The Ship

One vital convoy can break Mussolini’s stranglehold on Malta – but it is intercepted in the Mediterranean by enemy warships.

Five light British cruisers are left to beat back the armed might of the Italian battle fleet and C.S. Forester – creator of Horatio Hornblower – takes us aboard HMS Artemis as she steams into battle against overwhelming odds. We get inside the heads of Artemis’s men, from the Captain on his bridge down to the lowest engine room rating, as they struggle over one long and terrifying afternoon to do their duty.

Mr Midshipman Hornblower

Here we meet Horatio Hornblower, a young man of 17, in this Volume #1 of what becomes the 11 volume set about the career of this British Naval officer fighting against Napoleon and his tyranny of Europe as an inexperienced midshipman in January 1794. Bullied and forced into a duel, he takes an even chance. And then he has many more chances to show his skills and ingenuities - from sailing a ship full of wetted and swelling rice to imprisonment and saving the lives of shipwrecked sailors. And along the way, he fights galleys, feeds cattle, stays out of the way of the guillotine, and makes friends with a Duchess. Here Hornblower becomes a man and develops the strength of character which will make him a hero to his men, and to all England.

The Earthly Paradise

Tells the story of Christopher Columbus's third voyage to America, which began on May 30, 1498, and which was personally his most disastrous, the voyage from which he returned in chains... Forester tells this tale of Columbus through the eyes of a strange character, Don Narciso Rich, an attorney representing the interests of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He is fat, celibate, base born, not overly brave, and forty; quite out of place with the young, frustrated grandees embarked with Columbus and him on board the Holy Name.

The General

Herbert Curzon is a former cavalry officer who earned fortuitous distinction in the Boer War. He knew little then; he learned nothing since. But the army, desperate for officers in the opening months of WW I, hands Curzon, a new division to train.

A few months later his formations dissolve at the Somme, hosed down by German machine guns. Uninstructed, Curzon still thinks himself a leader. When a German offensive threatens his remaining troops, he gallops suicidally into the fighting. He prefers death to self-knowledge.

The Captain from Connecticut

No one but a madman would put to sea in such conditions. A blizzard cut visibility to yards. Long Island Sound was galloping whitecaps. But in this second year of the war of 1812, conditions like these spelled opportunity to Captain Josiah Peabody.

His mission: break the British Blockade. The only thing in his favour was surprise. Who would expect a Yankee frigate in Long Island Sound at night?

The African Queen

As World War I reaches the heart of the African jungle, Charlie Allnutt and Rose Sayer, a dishevelled trader and an English spinster missionary, find themselves thrown together by circumstance. Fighting time, heat, malaria, and bullets, they make their escape on the rickety steamboat The African Queen...and hatch their own outrageous military plan. Originally published in 1935, The African Queen is a tale replete with vintage Forester drama - unrelenting suspense, reckless heroism, impromptu military manoeuvres, near-death experiences - and a good old-fashioned love story to boot.

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