18 books like Afloat and Ashore a Sea Tale
The Wing-and-wing: Or, Le Feu-follet. A Tale
The year is 1799. Admiral Caraccioli of Naples is about to be executed from the yard-arm of Lord Nelson’s flagship in the Mediterranean. Young and in love with Carccioli’s daughter, the spirited French privateer, Raoul Yvard, and his wily sailing master, Ithuel Bolt, harass the British fleet against all odds. Yvard is captured but cunningly escapes, setting up a showdown at sea against the…
Shares: Napoleonic wars, Historical Fiction
Shirley
Shirley, published in 1849, was Charlotte Brontë’s second novel after Jane Eyre. Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work. It is written in the third person with an omniscient narrator, rather than the first-person of Jane Eyre, and incorporates the themes of industrial change and the plight of unemployed workers. It also features…
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
From the book:UPON my return to the United States a few months ago, after the extraordinary series of adventure in the South Seas and elsewhere, of which an account is given in the following pages, accident threw me into the society of several gentlemen in Richmond, Va., who felt deep interest in all matters relating to the regions I had visited, and who were constantly urging it upon me, as a…
Shares: Seafaring life, Young men, Historical Fiction
Through Russian Snows
Henty gives us two brothers as heroes, Frank and Julian Wyatt from Weymouth. Julian, through some fault of his own, is carried to France by smugglers and ends up in a French prison. Given the opportunity to fight for France in Germany, Julian agrees and is off to the invasion of Russia.
Brother Frank obtains a commission in the army in England, learns Russian, fights a duel, and is sent on…
Shares: Napoleonic wars, Historical Fiction
The water-witch
James Fenimore Cooper’s 1830 novel set in colonial New York follows seafaring smugglers and merchants as they evade the corrupt British government.
Shares: Seafaring life, Historical Fiction
Sea Tales
An American frigate and her supporting schooner enter a shoal-filled bay off Northumberland (northeastern England) on a bleak day in December during the American Revolution. Their immediate purpose is to pick up from the rocky cliffs someone referred to at first simply as a pilot. There is a suggestion that he may be a very special pilot when Captain Munson, commander of the frigate, orders his…
Shares: Seafaring life, Historical Fiction
The Masque of the Black Tulip
...But now she has a million questions about the Pink Carnation's deadly French nemesis, the Black Tulip. And she's pretty sure that her handsome onagain, off-again crush, Colin Selwick, has the answers somewhere in his archives. But what she discovers in an old codebook is something juicier than she ever imagined.
Shares: Napoleonic wars, Historical Fiction
Home as found
"No society, dear!--Why you were at the Henderson's, and the Morgan's, and the Drewett's; three of the greatest _réunions_ that we have had in two winters!"'
"I did not know that you meant those unpleasant crowds, by society".
"Unpleasant crowds! Why, child, that is society, is it not?'
"Not what I have been taught to consider such; I rather think it would be better to call it company".
"And is…
Shares: Historical Fiction
The Border Empire
Wes Stone was a lawman—until the Sandlin gang gunned down his legendary father. Now, he's giving up his badge for vengeance...
Shares: Historical Fiction
Master and Commander
This is book 1 in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Here is the maiden voyage of O'Brian's acclaimed Aubrey-Maturin series, which follows the unique friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. O'Brian renders in riveting detail the life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy: the conversational idiom of…
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The Trumpet-Major, and Robert His Brother
Set against a backdrop of the Napoleonic wars, this is a novel about a young woman and the three very different suitors who vie for her hand. Two of the men are brothers involved in the fighting, one an easygoing sailor, the other an honest and diffident trumpet major, the third suitor being the cowardly son of the local squire.
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Miles Wallingford
The sequel to Afloat and Ashore, set in the Napoleanic era. The terrific scene enacted so directly before his eyes, produced an effect on the Albon-ny man, who consented to haul aft his main-sheet, lower his studding-sail and top-sail, come by the wind, stand across to the Wallingford, heave-to, and lower a boat. This occurred just as Drewett was taken below; and, a minute later, old Mrs. Drewett…
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Pan Michael An historical novel
The third and final book of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy takes a closer and more intimate look at one of the series’ protagonists: Pan Michael Volodyovski. The Polish Commonwealth has been through intense periods of war, and the peace that follows leaves one of its greatest heroes, Pan Michael, finally free to marry his beloved Panna Anusia. But in a twist of fate, she falls ill and dies, leaving…
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St. George and St. Michael
It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers…
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A Bitter Cut
Lady Kiera Darby plans to spend the summer reconnecting with friends and family in anticipation of the betrothal of her beloved brother. But when a future in-law is implicated in a murder, the party takes a deadly turn. . . .July 1833. Lady Darby and her dashing husband, Sebastian Gage, are settling into their newly renovated home at Bevington Park in Warkwickshire with their young daughter. With…
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The Two Admirals: A Tale
Describing first obscure English law and then a number of characters who will ultimately prove only secondary to the plot.
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The Hundred Days
Set in the days succeeding Napoleon's escape from Elba, where Aubrey and Maturin are in the thick of Europe's attempt to prevent the French Emperor from regaining his power, by attempting to turn Napoleon's secret link to the Islamic world against him.
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The Ambassadors
Chad Newsome has gone to Paris. He is charmed by Old World fascinations and caught up in the leisurely craft and bohemian direction of European worldliness. An older woman of rank and adventurous but subtle skill, Madame de Vionnet, strokes his ego and does her best to keep Chad in Paris indefinitely. Chad's mother lives in Woollett, Mass., and wants her son to return to run the family business.…
Shares: Young men, Historical Fiction