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.

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.

Midshipman Johnnie Wharton has no idea when he joins HMS St George as a 12-year-old that he is soon to take part in some of the greatest sea battles of Nelsons Royal Navy. Life aboard his next ship HMS Gibraltar is tough for the youngster and he and the other officers face disgrace as his Captain blunders badly at the Battle of the Glorious First of June.

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.

More than one hundred years after Columbus blundered onto Hispaniola, the West Indies are held in Spain's iron fist, and no threat to that absolute rule is tolerated. But such total control cannot last, and one threat will emerge as the most dangerous of all: the buccaneers. Camped on the shore of Hispaniola, these half-wild men eke out a living hunting the island's feral livestock. Among them, Jean-Baptiste LeBoeuf lives out his exile, content that no one in the hunters' camp is curious about his past. But when a hurricane sweeps through the Caribbean, it upends their rough existence.

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.

For John Dempsey, it’s a time of uncertainty. As a new administration tries to piece together who was behind the assassination of an American president, task force Ember is a team without a target. Newly Minted POTUS, Kelso Jarvis, is haunted by strange dreams of a house on fire, and Dempsey’s son Jake—who has begun his own journey as a SEAL—can’t escape the ghost of the father he believes to be dead.

1878: When his family loses their home, to Jack Roberts, who has grown up hearing stories of the Crimean war and the magnificent charge of the Heavy Brigade, the choice between working in a dangerous factory or enlisting in the army and putting on the famed red uniform is an easy one. But when fighting for Queen and Country takes him far from home to defending a small mission station from overwhelming numbers, it is anything but easy and bravery and stoicism take on new meaning.

When Charlemagne the Holy Roman Emperor declares war on the pagans of Denmark, Pomerania and the Baltic lands, he is unaware of the true might of the storm he is about to unleash. Meanwhile, in a small fjord in the north of Norway, a young Norse warrior is about to embark on a journey that will take him far to the south, beyond the land of the Angles and the Franks.

Stephanie Harrington had always expected to be a forest ranger on her homeworld of Meyerdahl until her parents relocated to the frontier planet of Sphinx in the far distant Star Kingdom of Manticore. It should have been the perfect new home - a virgin wilderness full of new species of every sort, just waiting to be discovered. But Sphinx is a far more dangerous place than ultra-civilized Meyerdahl, and Stephanie's explorations come to a sudden halt when her parents lay down the law: no trips into the bush without adult supervision!

April 12, 1861. With one jerk of a lanyard, one shell arching into the sky, years of tension exploded into civil war. And for those men who did not know in which direction their loyalty called them, it was a time for decisions. Such a one was Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, an officer of the United States Navy, a native of Charleston, South Carolina. Hard pressed to abandon the oath he swore to the United States, but unable to fight against his home state, Bowater accepts a commission in the nascent Confederate navy.

As the War of Independence begins in earnest, American merchant seamen prepare to strike the first blows. None strikes more deftly than Isaac Biddlecomb, captain of the Judea, whose smuggling activities are making a mockery of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Pursued by HMS Rose, he sacrifices the ship he loved to the depths, together with the fortune he stood to gain, rather than surrender.

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.

13th Century, Wales and England. To young Gruffyd, life has been unkind. Eking out a meagre living with his father, he has learned very quickly how to look after himself in the hostile borderlands. His father, an archer, has taught him well, and at 17 Gruffyd is a keen and able bowman. Young, loyal and skilled, it’s not long before Gruffyd finds himself following in his father’s footsteps, working as an archer in the bordering castle. But tragedy strikes when his lord commits a devastating deed, and Gruffyd is forced to make a life altering decision.

England, 1940: When seventeen-year-old John Sharratt’s life is shattered by a single, devastating bomb dropped by the Luftwaffe, he is thrust into a world of loss and longing. With his family gone and his heart heavy, John’s conscription into the army offers a refuge and a new beginning, even in the face of turmoil. As he dons the battledress of a British soldier at Seaforth Barracks, John embarks on an intense journey of transformation.