Patrick O'Brian Knihy

Příběh začíná v okamžiku, kdy se Jack Aubrey vrací domů po svých eskapádách ve Středozemním moři. Británie prožívá období míru, následujícího po příměří v Amiensu. Spolu s přítelem lékařem Stephenem Maturinem začíná vést život venkovského gentlemana - věnuje se lovu, zábavě a milostným zápletkám. Jejich pohodlné žití je však náhle ukončeno, když se z Jacka přes noc stane chuďas s tolika dluhy, že by mohl zbytek života strávit ve vězení. Prchá na kontinent, aby zde našel spásu. Místo toho se však stane pronásledovaným uprchlíkem, neboť Napoleon nařídil internaci všech Angličanů, nalézajících se ve Francii. Aubreyho dobrodružství při úniku z Francie a před vězením pro dlužníky uchvátí pozornost čtenářů stejně silně jako jeho nedostižné šarvátky na moři.

Jack Aubrey, a former sea-officer in the British Navy and still bitter about his court-martial, agrees to take command of his old ship, the Surprise, which was sold to Dr. Stephen Maturin, who obtained a letter of marque to the use the ship as a privateer.

Captain Jack Aubrey and secret agent Steven Maturin are in Her Majesty's Navy, disrupting slave traders in the Gulf of Guinea.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are being re-issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets to coincide with a new film based on the adventures and to introduce these modern classics to a new generation. It is still the War of 1812. Patrick O'Brian takes his hero Jack Aubrey and his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin on a voyage as fascinating as anything he has ever written. They set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade. If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them. It is a commission after Jack's own heart. Maturin has fish of his own to fry in the world of secret intelligence. Aubrey has to cope with a succession of disasters - men overboard, castaways, encounters with savages, storms, typhoons, groundings, shipwrecks, to say nothing of murder and criminal insanity. That the enemy is in fact faithfully dealt with, no one who has the honour of Captain Aubrey's acquaintance can take leave to doubt.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. H.M.S. Surprise follows the variable fortunes of Captain Jack Aubrey's career in Nelson's navy as he attempts to hold his ground against admirals, colleagues and the enemy, accepting a mission to convey a British ambassador to the East Indies. The voyage takes him and his friend Stephen Maturin to the strange sights and smells of the Indian sub-continent, and through the archipelago of spice islands where the French have a near-overwhelming superiority. Rarely has a novel managed to convey more vividly the fragility of a sailing ship in a wild sea. Rarely has a historical novelist combined action and lyricism of style in the way that O' Brian does. His superb sense of place, brilliant characterisation, and a vigour and joy of writing lift O'Brian above any but the most exalted of comparisons.

Jack Aubrey, commander of the best-armed frigate in the Royal Navy, leaves the Dutch East Indies to return to England in a dispatch vessel, but the outbreak of the War of 1812 delays his journey and draws him into bloody battle

All Patrick O'Brian's strengths are on parade in this novel of action and intrigue, set partly in Malta, partly in the treacherous, pirate-infested waters of the Red Sea. While Captain Aubrey worries about repairs to his ship, Stephen Maturin assumes the center stage for the dockyards and salons of Malta are alive with Napoleon's agents, and the admiralty's intelligence network is compromised. Maturin's cunning is the sole bulwark against sabotage of Aubrey's daring mission.

Alternate Cover Edition can be found here. Shipwrecked on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies, Captain Aubrey, surgeon and secret intelligence agent Stephen Maturin, and the crew of the Diane fashion a schooner from the wreck. A vicious attack by Malay pirates is repulsed, but the makeshift vessel burns, and they are truly marooned. Their escape from this predicament is one that only the whimsy and ingenuity of Patrick O'Brian—or Stephen Maturin—could devise. In command now of a new ship, the Nutmeg, Aubrey pursues his interrupted mission. The dreadful penal colony in New South Wales, harrowingly described, is the backdrop to a diplomatic crisis provoked by Maturin's Irish temper, and to a near-fatal encounter with the wildlife of the Australian outback.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by despatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing. The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as thrilling, as tense and as unexpected as anything Patrick O'Brian has written. Then, among other things, follows a shipwreck, and a particularly sinister internment in the Temple Prison in Paris. Once again the tigerish and fascinating Diana Villiers redresses the balance in this man's world of seamanship and war.