Patrick Tull
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The Pickwick Club was founded by the most learned minds in London for the purpose of making a scientific tour of the world. No sooner have the distinguished members begun their historic journey than they are set upon by a charming but notorious con man. So begins a series of hilarious misadventures that takes the incorrigibly innocent Pickwicks wandering around England, coming in contact with some of the most colorful and comical characters in all...
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First Published in 1903, Erskine Childers' "The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service", is one of the earliest examples of an espionage novel and was immensely influential in the creation of this popular genre. Childers led an interesting and adventurous life, becoming an amateur sailor as a young man before enlisting in the military and serving in the Boer War and eventually the First World War. In "The Riddle of the Sands", a gripping...
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Appears on list
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We owe The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) to Arthur Conan Doyle's good friend Fletcher "Bobbles" Robinson, who took him to visit some scary English moors and prehistoric ruins, and told him marvelous local legends about escaped prisoners and a 17th-century aristocrat who fell afoul of the family dog. Doyle transmogrified the legend: generations ago, a hound of hell tore out the throat of devilish Hugo Baskerville on the moonlit moor. Poor, accursed...
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David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.
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Chronicles of Brother Cadfael volume 1
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The "irresistible" and "compelling" first novel in the historical mystery series featuring a Welsh Benedictine monk in the twelfth century (The Washington Post).
A Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in western England, Brother Cadfael spends much of his time tending the herbs and vegetables in the garden—but now there's a more pressing matter. Cadfael is to serve as translator for a group of monks heading to...
A Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in western England, Brother Cadfael spends much of his time tending the herbs and vegetables in the garden—but now there's a more pressing matter. Cadfael is to serve as translator for a group of monks heading to...
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Chronicles of Brother Cadfael volume 14
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In the Autumn of 1142, a holy man living as a hermit is found dead. His murder coincides with the arrival at the Abbey of Shrewsbury of the new Lord of Eaton. Brother Cadfael suspects a connection, but the new lord is only ten years old ? who can have been acting in his interests?
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Richard Sharpe volume 10
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At the height of the 1810 battle of Bussaco, Captain Richard Sharpe finds himself separated from his company and lured into a trap from which he must escape in order to rejoin the conflict and stop French invaders at Lisbon
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For years, critics have celebrated best-selling author Patrick O'Brian's seafaring adventures for their magnificent blend of swashbuckling excitement and historical accuracy. With The Hundred Days, he transports you to the high seas of the Napoleonic era when the French demagogue is making a desperate attempt to control the European world. While Napoleon pursues the British across Europe, rumors fly about him forging a secret link with the forces...
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Golden Ocean volume 2
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Best-selling author Patrick O'Brian turns to Commodore Anson's famous 1740 voyage for this rich tale of exploration and adventure. In The Unknown Shore, the inspiration for and immediate precursor to the acclaimed and immensely popular Aubrey/Maturin series, O'Brian's splendid prose and enthralling attention to detail launches listeners-spellbound-into the Age of Discovery.
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Captain Jack Aubrey, R. N., ashore after a successful cruise, is persuaded by a casual acquaintance to make certain investments in the City. This innocent decision ensnares him in the London criminal underground and in government espionage-the province of his friend Stephen Maturin. 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...
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The South Seas are a paradise for battle-weary Captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin. But their peace is disturbed when Stephen's fancy for a peculiar marine organism lands him overboard. Acting in his usual headstrong fashion, Jack dives in to the rescue, unfortunately failing to plan what will happen once they are both in the water watching the sails of the Surprise disappear in the mist.
14) H.M.S. Surprise
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Third in the series of Aubrey-Maturin adventures, this book is set among the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams: the ships sent by Napoleon to...
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Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans now of many battles, return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But a sudden turn of events takes them off on a hazardous mission to the Greek isles, where they are soon involved in fierce and thrilling action.
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Life ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey in The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O'Brian's best-selling novel and eighteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the Admiralty by his erratic voting as a Member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbor, a man with strong Navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates; he is...
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Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half pay without a command - until Stephen Maturin arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope under a commodore's pennant, there to mount an expedition against the French-held islands of Mauritius and La Reunion. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains - Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity...
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Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, surgeon Stephen Maturin, sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy--and a treacherous disease that decimates the crew. With a Dutch man-of-war to windward, the undermanned, outgunned Leopard sails for her life into the freezing waters of the Antarctic, where, in mountainous seas, the Dutchman closes...
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In The Letter of Marque, Jack is once again aboard his beloved Surprise but stripped of his post captaincy for a crime he did not commit. Bought by Stephen, the Surprise has become a privateer. Sailing into French waters, the two concoct a desperate mission which, if successful, may redeem Aubrey from his state of disgrace. A nighttime battle with an unusual climax, a jewel of great value and Stephen's fondness for opium make this segment of O'Brian's...