The African Queen is an old, dirty, ugly, unreliable steamboat - not the kind of boat anyone would take down a dangerous river through the jungles of Central Africa. But Rose Sayer and Charlie Allnut do just that. Why do they do it? The First World War has just begun, and Rose has a crazy plan. She [...]

A superb yet neglected novel, 'The General' is the most vivid, moving - and devastating - word-portrait of a World War One British commander ever written, here re-introduced by Max Hastings. Best known for his Hornblower novels, C.S. Forester's 1936 masterpiece follows Herbert Curzon, who fumbled a [...]

This book introduces the most gallant and redoubtable figure in naval history - Horatio Hornblower. The seventeen year old Hornblower became infamous as soon as he stepped on board ship as the midshipman who was seasick in the Spithead, but things were soon to change. Amid battle, action and adventu[...]

Mr Marble is in serious debt, desperate for money to pay his family's bills, until the combination of a wealthy relative, a bottle of Cyanide and a shovel offer him the perfect solution. In fact, his troubles are only just beginning. Slowly the Marble family becomes poisoned by guilt, and caught in [...]

1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Midshipman Horatio Hornblower receives his first command ...As a seventeen-year-old with a touch of sea sickness, young Horatio Hornblower hardly cuts a dash in His Majesty's navy. Yet from the moment he is ordered to board a French merchant ship in the Bay [...]

It's 1805, and Hornblower is both humbled and honoured in quick succession ...After near disaster on board a canal barge, Horatio Hornblower is given his first assignment as Captain, taking charge of the Atropos, a 22-gun sloop that will act as flagship for the funeral procession of Lord Nelson. Soo[...]

The final Horatio Hornblower story tells of Napoleon's plans to invade England ...Set in 1805, "Hornblower and the Crisis" finds Horatio Hornblower in possession of confidential dispatches from Bonaparte after a vicious hand-to-hand encounter with a French brig. The admiralty rewards Hornblower by s[...]

It's 1815, the Napoleonic Wars are over. Yet peace continues to elude Horatio Hornblower overseas ...As an admiral struggling to impose order in the chaotic aftermath of the French wars, Horatio Hornblower, Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels in the West Indies, must still face sav[...]

It's May, 1810 - and thirty-nine-year-old Captain Horatio Hornblower has been handed his first ship of the line ...Though the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland is 'the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy' and a crew shortage means he must recruit two hundred and fifty landlubbers, Hornb[...]

This novel is about an action in WW I between German forces and what might be called British irregulars. Rose Sayer, sister of an English missionary in German Central Africa, seems an unlikely heroine until her brother dies and she takes responsibility for her own life. With a gin drinking engineer,[...]

This is the seventh novel in the Horatio Hornblower saga. In it, Hornblower emerges from his apprenticeship as midshipman to assume the responsibilities that await him as a lieutenant. Chronologically this novel falls between MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER and CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER. It works us alon[...]

This sixth installment in C. S. Forester's eleven-volume chronicle of Horatio Hornblower places the captain in the gravest danger yet. The time is May, 1810, deep into the Napoleonic Wars. Hornblower, newly in command of his first ship of the line is on his way to Spain with a ragtag, brutish crew. [...]

This seventh volume in the Hornblower series opens with Captain Horatio Hornblower a prisoner in the French fortress of Rosas, having had to surrender his ship, the "Sutherland," after a long and bloody battle. Within days he and his first lieutenant, Bush, who was crippled in the last fight, will b[...]