In 1793, Britain is at war with revolutionary France, and Royal Navy Lt. Charles Hayden, the son of an English father and a French mother, feels torn in half. Denied a promotion, he reluctantly accepts appointment as first lieutenant to the frigate Themis: the commander, Capt. Josiah Hart, has powerful connections in the Admiralty, but is widely disparaged among the fleet as a tyrannical coward. Hayden is dismayed to find the ship in a state of dreadful disarray, the crew on the verge of mutiny and Hart hostile to Hayden's remedial efforts. With the French in sight, tensions aboard come to a boil.
"[A] thrilling story of nautical warfare" (Kirkus Reviews) from the author of Under Enemy Colors. Winter 1793. Master and Commander Charles Hayden is given orders to return to the ill-fated HMS Themis as the British fight the French for control of the strategically located island of Corsica, where his captaincy and military skill are stretched to their utmost as he finds himself at the vanguard of this brutal clash of empires.
A Ship of War is a stunning new maritime adventure from Top Ten bestselling author Sean Thomas Russell, following the great success of A Battle Won and Under Enemy Colours. For fans of Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O'Brian, A Ship of War is the third instalment in the electrifying historical series of Charles Hayden and the Themis. 'Hayden kept his eye fixed upon the chasing ship...The screech of an iron ball passed narrowly by. There was no room now for error' 1794. As the terror rages in France, Captain Charles Hayden leaves Plymouth with orders to gather intelligence from a spy off the Le Havre coast. But the enemy lies in wait. In the foulest of weather, Hayden's seamanship is tested to the limit and a terrifying cat and mouse chase begins. Faced with a powerful French squadron Hayden knows he must elude capture at any cost. In his possession are details of an imminent attack on British soil which must be delivered before all is lost.Ahead lie shipwrecks, storms, battles and dramatic escapes - and at the centre of it all, the courage and heroism of a lone captain . . . A Ship of War is the brilliant third tale in the epic maritime adventures of Charles Hayden. A masterpiece already rivalling the stories of Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O'Brian. Praise for Sean Thomas Russell: 'An unqualified seal of approval. This is gloriously readable stuff.' The Bookseller 'Russell's encyclopaedic command of nautical lore, joined to his rare ability to spin a ripping yarn, combine to place the reader right in the middle of the action, of which there is plenty.' Neal Stephenson (author) 'Well-written, plenty of adventure . . . places the reader in the midst of the action of battle.' Marine Society Sean Thomas Russell is a lifelong sailor whose passion for the sea - and his love of nautical history - inspired the adventures of Charles Hayden. A Ship of War follows bestsellers A Battle Won and Under Enemy Colours. Sean lives on Vancouver Island.
Born to an English father and a French mother, lieutenant Charles Saunders Hayden?s career is damned by his ?mixed? heritage. Assigned to the HMS Themis, an aging frigate under the command of a captain reviled by his crew for both his brutality towards his men and his cowardice in battle, Hayden is torn between honor and duty, as the British navy engages the French in a centuries-old struggle for power.
Debut Historical Suspense Novel Wins IPPY Award for Best “Literary Fiction 2014” Stolen art, love, lust, deception, and revenge paint the pages of veteran journalist Lisa Barr’s debut novel, Fugitive Colors, an un-put-down-able page-turner. Booklist calls the WWII era novel, "Masterfully conceived and crafted, Barr’s dazzling debut novel has it all: passion and jealousy, intrigue and danger." Fugitive Colors asks the reader: How far would you go for your passion? Would you kill for it? Steal for it? Or go to any length to protect it? Hitler’s War begins with the ruthless destruction of the avant-garde, but there is one young painter who refuses to let this happen. An accidental spy, Julian Klein, an idealistic American artist, leaves his religious upbringing for the artistic freedom of Paris in the early 1930s. Once he arrives in the “City of Light,” he meets a young German artist, Felix von Bredow, whose larger-than-life personality overshadows his inferior artistic ability, and the handsome and gifted artist Rene Levi, whose colossal talent will later serve to destroy him. The trio quickly becomes best friends, inseparable, until two women get in the way—the immensely talented artist Adrienne, Rene’s girlfriend with whom Julian secretly falls in love, and the stunning artist’s model Charlotte, a prostitute-cum-muse, who manages to bring great men to their knees. Artistic and romantic jealousies abound, as the characters play out their passions against the backdrop of the Nazis' rise to power. Felix returns to Berlin, where his father, a blue-blooded Nazi, is instrumental in creating the master plan to destroy Germany’s modern artists, and seeks his son’s help. Bolstered by vengeance, Felix will lure his friends to Germany, an ill-fated move, which will forever change their lives. Twists and turns, destruction and obsession, loss and hope will keep you up at night, as you journey from Chicago to Paris, Berlin to New York. With passionate strokes of captivating prose, Barr proves that while paintings have a canvas, passion has a face—that once exposed, the haunting images will linger . . . long after you have closed the book. The Hollywood Film Festival awarded Fugitive Colors first prize for “Best Unpublished Manuscript” (Opus Magnum Discovery Award). Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Master and Commander Charles Hayden returns in the riveting seafaring adventure by bestselling author S. Thomas Russell. In 1794, the French Revolution rages, and Charles Hayden sets off aboard the HMS Themis with orders to destroy a French frigate and to gather intelligence from a royalist spy. Upon discovering French plans for an imminent invasion of England, Hayden must return to Portsmouth to raise the alarm before it’s too late. But the enemy is laying in wait—and so begins a dangerous chase out into the Atlantic and into the clutches of a powerful French squadron. With no chance of fighting their way through, Hayden and his officers are taken prisoner. Shipwrecked in a storm on the French coast and mistaken for a French sea officer, Hayden must attempt a desperate escape to warn the Lords of the Admiralty. Failure will mean the invasion of England—and the guillotine for Hayden.
Former intelligence officer Harry Strand learns that a secret agent can never retire--and never surrender. A widower, he has started his life over and fallen in love with Mara Song, a beautiful Asian art collector. But Harry's peaceful world is shattered when he discovers a shocking videotape of his wife's death in Mara's tape collection.
George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's--and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon--and America itself--in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.
Winner of the PEN Open Book Award * Winner of the Whiting Award * Longlisted for the National Book Award and Aspen Words Literary Prize * Nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize * Finalist for the Kirkus Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by Refinery29, NPR, The Root, HuffPost, Vanity Fair, Bustle, Chicago Tribune, PopSugar, and The Undefeated In one of the season’s most acclaimed works of fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires offers “a firecracker of a book...a triumph of storytelling: intelligent, acerbic, and ingenious” (Financial Times). Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with race, identity politics, and the contemporary middle class in this “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo) collection. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous—two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids’ backpacks—while others are devastatingly poignant. In the title story, when a cosplayer, dressed as his favorite anime character, is mistaken for a violent threat the consequences are dire; in another story, a teen struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with so-called black culture. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires “has taken the best of what Toni Cade Bambara, Morgan Parker, and Junot Díaz do plus a whole lot of something we’ve never seen in American literature, blended it all together...giving us one of the finest short-story collections” (Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division).
