Books with author Patrick Obrian

2008 Harper Collins trade paperback. Patrick O'Brian (Master and Commander). At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue an American privateer through the Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean reminds Stephen of Homer's famous description, and portends an underwater volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an indelible impression on the reader's imagination. - Amazon

An archaeological expedition with a cargo of priceless jade is pursued across the Gobi Desert into the snows of Tibet. This story begins with a sloop in the South China Sea barely surviving a killer typhoon. In the company of his rough seafaring uncle and an elderly English cousin‚ an eminent archeologist‚ a teenaged American boy whose missionary parents have just died sets off in search of ancient treasures in central Asia. Along the way they encounter a charismatic Chinese bandit and a host of nasty characters‚ including Russian agents fomenting unrest. The tale ends in a life–and–death deliverance in an ice–bound valley‚ with the party caught between hostile Red–Hat monks and the Great Silent Ones.

"The old master has us again in the palm of his hand."—Los Angeles Times (a Best Book of 1999)Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America—where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain—the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences. The South American expedition is a desperate affair; and in the end Jack's bold initiative to strike at the vastly superior Spanish fleet precipitates a spectacular naval action that will determine both Chile's fate and his own.