Books by Alexander Kent

This fourteenth Bolitho novel has the epic scenes of action, the powerful characterization and the authentic period detail that have made Alexander Kent a bestseller wherever sea stories are read. After eight years of war between Britain and France there is at last a rumour of peace.

Colours Aloft!, the sixteenth Richard Bolitho novel, bears all the hallmarks of its best-selling predecessors. September 1803Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds himself the new master of the Argonaute, a French flagship taken in battle.

March, 1811After two and a half months of precious peace in Cornwall with his beloved mistress Catherine, Admiral Richard Bolitho is once again summoned to London.

As the clouds of war begin to rise once more over the Channel, he has no choice but to accept an appointment to the Nore. With his small flotilla of three topsail cutters Bolitho sets out to search the coast for seamen who have fled the harsh discipline of His Majesty's Navy for the more tempting rewards of smuggling.

Success to the Brave is the fifteenth Richard Bolitho story and chronologically it follows the events covered by A Tradition of Victory. In the spring of 1802 Richard Bolitho is summoned to the Admiralty in London and given his orders for a difficult and, to him, distasteful task.

Returning safely to England after the dramatic capture of Martinque, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds an all too brief respite from war and politics in the arms of his mistress Catherine Somervell. Although ordered immediately to the Indian Ocean, for the first time Bolitho's thoughts are not of glory but his own - and the Navy's - past.

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.

The new year of 1774 seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream. Both have been recommended for promotion, although they have not yet gained the coveted lieutenant's commission.

But peace will present its own challenge to Adam Bolitho, captain of His Majesty's Ship Unrivalled, as many of his contemporaries face the prospect of discharge. The life of a frigate captain is always lonely, but for Adam, mourning the death of his uncle Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho, that solitude acquires a deeper poignancy.

After the murder of a revenue office, Bolitho is swept aboard his brother's cutter Avenger on a dangerous mission of hide and seek. Band of Brothers1774 - the new year seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream.

Every harbour and estuary is filled with ghostly ships, the famous and the legendary redundant in the aftermath of the 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.

March 1814Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho returns to England from several months' rigorous patrolling off the North American coast.

He has written dozens of naval books under his own name and the pseudonym Alexander Kent, including the famous Richard Bolitho books set during the Napoleonic Wars.