Books in the Richard Bolitho series

A searing and gripping tale of trouble on the high seas, and of the weakness of the human spirit, In the King's Name heralds the return of our greatest living maritime writer and the legendary Adam Bolitho..

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.

When in 1798, Richard Bolitho hoists his pendant as commodore of a squadron, and prepares to re-enter the Mediterranean, he is soon made aware of his responsibility. There are rumours of a massive French armada and of the latest type of artillery, and Bolitho's orders are to seek out the enemy, and to discover the intentions of his growing force.

The time is January 1782, and British Captain Richard Bolitho is ordered to take the frigate Phalarope to the Caribbean, where the hard-pressed royal squadrons are fighting for their lives against the combined fleets of France and Spain and the upstart American privateers.

At a time of shortages and sudden death, even a lieutenant can find himself faced with tasks and decisions more suitably given to officers of greater experience. And, as the Trojan, an eighty-gun ship of the line, goes about her affairs, the threat to Bolitho and his companions makes itself felt from New York to the Caribbean.

As 1794 draws to a close Richard Bolitho, commanding the old seventy-four-gun ship of the line Hyperion, leaves Plymouth to join a squadron blockading the rising power of Revolutionary France.

June 1793, Gibraltar - The gathering might of revolutionary France prepares to engulf Europe in another bloody war. For Richard Bolitho, the renewal of hostilities means a fresh command and the chance of action after long months of inactivity. Bolitho and the crew of the Hyperion are trapped by the French near a dry Mediterranean island.

The year is 1774 and Bolitho is the third lieutenant joining the 28-gun frigate Destiny at Plymouth. Despatched on a secret mission far south to Rio and then to the Caribbean, Destiny and her company face the hazards of conspiracy, treason and piracy - and, as the little ship sails on, Bolitho has to learn amid broadside battles at sea.