Morgan's criticism of the British Navy in this novel led to the book's limited distribution.

"Few, very few books have made my heart thud with excitement. H.M.S. Surprise managed it." —Helen Lucy Burke, Irish Press In H.M.S. Surprise, British naval officer Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin face near-death and tumultuous romance in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Tasked with ferrying a British ambassador to the Sultan of Kampong, they find themselves on a prolonged voyage aboard a Royal Navy frigate en route to the Malay Peninsula. In this new sphere, Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy who enjoys overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could secure him a marriage to his beloved Sophie and make him rich beyond his wildest dreams: the ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet.

The Lane Fleming collection of early pistols and revolvers was one of the best in the country. When Fleming was found dead on the floor of his locked gunroom, a Confederate-made Colt-type percussion .36 revolver in his hand, the coroner's verdict was "death by accident." But Gladys Fleming had her doubts. Enough at any rate to engage Colonel Jefferson Davis Rand—better known just as Jeff—private detective and a pistol-collector himself, to catalogue, appraise, and negotiate the sale of her late husband's collection.

Stephen Maturin brings Captain Jack Aubrey secret orders to lead an expedition against the French islands of Mauritius and La Reunion, but the conduct of two of his own officers threatens the success of the mission.

A beautiful, powerful and utterly devastating novel from Orange-prize shortlisted author Georgina Harding 'Georgina Harding's novel is the finely tuned work of a writer exceptionally at ease with her craft and a testament to the power and poetry of clean and disciplined prose' Guardian The memory of war will stay with a man longer than anything else. Dawn, mist clearing over rice fields, a burning Vietnamese village, and a young photographer takes the shot that might make his career. The image, of a staring soldier in the midst of mayhem, will become one of the great photographs of the war. But what Jonathan has seen in that village is more than he can bear... He flees to Japan, to lose himself in the vastness of Tokyo, and to take different kinds of pictures: of streets and crowds and cherry blossom – and of a girl with whom he is no longer lost. Yet even here his history will catch up with him: that photograph and his responsibility in taking it; his responsibility as a witness to war, and to other events buried deep in his past. The first in Harding's cycle of acclaimed novels on themes of witness, memory and silence, The Gun Room is beautiful, powerful and utterly devastating.

The Lane Fleming collection of early pistols and revolvers was one of the best in the country. When Fleming was found dead on the floor of his locked gunroom, a confederate-made Colt-type percussion .36 revolver in his hand, the coroner's verdict was "death by accident," But Gladys Fleming had her doubts... enough to engage Colonel Jefferson Davis Rand - a pistol collector himself, to catalogue, appraise, and negotiate the sale of her late husband's collection. There were a number of people who had wanted the collection, but had anyone wanted it badly enough to kill Fleming? And if so, how had he done it? Here is a mystery, told against the fascinating background of old guns and gun-collecting that will keep your nerves on a hair trigger even if you don't know the difference between a cased pair of Paterson .34's and a Texas .40 with a ramming-lever.

"Keith Stahl's poems in From the Gunroom recycle words and phrases like "mean point of impact" and "extreme killing range" to empathically explore the history of a dysfunctional family and the corrosive effects of masculinity. Weirdly touching, funny and strange, wrought from the language of violence, these startling original poems redeem and critique our gun obsessed society's willing and unwilling victims with a dead-on, loaded, penetrating humor. Sarah C. Harwell"--