The author hits just the right note in this non-formulaic story, so much so I am convinced he is a time traveler! No single protagonist, but a crew, all written from the inside out This third of Alaric Bond's The Coastal Forces Series (World War II maritime fiction) is gritty, sometimes wry, in a very believable way. Sometimes you don't even realize you've been hit, until you turn the page.
1942, and America has entered the war against Germany yet, for those manning the powerful, but vulnerable, gunboats of Britain’s Coastal Forces, victory remains a long way over the horizon.
Though faster than most conventional warships, the light wooden craft can be destroyed by a single, well-placed shell. Their nighttime mid-Channel meetings with the German Kriegsmarine are brisk and brutal, with success often measured by whoever stays afloat, although daytime brings a more normal life for their volunteer crews.
These are men new to the sea, and new to a world filled with extreme danger and ruthless contrasts. A world…
I write, read, and study nautical history. Having read the historical account by Bulkeley and Cummins (Gunner and Carpenter of Wager) titled A Voyage to the South Seas in His Majesty's Ship The Wager in the Years 1740-1741, I was pleased to read David Grann's The Wager, a highly visible, well-promoted popular history of that same mutiny, shipwreck, and survival story. It is said, 'A rising tide raises all ships,' so I hope Grann's success helps all of us who write maritime history and historical nautical fiction stay afloat and not run aground for lack of awareness.
'The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail... one of the finest nonfiction books I've ever read' Guardian
'The greatest sea story ever told' Spectator
'A cracking yarn... Grann's taste for desperate predicaments finds its fullest expression here' Observer
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER
From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the…
Stories with a sense of time, place, and character, written by someone who has a deep connection to that time and place, and who understands human nature -- that's my favorite fiction.
“Tender, riveting, and inventive is Clear, the newest offering and masterpiece from the brilliant Carys Davies. It will take your breath away…What a thrill.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
One of Vogue’s Best Books of the Year
Winner of the 2024 Bookmark Festival Book of Year Shortlisted for the 2024 Books Are My Bag and Award Longlisted for the 2024 Saltire Society Literary Award and the Historical Writers' Association Crown Award
A “daring and necessary…sophisticated and playful” (The New York Times) novel from an award-winning writer, Clear is the story of a minister dispatched to a remote island to “clear” its last…
Portsmouth, England,1760. Patricia Kelley, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Barbadian sugarcane planter, falls from her imagined place in the world when her absent father unexpectedly dies. Raised in a Wiltshire boarding school sixteen-year-old Patricia embarks on a desperate crossing on a merchantman bound for Barbados, where she was born, in a brash attempt to claim an unlikely inheritance. Aboard a merchantman under contract with the British Navy to deliver gunpowder to the West Indian forts, young Patricia finds herself pulled between two worlds -- and two identities -- as she charts her own course for survival in the war-torn 18th century.
