Sea Adventures Fiction

A Sloop of War, the second novel in the Alexander Clay series, is set on the island of Barbados, where the temperature of the politics, prejudices, and amorous ambitions are matched only by the sweltering heat of the climate.

It is February 1818, and Adam Bolitho longs for marriage and a safe personal harbour. But with so much of Britain's fleet redundant, he knows he is fortunate to be offered HMS Onward, a new 38-gun frigate whose first mission is not war but diplomacy, as consort to the French frigate Nautilus.

Archaeologist Nicole Berman is the first woman to be awarded a permit to lead a dig in Saudi Arabia. Nicole believes what she hopes to discover has the power to to rewrite world history. She assembles a team that will ultimately surprise—and in some cases—betray her. In a parallel storyline, listeners are launched back to ancient Ur where young Abram is sent to learn from his forebears, who tell him firsthand stories of being on the ark during the Great Flood.

"Boredom is dangerous," writes Benjamin Samuel, Co-Editor of Electric Literature, in his introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "It can make us lazy, complacent, and if we suffer too much of it we're liable to become boring ourselves. For the whalers at sea in Anu Jindal's Not a Bad Bunch, boredom is far more insidious; according to the ship's surgeon, who narrates the story, it's an early symptom of an infectious and barbarous madness.

Time is a very fluid thing, no one really has a grasp on it other than maybe how to measure it. As the maestro of the Day by Day Armageddon Universe, I have the latitude of being in control of that time. I can adjust the slider either direction, moving the timeline back and forth along the continuum. This is one of the perks of creation, the benefit in constructing something (albeit small) from nothing. Sort of makes you wonder what the maestro of the universe is up to, no? You have again stumbled upon a ticket with service through the apocalyptic wastes, but this time the train is a little bit older, a little more beat up, and maybe a little wiser. Keep your doors locked.

Biding its time for decades, China has patiently lain in wait for its chance at global dominance. Long content to needle the West while secretly amassing intelligence, technology, and resources, the war chest is now full, and the gears of the colossus are grinding into motion. New arenas of modern battle emerge as China wages an all-out cyber assault on the West. And the more familiar tactics of brute strength play out in its bold attacks against sovereign neighbors. The scope of the Chinese menace draws the US into the melee.

On the run from his past, Nick and the crew of The Panther have enough treasure aboard to live like kings, but nowhere to spend it. Not all the crew agrees on his plan, and after a near mutiny, the crew decides to try for a new start. When his heritage catches up to him and a new treasure appears, bigger than anything they’ve tried to recover before, the crew is lured into an adventure off the coast of the Yucatan. The natives and legendary pirate Jean Lafitte stand in the crews way, forcing them to use everything they’ve learned to escape.

Great Lakes galley cook Sunny Colvin has her hands full feeding a freighter crew seven days a week, nine months a year. She also has a dream—to open a restaurant back home—but knows she'd never convince her husband, the steward, to leave the seafaring life he loves.

After narrowly escaping the New Lands, Egg is determined to take down ruthless slave trader Roger Pembroke. But war is brewing among the Blue Sea's pirate gangs - and Egg, Guts, and Kira are running out of time to find the Fire King’s treasure and free the Okalu slaves from the silver mine on Sunrise. Can they save Kira’s people before Sunrise is plundered by Ripper Jones’s pirates? Will Burn Healy save the day, or has the legendary captain finally met his match? And will Egg ever win back Millicent from the annoyingly handsome Cyril?

Vaguely remembering the accident that might have killed him, retired Navy captain Craig Larson is offered a chance at a new life. Choosing the body of a half-man, half-serpent creature called a naga, Larson must fight to secure a place for himself in this new world. Soon, he finds himself in a fight against pirates, thieves, and terrors of the deep, all of which seek to end his new life before it truly begins. But Larson is not easily deterred.

Captain Lord Ramage and the Calypso return from Devil's Island, but Ramage's new wife, Sarah, is missing. The captain would like nothing better than to sail home immediately, but instead he is ordered to shepherd a lumbering convoy of merchant ships back to England. On the way bizarre events lead him to a full court-martial in Plymouth, presided over by his old nemesis, Rear Admiral Goddard. Ramage must clear his name--or face a sentence of death!

Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally enough of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. No man is an island, my butt, he thinks. I am that very man.... But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. The Plover is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica.

The Extravaganza of the Seas is a 5,000 ton cash cow, a top-heavy tub whose sole function is to carry gamblers three miles from the Florida coast, take their money, then bring them back so they can find more money.

The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered raja who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck-hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her homeland with her lover, Kalua. The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton.

Fleeing his failed marriage in Berlin, Lukas Dorn revisits the West of Ireland, the place of his honeymoon two decades earlier. While his former wife is being cancelled at work and his daughter is arrested at a street protest, he tries to make sense of his broken life with his journal as his sole companion. His inherited memory of the Nazi Holocaust comes face to face with the present when he meets a refugee from a recent warzone. As Lukas communes with the elements in this wild coastal place, he is forced into a confrontation with the past that will carry him to the edge of existence.

1794. Lieutenant John Pearce is caught between a feuding trio of admirals. One puts him in a position of danger while another asks him to undertake a hazardous commission in order to protect his friends, the Pelicans. Meanwhile, Pearce is also trying to construct a perjury case against Admiral Ralph Barclay.

In 1798, the British Royal Navy withdrew from the Mediterranean to combat the threat of invasion at home. In their absence, rumors abound of a French Army gathering in the south of France under General Napoleon Bonaparte, and of a large fleet gathering to transport them. Alexander Clay and his ship, Titan, are sent to the Mediterranean to investigate. Clay verifies the troubling rumors but is unable to learn where the French fleet and the army will be heading.

In 1805, with news of Admiral Nelson's death fresh on his mind, Captain Lewrie's HMS Reliant joins up in the voyage that will culminate in the Battle of Cape Town, in which the British wrested control of South Africa from the Dutch. In the wake of that victory, Lewrie heads west to South America, where Britain's attacks on Buenos Aires and other Spanish colonies have not been faring as well. But the worst is yet to come, and soon Lewrie will be facing a battle at sea that will put his naval career and life at risk.

En un mar embravecido, un buque se encuentra en medio de una tormenta. A bordo, la tripulación lucha no solo contra la furia de la naturaleza, sino contra un cañón suelto que amenaza con destruir la embarcación. La desesperación y el coraje se entrelazan mientras los marineros enfrentan esta amenaza inesperada. Victor Hugo, en Pelear contra un cañón, nos sumerge en un intenso drama donde la lucha del hombre contra la máquina se convierte en una metáfora del desafío humano ante adversidades imprevistas.

The powerful narcotic syncophine, commonly known as Flare, comes from only one source: the oil of the gargantuan whale-like beasts that swim the dust sea of Nullaqua. It was John Newhouse’s addiction to the substance that made him a dealer and forced him to move to this airless, inhospitable planet. But when the all-powerful galactic Confederacy declares Flare illegal, the needs of Newhouse and his clientele leave the desperate off-worlder no choice but to sign on as an able seaman aboard a dustwhaler and hunt the giant creatures himself.