Patrick O'Brian, C.S. Forester and Captain Marryat all based their literary heroes on Thomas Cochrane, but Cochrane's exploits were far more daring and exciting than those of his fictional counterparts. He was a man of action, whose bold and impulsive nature meant he was often his own worst enemy. Writing with gripping narrative skill and drawing on his own travels and original research, Cordingly tells the rip-roaring story of a flawed Romantic hero who helped define his age.

Set sail for the read of your life! Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback by Harper Perennial with stunning new jackets.

A portrait of a British warship that played a key role during the wartime years of the Napoleonic era describes the ship's service in three crucial sea battles--the Glorious First of June (1794), the first action against revolutionary France; the 1798 battle of the Nile; and the battle of Trafalgar (1805)--as well as its role in Napoleon's ultimate surrender. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

In this fascinating account of Thomas Cochrane's extraordinary life, David Cordingly (Under the Black Flag and The Billy Ruffian) unearths startling new details about the real-life "Master and Commander"-from his heroic battles against the French navy to his role in the liberation of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and the stock exchange scandal that forced him out of England and almost ended his naval career. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, his own travels, wide reading, and original research, Cordingly tells the rip-roaring story of the archetypal Romantic hero who conquered the seas and, in the process, defined his era.

Edward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest frigate captain in the age of sail. An incomparable seaman, ferociously combative yet chivalrous, a master of the quarterdeck and an athlete of the tops, he was as quick to welcome a gallant foe into his cabin as to dive to the rescue of a man overboard. He is the likely model for the heroic but all-too-human Jack Aubrey in Patrick O'Brian's novels. Pellew was orphaned at eight, but fought his way from the very bottom of the Navy to fleet command and a viscountcy. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet as an outsider with a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves. Contemporary opinion held this to be an impossible mission, and Pellew himself, in leading from the front in the style of his direct contemporary Nelson, did not expect to survive. Pellew's humanity as much as his gallantry, fondness for subordinates and blind love for his family, and the warmth and intimacy of his letters, make him a hugely engaging and sympathetic figure. In Stephen Taylor's magnificent new life he at last has the biography he deserves.

A heart-pounding First World War naval thriller featuring the rebel Captain Cochrane Smith. 1917: After three years, the outcome of the Great War is poised on a knife-edge. David Cochrane Smith, captain of the armoured cruiser HMS Thunder, is patrolling off the coast of South America. But then he attacks and sinks the Gerda, a neutral ship in a neutral port. Smith already has a reputation as a maverick and now he faces professional ruin. But he is certain he was right, that the Gerda was one of two ships masquerading under neutral flags that are in fact supply vessels for the mighty German warships, Kondor and Wolf. Only an outdated cruiser and a young captain prepared to break all the rules stand in their way... Thunder At Dawn is an edge-of-the-seat naval adventure that combines thrilling story-telling with meticulous research, perfect for readers of Alexander Fullerton, Julian Stockwin and Philip McCutchan. Praise for Alan Evans'I think a 21 gun salute is required...Alan Evans has produced a cracking thriller' Daily Mirror 'Evans provides a different sea story, sustained suspense and vivid battle scenes' Publishers Weekly

No one interested in fashion, style, or the high-flying intrigues of café society will want to miss Christopher Petkanas’s exuberantly entertaining oral biography Loulou & Yves: The Untold Story of Loulou de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent. Dauntless, “in the bone” style made Loulou de La Falaise one of the great fashion firebrands of the twentieth century. Descending in a direct line from Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, she was celebrated at her death in 2011, aged just sixty-four, as the “highest of haute bohemia,” a feckless adventuress in the art of living—and the one person Yves Saint Laurent could not live without. Yves was the most influential designer of his times; possibly also the most neurasthenic. In an exquisitely intimate, sometimes painful personal and professional relationship, Loulou was his creative right hand, muse, alter ego and the virtuoso behind all the flamboyant accessories that were a crucial component of the YSL “look.” For thirty years, until his retirement in 2002, Yves relied on Loulou to inspire him, make him laugh and talk him off the ledge—the enchanted formula that brought him from one historic collection to the next. Yves’s many tributes shape Loulou’s memory, as if everything there was to know about this fugitive, Giacometti-like figure could be told by her clanking bronze cuffs, towering fur toques, the turquoise boulders on her fingers and her working friendship with the man who put women in pants. But another, darker story lifts the veil on Loulou, a classic “number two” with a contempt for convention, and exposes the underbelly of fashion at its highest level. Behind Yves’s encomiums are a pair of aristocrat parents—Loulou’s shiftless French father and menacingly chic English mother—who abandoned her to a childhood of foster care and sexual abuse; Loulou’s recurring desperation to leave Yves and go out on her own; and the grandiose myths surrounding her family. Loulou felt that her life had been kidnapped by the operatic workings of the House of Saint Laurent, and in her last years faced financial ruin. Loulou & Yves unspools an elusive fashion idol—nymphomaniacal, heedless and up to her bracelets in coke and Boizel champagne—at the core of what used to be called “le beau monde.”

One single mistake will cost them everything. Lieutenant David Brent and his crew are waiting on a torpedo boat – fast, agile and terribly vulnerable. They are the sole members of a Commando raiding party, poised to charge ashore on a carefully orchestrated rescue mission. Little do they know that Hell is about to break loose... The near-suicidal mission has been ordered at the very highest level of government. Now, engines idling, alert for the tell-tale sounds of patrolling E-boats, they can only pray to come out of this alive... A nerve-shredding war thriller that crackles with intensity, perfect for fans of Anthony Trew, Douglas Reeman and Philip McCutchan.