Description

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"An overwhelming, outstanding novel...!"—Irish Times

Captain Jack Aubrey, accomplished at sea but dreadfully vulnerable on land, finds himself ashore after a successful cruise. With his prize money burning a hole in his pocket, he is persuaded by a kind stranger he meets at a tavern to make certain investments. This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage the province of his friend Stephen Maturin, now tasked with rescuing his imperiled friend as he also attempts to locate his wayward wife, Diana Villiers. Is Aubrey’s humiliation and the threatened ruin of his career a deliberate plot? This dark tale is a fitting backdrop to the brilliant characterization and sparkling dialogue which Patrick O’Brian’s readers have come to expect.

About the Author

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One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O’Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.

Praise For…

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Bubbles at the brim, stimulating, tender, thought-provoking.
— John Bayley - London Review of Books

The Aubrey-Maturin series is a great novel. In relentlessly beautiful prose it creates, or re-creates, a world of people about whom we care intensely, and who come alive all over the globe…You will meet nothing like O’Brian in all literature.
— Stephen Becker - Chicago Sun-Times