October 1772, Portsmouth. Sixteen-year-old Richard Bolitho waits to join the Gorgon, ordered to sail to the west coast of Africa and to destroy those who challenge the King's Navy. For Bolitho, and for many of the crew, it is a severe and testing initiation into the game of seamanship.

England, 1346: For Thomas Blackstone, the choice is easy - dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king's invasion. As he fights his way across northern France, Blackstone learns the brutal lessons of war - from the terror and confusion of his first taste of combat, to the savage realities of siege warfare.

Shaking off this label, a shy and lonely 17-year-old, Horatio Hornblower, embarks on a memorable career in Nelson's navy on HMS Justinian. In action, adventure, and battle he is forged into one of the most formidable junior officers in the service.

Captain Carlisle hails from Virginia, a loyal colony of the British Crown. As the clouds of war gather, Carlisle's small frigate is ordered to Toulon on a reconnaissance mission. If battling the winter weather in the Gulf of Lions is not a sufficient challenge, Carlisle must also juggle the delicate diplomatic issues in this period of pre-war tension while contending with an increasingly belligerent French frigate. But Carlisle has additional problems unique to his colonial origins.

London: 1793. Young firebrand John Pearce, on the run from the authorities, is illegally press-ganged from the Pelican tavern into brutal life aboard HMS Brilliant, a frigate on her way to war. In the first few days, Pearce discovers the Navy is a world in which he can prosper. And he is not alone; he is drawn to a group of men who eventually form an exclusive gun crew, the Pelicans, with Pearce their elected leader.

It is 1801, and President Thomas Jefferson has assembled a deep-water navy to fight the growing threat of piracy, as American civilians are regularly kidnapped by Islamist brigands and held for ransom, enslaved, or killed, all at their captors' whim. The Berber States of North Africa, especially Tripoli, claimed their faith gave them the right to pillage anyone who did not submit to their religion.

The year 1792. With French revolutionary agents traveling freely but secretly between Ireland and England and war with France inevitable, the English government of Mr. Pitt is desperately anxious to uncover any plots between Irish rebels and the French. Lieutenant James Merriman with his ship, the sloop Aphrodite, is ordered to the Irish Sea to assist the principal treasury agent Mr. Grahame in this work. Merriman is plunged headlong into the world of espionage, and when Grahame is seriously wounded, it falls to Merriman to carry on the investigation.

After a century of war, revolutions, and imperial conquests, 1790s Europe is still embroiled in a battle for control of the sea and colonies. Tall ships navigate familiar and foreign waters, and ambitious young men without rank or status seek their futures in naval commands. First Lieutenant Alexander Clay of the frigate Agrius is self-made, clever, and ready for the new age. But the old world, dominated by patronage, retains a tight hold on advancement.

Jack Biddlecomb has much to live up to, being as he is the eldest son of the esteemed Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, wealthy merchant captain, leading light of the War for American Independence, and newly minted congressman. Jack finds himself off to a promising start, however, when he’s given command of the merchant vessel Abigail bound from Philadelphia for Barbados. But even before the dock lines are cast off, the voyage, which should have been routine, begins to look like a stormy passage indeed.

Shortly after Thomas Marlowe's arrival in Williamsburg, Virginia, all in that newfound capital city are speaking his name. With the bounty from his years as a pirate—a life he intends to renounce and keep forever secret—he purchases a fine plantation from a striking young widow, and soon after kills the favorite son of one of Virginia's most powerful clans while defending her honor. But it is a daring feat of remarkable cunning that truly sets local tongues wagging: a stunning move that wins Marlowe command of Plymouth Prize, the colony's decrepit guardship.

This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

With his first historical high-seas adventure chronicling the exploits of Naval Commander Charles Edgemont, Jay Worrall sets sail in the rousing tradition of C.S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian.

From New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell, the first exciting adventure in the world-renowned Sharpe series, chronicling the rise of Richard Sharpe, a Private in His Majesty’s Army at the siege of Seringapatam.

The throne of England is slipping from King Henry’s grasp. His only son has drowned in the English Channel, and the predators are gathering ready to devour both England and Normandy. When the last of King Harold’s housecarls returns to England to die, he brings with him a reluctant hero who will save the kingdom. Alfraed, son of Ridley, is the first of a new breed; he is an English knight.

In the tradition of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, Nelson's Trafalgar presents the definitive blow-by-blow account of the world's most famous naval battle, when the British Royal Navy, under Lord Horatio Nelson, dealt a decisive blow to the forces of Napoleon. The Battle of Trafalgar comes boldly to life in this definitive work that recreates those five momentous, earsplitting hours with unrivaled detail and intensity.