Product Description
The author of the acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin sea novels presents twenty-seven vivid stories, ranging from the humorous to the dramatic, about the savage forces lurking behind the veneer of civilization. Reprint. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Be prepared to be confused....
I am a Aubrey addict. I also just finished Patrick O'Brian's biography by Dean King which is pretty decent and worth reading. It gives you some interesting insight as to how he developed as a writer and the early development of the Aubrey characters.

So I ordered this collection of his early short stories. I can see why O'Brian was not particularly successful until later in his career.

Only one has anything to do with sailing. Most of these stories end, trail off, or just sort of stop suddenly, with the reader wondering ...what...what just happened?

One of them, the Billabillian really perplexed me. I could not figure out the surprise ending - why the young man was suddenly in big trouble. So I googled the story, found a discussion forum and - what a surprise - none of them had a clue as to what was going on either.

Most of them were complaining about the stories. One of the forum members said, "This book is beginning to sap me." I thought to myself, that describes me exactly: why am I reading this?

Lots of other great collections of short stories out there. I would give this a pass.

The Road Not Taken
Ahoy, shipmates! I enjoyed the Aubrey-Maturin books as much as any of you. I was introduced to them by a Medieval musicologist, not someone you'd expect to swash his buckle much, and I read the whole series in one summer. I'm still hoping that another all-concluding volume will be discovered in a secret cask somewhere in Provence. I wouldn't want O'Brian to have been another writer than he was. Nevertheless, his early short stories display the fact that he COULD have been a very different writer, and perhaps a very great different writer. I rather lament the writer that he wasn't as much as I value the writer he was.

The stories in The Rendezvous apparently represent O'Brian's own selection, and thus part of his literary testament. Most of them would be impossible to regcognize as his work if one encountered them anonymously. They are terse, dark, evocative, elusive, and beautifully crafted. Another reviewer has already identified the masterpiece of the collection, "The Chian Wine", a story about ritualized Jew-baiting in an otherwise idyllic village. It's a story that will knock you out of yourself. A classic. But there are other stories of almost equal power, and then there are graceful flirtations with an aesthetic never exposed in the Aubrey-Maturin books. Too bad cloning hadn't been perfected in time to create two Patrick O'Brians - one to write the great sea novels that he wrote, and another to write the great psychological novels that he could have written.

Not part ofthe Aubrey Maturin Series
Readers of the Aubrey Maturin Series may be disappointed as this book of short stories has nothing to do with that series.While I personally read and enjoyed all 20 1/2 of the Aubrey Maturin Series as well as the related Golden Ocean and Unknown Shore, I did not enjoy the few stories I read in this volume.So I would urge caution here.UPDATE:Obviously my intent here is to warn readers how different these stories are to the Aubrey Maturin series.These stories may have merit as another reviewer states and I won't argue the point, but if you are expecting anything like the Aubrey Maturin series, you will likely be disappointed.

The best short story writer in the language
This is a compilation of short stories, written by Mr. O'Brian over many years.They are emotionally dark, speaking to man's helplessness against the forces of nature and emotion, but they are masterpieces of characterization and understatement.

Read "The Chian Wine" first and you will be astounded. ... Read more

Product Description
Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Royal Navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a dispatch vessel, but the War of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen’s past activities as a secret agent return on him with a vengeance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Writing better than the speaker
The book is better to read than to listen to. Unfortunately, the speaker is not really familiar with American accents, consequently the dialogues of the US citizens sound stiff and unnatural in his rendering. The Brits all sound OK. Wish there had been a choice of readers as other reviewers also were lukewarm about this one.

Simon Vance lacks ability in making the story real
For anyone who loves to listen the O'brian's novels read with eloquence and great vocal characterization, go for Patrick O'Tull's version. Seriously,he is much better than Simon's insipid performance.

Exceeded My Expectations
I own the entire 21 books in this series, as well as all the Horatio Hornblower series. This audio book was purchased for a road-trip. Unfortunatley, I reached my destination before the book was finished. I plan to buy the additional audio books ofr future road-trips. . . .a good resaon to drive to California and back!!

A thrilling tale of survival on the high seas amid deadly conflict
Set during the War of 1812, The Fortune Of War is an audiobook novel following Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and his friend Stephen Maturin, a former secret agent. When Captain Jack Aubrey receives an appointment to command the best-armed frigate in the Navy, both men seek passage from the Dutch East Indies to England in a dispatch vessel; yet the war breaks out when they are en route, placing them in peril of life and limb. Grippingly narrated by John Lee, The Fortune Of War is a thrilling tale of survival on the high seas amid deadly conflict. 8 cassettes, 11 hours 35 minutes.

