Showing results for "chris" in Historical Fiction

Captain Carlisle hails from Virginia, a loyal colony of the British Crown. As the clouds of war gather, Carlisle's small frigate is ordered to Toulon on a reconnaissance mission. If battling the winter weather in the Gulf of Lions is not a sufficient challenge, Carlisle must also juggle the delicate diplomatic issues in this period of pre-war tension while contending with an increasingly belligerent French frigate. But Carlisle has additional problems unique to his colonial origins.

The French called it La Forteresse Maudite, the Cursed Fortress. Louisbourg stood at the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, massive and impregnable, a permanent provocation to the British colonies. It was Canada’s first line of defence, guarding the approaches to Quebec, from where all New France lay open to invasion.

LIDAR scans of the area beneath the Great Pyramids have revealed something astonishing. An entire city lies beneath the sands, hidden for countless millennia, remembered only by the ancient priests of the early dynastic Egyptians. Thoth left behind the Emerald Tablets to explain what lies within the Halls of Amenti, a place that transcends life and death. There he met 32 immortal sages, and became the 33rd so that he could pass the knowledge onto the Egyptians.

Britain’s response was fast and decisive when Spain joined the Seven Years War on the side of France. Guarded by a naval battle squadron, regiments drawn from Britain, the American colonies, and the garrisons of captured French islands were sent to lay siege to Havana. With Havana in British hands the Flota’s route to carry the wealth of the Indies to Spain would be threatened and the Spanish economy would collapse, knocking Spain out of the war in one stroke. That was the plan, but the British invasion force soon learned the gruesome reality of campaigning in the tropics.

I saw it in a memory. I know how crazy that sounds. There were ten kingdoms of Atlantis, as Plato taught us, each ruled by one of the sons of the legendary Poseidon. I know where they all are. We are not the first advanced civilization. We aren't even the second. Others existed, and they left behind clues to help their descendants. To help us. I found those clues, including a device used by the ancients that allows me to relive their memories.

Paris, June 1940. The Nazi occupation of Paris begins. Detective Eddie Giral - a survivor of the last World War - watches helplessly on as his world changes forever. But there is something he still has control over. Finding whoever is responsible for four murdered refugees: the unwanted dead, forgotten amid the headlines. To do so, he must tread carefully between the Occupation and the Resistance, all the while becoming whoever he must be to survive in this new and terrible order descending on his home.

It is the summer of 1760 and the British navy reigns supreme on the oceans of the world; only in the Mediterranean is its mastery still seriously challenged. Admiral Saunders is sent with a squadron of ships-of-the-line to remind those nations that are still neutral of the consequences of siding with the French.

It's 1946, and the dust of World War Two has just begun to settle. When famous archaeologist Rufus Denby returns to London, his life and reputation are as devastated as the city around him. He's used to the most glamorous of excavations, but can't turn down the offer of a job in rural Sussex. It's a refuge, and the only means left to him of scraping a living. With nothing but his satchel and a mongrel dog he's rescued from a bomb site, he sets out to investigate an ancient church in the sleepy village of Droyton.

The residents of tiny Butcherville, Oklahoma, love their God-given freedoms so much, they refuse to hire their own police force. When they need a cop, they just call Emmett Hardy, police chief of Burr, the closest neighboring town. Whether it’s to break up a fight, dissuade an angry good ol’ boy from hunting rabbits with an M-16, or eject an unruly patron from Butcherville’s combination strip joint and bookstore, Emmett’s always glad to oblige...that is, until a local business owner’s lust for money and power results in a deadly shootout and multiple kidnappings.

I've found the Fortress of Atlas, and been to the legendary Halls of Amenti. I know Atlantis was real, but the city was destroyed by a massive tidal wave. Except now I know part of the city survived. Beneath Atlantis lay the vast cavern known as Abzu, from ancient Sumerian mythology.

Even before Spain joined the war in early 1762, it was obvious that it wouldn’t have the strategic effect that the cousins, King Louis and King Charles, had hoped. France needed a success to bring Britain to the negotiating table: nothing grand—Louis didn’t have the force for that—but something that would hurt the City of London in its pocket. A raid on the Newfoundland fisheries would have an immediate financial impact. In normal times the dried cod provided an important dietary supplement to the population of the Atlantic basin and a steady stream of gold for the City’s coffers.

In late 1756, as the British government collapses in the aftermath of the loss of Minorca, and the country and navy are thrown into political chaos, a small force of ships is sent to the West Indies to reinforce the Leeward Islands Squadron. Captain Edward Carlisle and his first lieutenant George Holbrooke are fresh from the Mediterranean and their capture of a powerful French man-of-war. Their new frigate Medina has orders to join a squadron commanded by a terminally ill commodore. Their mission: a near-suicidal assault on a strong Caribbean island fortress.

Cousins at Arms offers listeners the thunder of guns and the clash of cutlasses, but at its heart it’s a thoughtful analysis of a nation’s ill-judged slide into war. This is the thirteenth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. It continues the journey through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies, and ultimately to their bid for independence.

Fort Niagara is the key to the American continent. Whoever owns that lonely outpost at the edge of civilisation controls the entire Great Lakes region. Pitt’s grand strategy for 1759 is to launch a three-pronged attack on Canada. One army would move north from Lake Champlain, a second would sail up the St Lawrence to capture Quebec, and a third force would strike across the wilderness to Lake Ontario and French-held Fort Niagara. Commander George Holbrooke is seconded to command the six hundred boats to carry the army through the rivers and across Lake Ontario.

A Spanish colonial governor and his family are pursued through the Caribbean by a pair of mysterious ships from the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. The British frigate Medina rescues the governor from his hurricane-wrecked ship, leading Captain Edward Carlisle and his first lieutenant George Holbrooke into a web of intrigue and half-truths. Are the Dutchmen operating under a letter of marque, or are they pirates, and why are they hunting the Spaniard? Only the diplomatic skills of Carlisle’s aristocratic wife, Lady Chiara, can solve the puzzle.

It is 1758, and the Seven Years War is at its height. The Duke of Cumberland’s Hanoverian army has been pushed back to the river Elbe while the French are using the medieval fortified city of Emden to resupply their army and to anchor its left flank.

Rocks and Shoals is the seventh of the Carlisle & Holbrooke naval adventures. The series follows Carlisle and his protégé George Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies in the 1760s.

By late 1759 it is clear that France is losing the Seven Years War. In a desperate gamble, the French Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets combine to dominate the Channel and cover a landing in the south of England, but they are annihilated by Admiral Hawke at Quiberon Bay. Meanwhile, a diversionary landing is planned in the north of Britain, and it sails from Dunkirk before news of the disaster at Quiberon Bay can reach its commander.

“You dare call me traitor? It is you, sir, who is the traitor! You and all your slaver ‘friends’ speak nothing but treasonous sedition …” It’s spring 1861, and former army captain Nathan Chambers, is on unfamiliar ground; in the center of the swirling politics of the secession crisis, triggered by the election of an unknown Northerner, Abraham Lincoln. While Nathan fights to keep Virginia in the Union, his enemies plot to take the state by force. And when they do, they mean to trigger a war and murder their political rivals; especially one troublesome former army captain!

Treacherous Moon is the twelfth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. The series follows the two sea officers through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies prior to their bid for independence.