Historical Fiction You Need Series 1
Discover the best historical fiction series with our must-read list! Dive into captivating tales of the past with these top book recommendations for history lovers.
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Hornblower and the Hotspur
by C. S. Forester
April 1803. The Peace of Amiens is breaking down. Napoleon is building ships and amassing an army just across the Channel. Horatio Hornblower-who, at age twenty-seven, has already distinguished himself as one of the most daring and resourceful officers in the Royal Navy-commands the three-masted Hotspur on a dangerous reconnaissance mission that evolves, as war breaks out, into a series of spectacular confrontations. All the while, the introspective young commander struggles to understand his new bride and mother-in-law, his officers and crew, and his own "accursed unhappy temperament"-matters that trouble him more, perhaps, than any of Bonaparte's cannonballs.
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Beat to Quarters
by C. S. Forester
With rations running dangerously low, Captain Hornblower fears that the lure of the South Sea islands may entice the crew to mutiny.
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Flying Colours
by C. S. Forester
Forced to surrender his ship, the Sutherland, after a long and bloody battle, Captain Horatio Hornblower now bides his time as a prisoner in a French fortress. Within days he and his first lieutenant, Bush, who was crippled in the last fight, are to be taken to Paris to be tried on trumped-up charges of violating the laws of war, and most probably executed as part of Napoleon's attempt to rally the warweary empire behind him. Even if Hornblower escapes this fate and somehow finds his way back to England, he will face court-martial for his surrender of a British ship. As fears for his life and his reputation compete in his mind with worries about his pregnant wife and his possibly widowed lover, the indomitable captain imetierntly awaits the chance to make his next move.
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Commodore Hornblower
by C. S. Forester
These thrilling tales of high-seas adventure in the Napoleonic era, which Winston Churchill found "vastly entertaining" and Ernest Hemingway recommended to "every literate I know", are being eagerly embraced by a new generation of readers. Back Bay takes pleasure in reissuing these classic tales in handsome new trade paperback editions. -- The Hornblower renaissance is in full sail with a nearly tenfold increase in sales: more than I5O, OOO Hornblower books sold in the first six months of 1999. -- The A&E television network's series of original movies based on Hornblower's adventures have been tremendously successful -- praised by critics, enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of viewers, and winner of the Emmy Award for best miniseries. -- Two new movies will be premiering in the spring on A&E. -- Readers and booksellers who admire Patrick O'Brian's novels delight in discovering this "new" series of nautical adventure stories.
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Lord Hornblower
by C. S. Forester
Hornblower is tasked with a dangerous rescue mission in this "enthralling" chapter (New York Times) in C. S. Forester's beloved naval adventure series. Weary of the war that he has waged nearly his entire life, Hornblower finds himself assigned an especially dangerous and dubious new task: to rescue a man he knows to be a tyrant from the mutiny of his crew in the Bay of the Seine. This risky adventure, coinciding with reports that the tide of war may be turning -- as Wellington has swept over the Pyrenees and the Russians have reached the Rhine -- propels Hornblower toward the heart of the French Empire, toward a fateful reunion with old friends, and toward the harrowing but glorious conclusion of his own battle with Napoleon.
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The Hornblower Companion
by C. S. Forester
Forester wrote this beautifully illustrated book to explain the naval incidents his fictional hero Hornblower experienced during his adventures in the Royal Navy.
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The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower
by C. Northcote Parkinson
A fictional biography chronicling the rise of Horatio Hornblower from a midshipman in 1794 to a revered admiral of the fleet in 1847. Northcote Parkinson has evoked life at sea in a British man o'war with the detail paid to the minutiae of naval life during the Napoleonic period. Originally published in 1970 by PENGUIN.
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The Good Shepherd
by C. S. Forester
Reprint. Originally published: Boston: Little, Brown, 1955.
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Rifleman Dodd
by Cecil Scott Forester
"Separated from his company ... during a skirmish with the French, Rifleman Dodd finds himself behind enemy lines. Somehow he must pass through the French forces chasing the retreating British and rejoin his comrades ... A recording of the triumph of man over near-starvation and the harrowing uncertainties imminent in enemy territory."--Jacket.
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The Captain from Connecticut
by Cecil Scott Forester
Describes the exploits of a typical U.S. frigate cruising at sea during the War of 1812.
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Master and Commander (Vol. Book 1) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)
by Patrick O'Brian
The beginning of 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 in Nelson's navy 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.
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Post Captain (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)
by Patrick O'Brian
"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 debtors' prison, and from a possible mutiny, and pursues his quarry straight into the mouth of a French-held harbor.
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H. M. S. Surprise (Vol. Book 3) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)
by Patrick O'Brian
Capt. Aubrey and his friend Maturin sail to the Indian Ocean to save the British merchant fleet from the French.
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The Mauritius Command (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)
by Patrick O'Brian
During the Napoleonic wars, British naval captain Jack Aubrey, charged with capturing the French islands of Reunion and Mauritius, must first cope with his fellow commanders.
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Flash for Freedom!
by George MacDonald Fraser
A game of cards leads Flashman from the jungle death-house of Dahomey to the slave state of Mississippi as he dabbles in the slave trade in Volume III of the "Flashman Papers". When Flashman was inveigled into a game of pontoon with Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck, he was making an unconscious choice about his own future - would it lie in the House of Commons or the West African slave trade? Was there, for that matter, very much difference? Once again Flashman's charm, cowardice, treachery, lechery and fleetness of foot see the lovable rogue triumph by the skin of his chattering teeth.
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Flashman at the Charge
by George MacDonald Fraser
Begins with Flashman trying to avoid a transfer to the Crimea but failing miserably. He is made guardian of one of Queen Victoria's cousins and is sent to the midst of the Crimean War. Flashman witnesses and participates in the most notable offensive and defensive actions of that war, and eventually finds himself trekking across Asia in an effort to save the British Raj. Story covers the years 1854 to 1855.
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Arundel
by Kenneth Lewis Roberts
A young innkeeper in Maine tells of the terrible journey made by Colonial Benedict Arnold and his soldiers through the wilderness to Quebec, many months before the Declaration of Independence, in a vain-attempt to dislodge the British.
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Hell Bent For Santa Fe
by Jack Purcell
The Republic of Texas claimed all the Mexican territory west to the Pacific Ocean. President Mirabeau Lamar sent these 300 bravos to enforce the boundary. They failed, but today cities and counties throughout the State of Texas are named for them.Hell Bent for Santa Fe is a true story of men, mistakes, misery and mutiny set to fiction with maps and illustrations. McLeod, the drunken commander betrayed by Mexican spies and a traitorous officer. The most famous men in Texas folklore surrendered and walked home in rags. Experience the day-by-day actual adventure of the lowest moments in Texas history.