A thrilling tale of survival on the high seas amid deadly conflict
Set during the War of 1812, The Fortune Of War is an audiobook novel following Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and his friend Stephen Maturin, a former secret agent. When Captain Jack Aubrey receives an appointment to command the best-armed frigate in the Navy, both men seek passage from the Dutch East Indies to England in a dispatch vessel; yet the war breaks out when they are en route, placing them in peril of life and limb. Grippingly narrated by John Lee, The Fortune Of War is a thrilling tale of survival on the high seas amid deadly conflict. 8 cassettes, 11 hours 35 minutes. ... Read more

Product Description
A stark tale encompassing the cruelty and beauty of the natural world, and a clear demonstration of the storytelling gift that would later flower in the Aubrey/Maturin series. When he was fourteen years old and beset by chronic ill health, Patrick O'Brian began creating his first fictional character. "I did it in my bedroom, and a little when I should have been doing my homework," he confessed in a note on the original dust-jacket. Caesar tells the picaresque, enchanting, and quite bloodthirsty story of a creature whose father is a giant panda and whose mother is a snow leopard. Through the eyes and voice of this fabulous creature, we learn of his life as a cub, his first hunting exploits, his first encounters with man, his capture and taming. Caesar was published in 1930, three months after O'Brian's fifteenth birthday, but the dry wit and unsentimental precision O'Brian readers savor in the Aubrey/Maturin series is already in evidence. The book combines Stephen Maturin's fascination and encyclopedic knowledge of natural history with the narrative charm of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. It was published in England and the United States, and in translation in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Japan. Reviews hailed the author as the "boy-Thoreau."Amazon.com Review
Acclaimed as the work of a "boy Thoreau," thisbrief, charming story of a mythical animal was published in 1930 whenPatrick O'Brian, who went on to write the celebrated Aubrey/Maturin seriesofhistorical sea novels, was just 15. With its detached,authoritative narrative voice, Caesar: The Life Story of aPanda-Leopard reads more like a novel for young adults than a bookwritten by one--though it is hard to imagine a grown-up writer includingso many vividly realized hunting scenes,culminating in spurting blood and gore. In the introduction to thisreprint of his juvenilia, O'Brian remembers being given a copy of "theReverend Mr. Wood's Natural History, a mid-nineteenth centuryedition illustrated with a fair number of engravings." Alreadysomething of a naturalist, the boy "devoured the book." It must havespurred his interest in predatory animals, for Caesardemonstrates exceptional knowledge of the environments and habits ofleopards and other large hunting cats of India and Asia. O'Brian'sodd, matter-of-fact tone also derives from books like the ReverendMr. Wood's, and provides much of the twisted pleasure to be found inCaesar. After his mother dies in a forest fire, thepanda-leopard is forced to teach himself the fine points of hunting. One day he spots a large herd of pigs, strangely unguarded by a boaror sounder pig. He approaches cautiously, then notices a tallcreature standing on two legs. Eventually his hungerovercomes him, and he snatches up a small pig, breaking its neck. "Unluckily the pig had time to squeal," writes the young O'Brian,

and this attracted the man who, with a cry, picked up astone. His arm went back and the stone flew towards melike a bird. It hit me on the nose and hurt me more thanthe bee sting which I had had when a cub. It hit me on thesame tender place which had never quite got better, and itangered me beyond words, and dropping the pig I charged,running low along the ground. Then I sprang straight at him.

Customer Reviews (2)

Caesar
This book follows the life of a panda leopard.At first, he's nameless, living with his brothers, sister, and mother in a cave.Later he's captured, put into a cage and domesticated.He learns first to live this kind of life.Then he learns to love his master.He comes to the point where his love for his master overcomes his reason.Caesar questions this, but comes back to the fact he does love his master and wouldn't think of disobeying or hurting him.The story also covers another part of his life where Caesar finds a mate and becomes a father.And all the trials and rewards this new life brings.The book basically documents the nature of nature.Right off the bat, the book is an account of nature, its vicious brutality, and its laws.How in nature, death is an everyday thing and its just part of nature. Caesar looses everything, his family, the family he brings into the world, and the family he makes when his master captures him.The story follows him through this all and his feelings towards this.The book offers no sympathy towards anything living as that is not the nature of nature.

A prodigy
Many children of fourteen have trouble reading, much less writing well enough to get published. It's a child's story, but already you get glimpes of Aubrey/Maturin.If you're a book collector--and even if you are not--get it for value, and of course for the sheer pleasure of reading whatis truly a well-told tale.The first sentence of the first page grabbed meand it never let go.Listen to this:

First you must understand that I ama panda-leopard.My father was a giant panda and my mother a snow-leopard.

And four sentences down the page:

The first thing to make any greatimpression on my mind was the killing of my sister.

I challenge anyone toput the book down after that. ... Read more

Product Description
unabridged book on 11 CDS ... Read more

Product Description
In January 2000, Patrick O'Brian died in the Westbury Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. Like his life, O'Brian's death was marked by secrecy and confusion, sharpening the curiosity of his many readers who for years have speculated about the man behind the beloved Aubery-Maturin series of novels.

