gélidas aguas de la Antártida, donde, en los mares de montaña, el holandés cierra.

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.

Jack Aubrey recibe órdenes de interceptar a los barcos estadounidenses que están acosando a los balleneros británicos en aguas americanas, lo que supone una doble misión: llevar a cabo una investigación al respecto y poner fin al problema mediante los métodos que considere más oportunos. Es probablemente, la mejor novela de la serie.

Three previously unpublished short stories by the great Patrick O'Brian - Noughts and Crosses, Two's Company and No Pirates Nowadays. Noughts and Crosses: When Sullivan and Ross decide to go shark fishing among the atolls of the Great Barrier Reef little do they know what awaits them. With their schooner beached for cleaning they take a small whaler out to sea, but when the very devil of a storm turns the whole of the sea white, it drives them to the nearest atoll for shelter.