Teens and up who love history and tales of seafaring adventure are sure to enjoy the Aubrey/Maturin Novels, of which Master & Commander, which was later adapted into the movie of the same name, is the first installment. It’s a great time to give this series a try because the first book is currently (as of 1/17/15) priced at just 99 cents.
Master and Commander – Vol. Book 1, Aubrey/Maturin Novels (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at 99 cents)
The beginning to the sweeping Aubrey/Maturin series. “The best sea story I have ever read.”—Sir Francis Chichester
This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship’s surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars.
Details of a life aboard a man-of-war 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 roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
Post Captain – Vol. Book 2, Aubrey/Maturin Novels (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $11.99)
“Master and Commander raised almost dangerously high expectations, Post Captain triumphantly surpasses them…a brilliant book.”
—Mary Renault
“We’ve beat them before and we’ll beat them again.”
In 1803 Napoleon smashes the Peace of Amiens, and Captain Jack Aubrey, R. N., taking refuge in France from his creditors, is interned. He escapes from France, from debtor’s Prison, from a possible mutiny, and pursues his quarry straight into the mouth of a French-held harbor.
H.M.S. Surprise – Vol. Book 3, Aubrey/Maturin Novels (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $11.99)
“Few, very few books have made my heart thud with excitement. H.M.S. Surprise managed it.”
—Helen Lucy Burke, Irish Press
Third in the series of Aubrey/Maturin adventures, this book is set among the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company.
Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority.
But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich beyond his wildest dream: the ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet…
The Mauritius Command – Vol. Book 4, Aubrey/Maturin Novels (4.5/5 stars, currently priced at $11.99)
“Jack’s assignment: to capture the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius from the French. That campaign forms the narrative thread of this rollicking sea saga. But its substance is more beguiling still…”
—Elizabeth Peer, Newsweek
Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half pay without a command—–until Stephen Maturin arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope under a commodore’s pennant, there to mount an expedition against the French-held islands of Mauritius and La Réunion.
But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains—–Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity pushes his crew to the verge of mutiny.
Click here to browse the full Aubrey/Maturin Novel series.
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