Dean King at last unveils the story of Richard Patrick Russ, a writer and intellectual who emerged from the Second World War as Patrick O'Brian, a persona created by his imagination and refined over decades. To research this book, King crisscrossed Europe to speak to long-lost relatives, friends, and colleagues of his famously reclusive subject; now he has fashioned this wealth of information into a dramatic and compelling narrative. As King meticulously examines the events of O'Brian's life, he deepens and enriches our understanding and appreciation of O'Brian's work.
Amazon.com Review
Hailed as the Irish author of "the greatest historical novels everwritten"--the 20 swashbuckling Napoleonic-era adventures starring CaptainJack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin--Patrick O'Brian was not such a great guy.In fact, he wasn't really Patrick O'Brian: he was actually theEnglishman Richard Patrick Russ, who abandoned his semiliterate Welsh wifeand dying, spina bifida-plagued child in 1940 and reinvented himself as awriter and as a human being. He did well as a writer, winning kudos as abiographer (Picasso), translator(Papillon), and old literary sea lion. But he was less than humane,as Dean King's A Life Revealed reveals. The son of a rotten father,Russ/O'Brian became a rotten father himself, cutting off all contact withhis son, granddaughters, and even siblings. As he chillingly wrote inhis biography, "Parents are supposed to love their children, yet surelythere is the implied condition that the children should be reasonablylovable?" Though he was kinder to his second wife, the Countess MaryTolstoy, whose reckless driving injured both of them, he once wrote that Picassowas "sucked dry and rendered sterile by women, children, routine." For hispart, O'Brian preferred poverty and exile in Southern France with Mary--remote from his family origins, penning masterpieces in a house with booksbut no electricity or running water. Only in his 70s did he become rich and famous.

You can't deny the many striking parallels between O'Brian's life and hiswork--even though he did. Rotten fathers permeate his fiction, as thefathomless woe must have permeated him upon his mother's death from tuberculosisin 1918, when he was 4. It's great fun to read about his mad-inventorfather's machine to cure VD by electrocuting the bladder and compare itto Maturin's practice and devices--and to hear about the future author'ssalty Uncle Morse telling the lad about encounters with pirates. CaptainAubrey clearly derives partly from Patrick's sociable man-of-action brotherMike (who changed his surname to O'Brien, another family defector). And ofcourse Maturin proves to be in large part a self-portrait.

Fans of Aubrey and Maturin may find King's A Sea of Words (a lexiconof arcane terms that O'Brian uses) more delightful than his exposé of O'Brian'simpressive yet appalling life, but it is one thorough and convincingexposé. --Tim Appelo ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed
Good read if you are an Aubrey-Maturin Series fan.Author does the best he can with a man who was careful to guard the true facts about his life.Also, he provides a good synopsis of all of O'Brian's works (he could have provided a spolier alert in regard to some of the things he revealed about the Aubrey-Maturin Series so make sure you have completed the series before reading this book).

Scratches the surface, but not quite there
1 Star for thorough research
2 Stars for tying this together into a readable chronology of Parick O'Brian's life
3 Stars for adding value to my Patrick O'Brian reading experience

Surprise! (but not H.M.S.)
Jack Aubrey commanded H.M.S. Surprise, but this biography of Patrick O'Brian is a surprise in it's own right. Dean King has done an excellent job in his biography of the famous author, especially given the lengths to which O'Brian went to conceal his real background. I enjoyed the book very much, and although Tolstoy's competing biography of O'Brian claims that Dean King has made a lot of mistakes in his book, still it was King who opened up the truth about O'Brian.
Not to give the wrong impression, I am a real fan of O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books, and I consider him to be a wonderful author. His personal life is outside my judgment, and I was fascinated to follow his progress from humble beginnings to fame.

A Fine Biography
This is a fine biography of O'Brian, particularly in light of the problems faced by the author.In the first place, O'Brian attempted, at every turn, to suppress all knowledge of the facts of his early life.King was not, in short, an 'official' biographer who was presented with stacks of diaries and journals and invited to ask any question that might occur to him.Nevertheless, King was able to ground his narrative on a bedrock of serious scholarship and a first-hand awareness of his subject's work, ethos and experience.

It is said that a successful biography requires a degree of affection for the biographical subject, something that is complicated when that subject is, by turns, both secretive and irascible.The subject was also quite capable of utilizing his impressive erudition as a weapon, one that he could use as both a stiletto and a bludgeon.King is honest with regard to O'Brian's nature and shortcomings, but (without overlooking them) sees past them to O'Brian's significant strengths as a man and as a writer.Material success came relatively late, but O'Brian labored diligently, trusting in his monumental project and following his own lights.His tenacity and dedication make his eventual recognition all the more sweet and King charts the travails but also luxuriates, with O'Brian, in that ultimate recognition.The result is a narrative with a plot arc that one would expect to find in fiction, but here finds in real life.

