The commodore

Description

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All twenty books are being re-issued by Harper Perennial with stunning new jackets.

First Sentence

Thick weather in the chops of the Channel and a dirty night, with the strong north-east wind bringing rain from the low sky and racing cloud: Ushant somewhere away on the star-board bow, the Scillies to larboard, but never a light, never a star to be seen; and no observation for the last four days.

Description

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 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. Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade, but their ultimate destination is Ireland. There the French are mounting an invasion that will test Aubrey's seamanship and Maturin's resourcefulness as a secret intelligence agent, and the climax of the story is one of those grand and thrilling fleet actions on which the supremacy of the British Navy was founded.

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction.

Other Editions

• The commodoreW.W. Norton1995-01-01
• The CommodoreHarperCollins1995-01-01
• CommodoreNorton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.1995-01-01
• The commodoreCompass Press1996-01-01
• CommodoreISIS Large Print Books1996-01-01
• The Commodore (Aubrey-Maturin Series)W. W. Norton & Company1996-04-01