In Athens, a Boeing 737 noses into the gate, and its crew is suddenly confronted by Greek officials waiting to arrest one of its passengers, a beloved ex-President of the United States, John Harris. Captain Craig Dayton, believing Harris' life is in danger, stages a daring escape by backing the jet away from the gate without clearance and taking off down a vacant runway. The dilemma for Captain Dayton and his precious cargo is that Peru has signed an Interpol warrant for President Harris' arrest, using the same treaty employed to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Bristol, 1618. Kit Faulkner is a young vagrant orphan, taking life as he finds it in the rough world of the docks. But after an encounter with two gentlemen, his fortunes are changed forever. Kit is taken aboard the Swallow, a large merchant ship partly owned by the two men, Captain Henry Mainwaring and Captain Gideon Strange, and they decide to train the boy for a life on the sea. And so begins the adventures of Kit Faulkner, which see him rise through the ranks and risk all in encounters with pirates and a French man-of-war. Meanwhile, England edges ever closer to civil war, and very soon Kit must choose which side he will fight for...
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River, across the forbidding Rockies, and -- by way of the Snake and mighty Columbia -- down to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, endured incredible hardships and witnessed astounding sights.
Jamaica, in 1665 a lone outpost of British power amid Spanish waters in the sunbaked Caribbean. Its capital, Port Royal, a cuthroat town of taverns, grog shops and bawdy houses -- the last place imaginable from which to launch an unthinkable attack on a nearby Spanish stronghold. Yet that is exactly what renowned privateer Captain Charles Hunter plans to do, with the connivance of Charles II's ruling governor, Sir James Almont.
"So Sharpe and Harper will march again." Thus ended Sharpe's Havoc, the previous (19th) volume in Cornwell's series, and Sharpe aficionados will rejoice that the prophecy has been fulfilled. In September of 1810, just before repulsing the French army on the bare slopes of Bussaco ridge in central Portugal, Captain Sharpe is forced to take Lieutenant Slingsby, Colonel Lawford's arrogant, heavy-drinking brother-in-law, under his wing.
