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Death limits a man’s future opportunities, but for Royal Marine Major Thomas Pennywhistle, death expands them. After a near-death experience, he sees the world with enlightened eyes and enhanced perceptions. He will need them, because he has a code to break, a murder to solve, and spies to outfox. He will be entering a world of international intrigue, confronting a conspiracy to undermine the British monarchy. His capacity for guile, quick thinking, and decisive action have served him well in combat; now he will exercise his talents in the arena of politics.

Talon stared wide-eyed at the devices, awed that they could make such an overwhelming, head-splitting noise. His ears rang and his eyes were burning from the drifting smoke that carried with it an evil stink. “That will show the bastards,” Hsü told him with one of his rare smiles. “The General calls his weapons ‘the Dragon’s breath.’ They certainly stink like it.” Talon, an assassin turned knight turned merchant, is restless. Enticed by tales of lucrative trade, he sets sail for the coasts of Africa and India.

A major drug deal is underway and loose ends are being taken care of when two things go wrong: two murders that were supposed to look like a suicide and an accident get noticed – one on an English railroad, and one on board an ocean-going barge. As police are sent to investigate both seemingly unrelated incidents, the men at sea find themselves in dangerous waters. Who among them is on the take, and who is on the level? Who can be trusted when all of them are enduring the special man-made hell of life on an oil barge?

On a stormy night in March 1941, Maisie Rose Hawkins leaves her drunk husband, Stan, out in the rain - and he disappears. Detective Sergeant Bob Robbins and young PC Laurie Oliver are called out to investigate and discover that Stan’s small fishing boat is gone, the rope sawn through. As Bob searches for answers, it becomes apparent that in this small Cornish village where everyone knows everything about everybody, nobody quite knows the truth.

Narrated by 11-year-old Orla Gwen Gleason, Orla’s Canvas opens on Easter Sunday, in St. Suplice, Louisiana, a “misspelled town” north of New Orleans, and traces Orla's dawning realization that all is not as it seems in her personal life or in the life of her community. The death of St. Suplice’s doyenne, Mrs. Bellefleur Dubois Castleberry, for whom Orla’s mother keeps house, reveals Orla’s true paternity, shatters her trust in her beloved mother, and exposes her to the harsh realities of class and race in the Civil Rights-era South.

Chivalry comes naturally to Royal Marine captain Thomas Pennywhistle, but in the savage Peninsular War, it's a luxury he can ill afford. Trapped behind enemy lines with vital dispatches for Lord Wellington, Pennywhistle violates orders when he saves a beautiful stranger, setting off a sequence of events that jeopardize his mission.

Talon de Gilles, son of a Christian knight of Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades, is only 13 when ferocious Saracens attack his family's caravan and take him captive. Instead of selling him into slavery, or ransoming him, his captors impose a dire fate upon the boy, forcing Talon to become one of them, an Assassin of the Ismaili, the most feared and hated sect in all of Persia, and beyond.

Talon is returning to the Holy Land to search for his beloved Ravan, but Fate has other plans for him. When his ship is wrecked off the coast of North Africa in a storm, Talon and Max, his sole surviving companion, escape captivity and the threat of execution, only to risk their lives preventing a massacre. Barely surviving the ambush they interrupted, they find themselves in the care of a wealthy Egyptian family in a region known as the Fayoum.

It’s midwinter in 1539, and Catherine Havens Overton has just given birth to her second child, a daughter. The convent in which she was raised is now part of the Overton lands, and Catherine’s husband William owns the properties that once belonged to her mother’s family. With a son, Robert, and her new daughter, Veronica, Catherine’s life as the mistress of a great household should be complete.

Scotsman Edward MacNaughton, a former privateer captain, twice accused and acquitted of piracy and currently seeking a commission, is ensnared in the intrigue associated with the attempt to assassinate King William III in 1696. Who plots to kill the king, who will rise in rebellion—and which of three women in his life, the dangerous smuggler, the wealthy widow with a dark past, or the former lover seeking independence—might kill to further political ends?

Talon has returned to Acre, the Crusader port, after more than a year in Byzantium. He is now a rich man, the owner of ships and in possession of a license to play the merchant within the Empire to the north. However, riches bring enemies and his past is about to catch up with him as accusations of witchcraft have followed him from Languedoc. An investigation is about to disrupt his life but then everything is changed when he travels to a small fort with Sir Guy de Veres, his Templar mentor.

Imprisoned for brawling in Acre, a coastal city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Talon and his longtime friend Max are freed by an old mentor from the Order of the Templars and offered a new mission in the fabled city of Constantinople. There Talon finds that winning the emperor's favor obligates him to go to war to free Byzantine lands from the Seljuk Turks.

Young Midshipman Duncan Graham is anxious to get ahead in the British Navy, but has many hurdles to overcome. Without any familial privileges to smooth his way, he can only advance through merit. The fires of war prove his mettle, but during an expedition to obtain desperately needed fresh water - and an illegal duel - a French patrol drives off the boats, and Graham is left stranded on shore.

A joyous homecoming turns into a nightmare, as a trained assassin must do the one thing he didn't want to do -become an assassin again. Talon, a young Frank, returns to France with his uncle Phillip, a Templar knight, to be reunited with his family who lost him to the Assassins of Alamut when he was just a boy. When he arrives, he finds a sinister threat hanging like a pall over the joyous reunion. Ruthless enemies, who will stop at nothing to destroy his entire family to achieve their ends, are challenging the inheritance of his father.

It's the summer of 1814, and Captain Thomas Pennywhistle of the Royal Marines is fighting in a New World war that should never have started, a war where the old rules of engagement do not apply. Here, runaway slaves are your best source of intelligence, treachery is commonplace, and rough justice is the best one can hope to meet-- or mete out. The Americans are fiercely determined to defend their new nation and the Great Experiment of the Republic; British Admiral George Cockburn is resolved to exact revenge for the burning of York, and so the war drags on.

The White House is in flames, the Capitol a gutted shell. President Madison is in hiding. Organized resistance has collapsed, and British soldiers prowl the streets of Washington. Pennywhistle and Tracy are forced into an uneasy alliance that will try the resolve of both. Together, they will question the depth of their loyalties as heads and hearts argue for the fate of a nation.

New York, 1850. Two clipper ships depart on a race around Cape Horn to the boomtown of San Francisco, where the first to arrive will gain the largest profits and also win a $50,000 wager for her owner.

In May 1862, Robert Smalls, a slave and ship’s pilot in Charleston, South Carolina, crafts a daring plan to steal the steamship Planter and deliver it, along with, the crew and their families to the Union blockade. After risking his life to escape slavery, Robert faces an even more difficult challenge: convincing Abraham Lincoln to enlist black troops.