I am not a fanatical O'Brian devotee and came to the book as a lover of good biographical writing.O'Brian fans, however, will relish the book as will students of biography.Ultimately it is very hard not to love a dedicated, talented individual whose tastes run to Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson and who feels utterly at home in the eighteenth century.

A Man and Himself
For those of you who always thought that the father of Aubrey & Maturin was an Irishman, this book is a disillusionment.
This is a pathfinding biography (the word 'revealed' in the subtitle is only partly appropriate) of Richard Patrick Russ. Patrick Russ was an Englishman of German descent ('Russ' indicates immigration from further East in earlier centuries, possibly re-immigration), born in London in 1914. Of all years.
He is best known for inventing Patrick O'Brian, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. These 3 men somehow played or replayed different aspects of Russ's real life. To what extent is not fully disclosed yet.
Russ had changed his name to O'Brian in 45. When King wrote the first version of this book, O'Brian was still alive. He did not cooperate. King did not have the access to authentic sources that the second biographer, O'Brian's stepson, was going to have later. I have not read that second biography yet, so I can't talk about that.
The subject is as fascinating as a volume of the famous series of 'historical' novels. Russ seems to have been less than a perfect family man and friend, to put it mildly. The discrepancy to the morality in his novels' heroes is strong, but would we call somebody a hypocrite whose fictional creations follow standards that their creator had failed to meet? A question that King raises in his introduction.
Required reading for all who want to understand better where it all came from.
And since the book is out of print, I expect a properly updated version to show up sooner or later. ... Read more

Product Description
Police sergeant Tim Packard is a man known for getting things done. When a new police chief is appointed, Packard heads up a new task force designed to cut down recent drug trafficking in a Central Indiana city.

The attention of his new task force is quickly diverted, however, when a group of terrorists invades his city. Wreaking havoc, the terrorists set out to randomly murder citizens, poison the water supply, and blow up key buildings.

When Packard discovers one of the terrorists might have a link to one of his officers, things only grow worse. Forced to decide where to place his loyalty, and whom to trust, the sergeant realizes the fate of his city rests almost entirely on his shoulders.

Not a man who plays by the rules, Packard puts the safety of others and his reputation ahead of everything else. He and his men do whatever it takes to bring criminals to justice, and decide to use their own brand of justice against the terrorists.

Outgunned, outnumbered, and seemingly one step behind the terrorists at all times, the task force members use their knowledge of their city, investigative experience, and a few dirty tricks to track their new enemies.

Unsure of whom to trust, Packard ultimately withdraws himself from a group of emergency personnel formed to stop the terrorists, much to the dismay of his superiors. Deciding to place complete trust in his own group, and his knack for getting jobs done, he risks everything to save the city in which he has lived his entire life.

Should he fail, thousands could die, and if he succeeds, it may be at the cost of his own career.

Product Description
Firefighter Paul Clouse is the prime suspect when his wife of six years is brutally murdered on Halloween night. Working to restore the West Baden Springs Hotel, Clouse soon learns his friends, and the historic hotel, are targeted by a murderer disguised as the grim reaper. The horrific discovery that the killer may be someone close to him sends Clouse on a desperate search to discover the killer's identity and motive before all of his friends and family become victims. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Grim Reaper Stalks the Dome
Reaper is a terrific book. I purchased this mystery when we visited West Baden's Dome Hotel during Christmas vacation to see the Christmas tree and laser lights in the atirum. The hotel is magnificent. Since I live 15 miles from West Baden and enjoy Indiana history, I bought the book to see how O'Brian had incorporated the legends of the area and the hotel into his writing.

I really enjoyed reading the book. His descriptions of the rennovation, the gardens, the hotel tours, the past history of the area, Jesuit priests, angel paintings, cemetery, and the glory years are well done and for the most part historically accurate. He has added a fictional character admist the historically accurate fiction, but readers familiar with the history of the cemetery will figure out who really never lived here. It does add to the suspense and mystery of the book.

The writer has created characters that seem true to live and that you really care about. One of my favorite parts of the book is knowing that I don't have to really "give up" the character at the end of this novel as he will be a main character in three more books. O'Brian has also done a wonderful job of capturing the small town charm and loyalty of some of the local people who will do anything to help someone whom they like. Mystery books are my favorite genre and this one won't disappoint you. I am eagerly anticipating reading the next three books in the series.

brilliant
i live in england and was recommended this book by a friend in the states. I was not able to buy it in the shops so bought it from amazon. The book is brilliant, the story is really gripping,
It makes you feel as if you are there with the characters wanting to help them solve the crime. The writing is excellent and im so glad that i bought the book ... Read more