Alexander Kent Novels (VI)
MAN OF WAR
Antigua, 1817 ... Every harbour and estuary is filled with ghostly ships, the famous and the legendary now redundant in the aftermath of war. In this uneasy peace, Adam Bolitho is fortunate to be offered the seventy-four gun Athena, and as flag captain to Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune once more follows his destiny to the Caribbean. But in these haunted waters where Richard Bolitho and his ‘band of brothers’ once fought a familiar enemy, the quarry is now a renegade foe who flies no colours and offers no quarter, and whose traffic in human life is sanctioned by flawed treaties and men of influence. And here, when Athena’s guns speak, a day of terrible retribution will dawn for the innocent and the damned.
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HEART OF OAK
February 1818 ... Adam Bolitho longs for marriage and a safe personal harbour. But with so much of Britain's fleet redundant, he knows he is fortunate to be offered HMS Onward, a new 38-gun frigate whose first mission is not war but diplomacy, as consort to the French frigate Nautilus. Under the burning sun of North Africa, Bolitho is keenly aware of the envy and ambition among his officers, the troubled, restless spirits of his midshipmen, and the old enemy's proximity. It is only when Nautilus becomes a sacrificial offering on the altar of empire that every man discovers the brotherhood of the sea is more powerful than the bitter memories of an ocean of blood and decades of war.
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SWORD OF HONOUR
March 1814 ... Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho returns to England from several months' rigorous patrolling off the North American coast. War with the United States has not yet ended, but news of Napoleon's defeat and abdication has stunned a navy and a nation bled by years of European conflict. Victory has been the impossible dream and now, for Bolitho, a vision of the future and a personal peace seems attainable. However an unsympathetic Admiralty dispatches him to Malta. Is this appointment a compliment or a malicious ploy to keep Bolitho from the woman he loves and the freedom he craves? He cannot know, but the voice of duty speaks more insistently even than the voice of the heart, and in this familiar sea where both glory and tragedy have touched his life, Bolitho must confront the future, the renaissance of a hated tyrant, and the fulfilment of destiny.
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IN THE KING’S NAME
1819 ... Captain Adam Bolitho is ordered once again to Freetown in West Africa with secret orders for the senior officer there. The slave trade has been outlawed by many nations, but a hundred thousand slaves are still shipped out annually, the profit for slavers considered worth the risk of interception by the Royal Navy. For Adam, newly married and as fiery as ever, Africa will bring reunions and unexpected allies, and a treachery that wears the mask of friendship, and threatens the very heart of all he loves.
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