Books with author Patrick Obrian

This stand-alone adventure from the mighty Patrick O'Brian begins just where his devoted fans would want it to: with a sloop in the South China Sea barely surviving a killer typhoon. But the time is the 1930s and the protagonist a teenaged American boy whose missionary parents have just died. In the company of his rough, seafaring uncle and his elderly English cousin, an eminent archaeologist, young Derrick sets off in search of ancient treasures in central Asia. Along the way, they encounter a charismatic Chinese bandit and a host of bad characters, including Russian agents fomenting unrest. The tale ends in an ice-bound valley with the party caught between hostile Red-Hat monks and the Great Silent Ones, which is how the Tibetans designate the yeti.

"Such is O'Brian's power to possess the imagination that I found I was living in his world as much as my own." Alan Judd, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH. At the opening of their voyage, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are in pursuit of a privateer sailing under American colours through the Great South Sea. Stephen is charged with setting the revolutionary tinder of South America ablaze to relieve the pressure on a British government which, already engaged in a death-struggle with a Europe dominated by Napoleon, has blundered into a war with the young United States. After a series of hair-raising actions, they reach the objective of Stephen's clandestine operations, but the land shows itself as uncertain an element as the ocean...