Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Confessions of Frannie Langton read by Sara Collins. They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don't believe I've done? 1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie La...

A fictionalised retelling of Commodore (later Admiral) Anson's fateful circumnavigation of the globe in 1740, which precedes O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. Peter Palofox, son of a poor Irish parson, signs on as a midshipman, never before having seen a ship. Together with his lifelong friend Sean, Peter sets out to seek his fortune, embarking upon...

On a wild stormy night in 1813, Nathan Jago, drift fisherman, ex-prizefighter and lord of the manor of Polrudden, rescues a young boy from a drowning mother's arms as a French ship founders on the jagged Cornish rocks. It is an act that will profoundly affect his destiny. Despite hard times, Nathan and his wife Amy adopt Jean-Paul and bring him up...

The Cornish coast of 1810 is alive with fishing boats, warships and smugglers. For Nathan Jago, a fishing business seems the ideal place to invest his prizefighting winnings. It's not all plain sailing to a wealthy future though. For a start there is the wilful squire's daughter Elinor and Amy with her fierce Cornish pride. The first novel in the J...

Set in 17th-century France against a backdrop of terror and religious frenzy. Juliette seeks refuge in a remote abbey - and reinvents herself as Soeur Auguste. Then her past turns up to haunt her in the guise of a man she has every reason to fear.

Captain Jack Aubrey sets sail for the South China Sea with a new lease of life, having earned reinstatement to the Royal Navy through his exploits as a privateer. Now he shepherds Stephen Maturin on a diplomatic mission to prevent links between Bonaparte and the Malay princes which could put English merchant shipping at risk. The thirteenth book in...

Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where the French are mounting an invasion which will test Aubrey's seamanship and Maturin's resourcefulness as an intelligence agent. The seventeenth book in the Aubrey-Matu...

This is the story of Ruth bas Elazar Saul, a Jewish midwife who returns to her home of Deutz, outside Cologne in Germany. Imbued with the radical ideas of Spinoza and with the ancient Hebrew Kabbalism, Ruth's revolutionary methods of dealing with illness lead to accusations of witchcraft and imprisonment. Her love affair with Detleff von Tennen, a...

This audiobook contains three new episodes in the career of Sir Harry Flashman, the eminent if disreputable adventurer. The title piece touches on two of the most spectacular military actions of the century and sees Flashman pitted against one of the greatest villains of the day, and observing, with his usual jaundiced eye, two of its most famous h...

Patrick O'Brian's first novel about the sea, 'The Golden Ocean', took inspiration from Commodore Anson's ill-fated voyage around the globe in 1740. With this audiobook, O'Brian returns to this rich source to recount the adventures of two young men - midshipman Jack Byron and naive surgeon's mate Tobias Barrow - aboard the Wager, which was parted fr...

In this audiobook Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are stranded on an uninhabited island in the Dutch East Indies, attacked by ferocious Malay pirates. They contrive their escape, but after a stay in Batavia and a change of ship, they are caught up on a chase in fiercely tidal waters and then embroiled in much more insidious conflicts on the terrify...

As the book opens, Captain Jack Aubery sails away from the hated Australian prison colonies in his favourite vessel the Surprise, pondering on middle age. He soon becomes aware that he is out of touch with the mood of his ship: to his astonishment he finds that, in spite of a lifetime's experience, he does not know what the foremost hands or even h...

London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften. Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, an...

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 H.M.S. Onward, a new 38-gun frigate whose first mission is not war but diplomacy, as consort to the French frigate Nautilus. Under the burning sun of North Africa, Bolitho is kee...

It's July 1917, and as the sun sets over no-man's-land so Joseph Reavley's heart sinks with it. As chaplain he must keep up the men's morale, but as rumours of mutiny grow stronger he is losing any chance of getting through to them. After the death of an officer, twelve soldiers are arrested, and it falls to Joseph to uncover the truth about their...

Sir Harry Flashman, arch-cad, poltroon, amorist, and reluctant hero, fleeing first from Mexican bandits, rebels, and the French Foreign Legion, not to mention the relatives of an infatuated Austrian beauty, was in urgent need of somewhere to take cover - even if it meant a perilous secret mission in disguise to the court of a voluptuous African que...

At the time of Patrick O'Brian's death, he was half way through a novel that continued the Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series. In a moment of almost felicity, Jack Aubrey has seen his illegitimate son ably discharging important duties, Sophie and his daughters are with him, and Stephen has a new love. And Jack, at last, is flying a Rear-Admiral...

Napoleon's hundred days of freedom and his renewed threat to Europe have ended at Waterloo and Aubrey has finally, as the title suggests, become a blue level Admiral. He and Maturin have - at last - set sail on their much postponed mission to Chile. The twentieth title in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

The year is 878, and the Saxons of Wessex, under King Alfred, have defeated the Danes to keep their kingdom free. Uhtred, the dispossessed son of a Northumbrian lord, helped Alfred win that victory, but now he is disgusted by Alfred's lack of generosity. Uhtred flees Wessex, going north to search for his stepsister, who was taken prisoner by Kjarta...

Two 19th century stage illusionists, the aristocratic Rupert Angier and the working-class Alfred Borden, engage in a bitter and deadly feud; the effects are still being felt by their respective families a hundred years later. Working in the gaslight-and-velvet world of Victorian music halls, they prowl edgily in the background of each other's shado...

Growing up in the shadow of her dead mother, the infamous Anne Boleyn, young Princess Elizabeth has learnt to be continuously on the watch for the political games played out around her. It is never certain when one might rise in, or precariously fall out of, royal favour. When her distant father, Henry VIII, dies, the future brightens for Elizabeth...