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Audiobooks by George MacDonald Fraser
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Scottish author George MacDonald Fraser was famed for his legendary Flashman series, featuring the incorrigible knave Harry Flashman, a soldier in the imperial British army. In the colorful standalone Captain in Calico, the first novel he ever wrote but which has never been published, Fraser introduces another real-life anti-hero: Captain John Rackham, called Calico Jack, an illustrious eighteenth-century pirate who marauded the Caribbean seas. On a tranquil evening in the Bahamas, Calico Jack, long wanted on counts of piracy, makes a surprise appearance at the Governors residence and asks for a pardon for himself and his men. A deal is brokered after Jack reveals the motive for turning himself in: love. When Jack last set sail from the Bahamas two years ago, he left behind a beautiful fiance acute, and he recently learned that she remains unmarried. What the governor does not reveal to Jack is that while he was off pirating, his beloved has become betrothed to a new man the governor himself. It doesn't take long for this truth to come to light, and after embarking on a new romance with famous Irish pirate Anne Bonney, Jack is quickly transformed back into a thieving captain in calico.
In the spirit of Flashman and in the inimitable George MacDonald Fraser style comes a rousing story of prize fighting in the 19th century. Reissued in a stunning new package, Black Ajax will attract a new generation of fans.
When Captain Buck Flashman sees the black boxer catch a fly in mid-flight he realizes that he is in the presence of speed such as the prize ring has never seen. Tom Molineaux may be crude and untutored, but if 'Mad Buck' knows anything (and like his notorious son, the archcad Harry Flashman, he has an unerring eye for the main chance), this ex-slave from America is a Champion in the making, on whose broad shoulders the ambitious Captain can climb to sporting and social fame. Under his patronage, the 'Black Ajax' is carried on a popular tide of sporting fever to his great dream: to fight the invincible, undefeated Champion of England, the great Tom Cribb.
The story of Molineaux and his eventual battles with Cribb is told through a series of superbly original and individual voices - colourful, powerful and funny. Together they create a magnificent picture of Regency England and a portrait of a flawed hero who surmounted the barriers of ignorance, poverty and race hatred to bring the prize ring a lustre it had never known before, and may never again.
This is a beautiful, moving tale from the bestselling author of the 'Flashman Papers'.To the young Lady Margaret Dacre, raised in the rich security of Queen Elizabeth's court, the Scottish border was a land of blood and brutal violence, where raid and murder were commonplace, and her broad inheritance lay at the mercy of the outlaw riders and feuding tribes of England's last frontier. Beyond the law's protection, alone but for her house servants and an elderly priest, she could wait helpless in her lonely manor, or somehow find the means to fight the terror approaching from the northern night!
The first unpublished novel from the historical fiction legend, George Macdonald Fraser, featuring the unscrupulous and brilliantly entertaining pirate, Calico Jack Rackham.
New Providence, 1720s. When infamous pirate Captain 'Calico' Jack Rackham returns from the high seas to ask Governor Woodes Rogers for a royal pardon, the Governor sees his chance to put his own devious plans into action.
Their agreement sets off an adventure of betrayals, counter-betrayals, plots and escapes that see Rackham join forces with the scheming but seductively beautiful pirate, Anne Bonney.
Captain in Calico is a wonderfully spirited and entertaining novel, which will delight fans of George MacDonald Fraser. The unscrupulous Captain Rackham is pure pleasure, and shows the author's early penchant - and flair - for writing scoundrels of the highest order.
Repackaged to tie-in with hardback publication of 'The Reavers' and to appeal to a new generation of George MacDonald Fraser fans, 'Mr American' is a swashbuckling romp of a novel.Mark Franklin came from the American West to Edwardian England with two long-barrelled .44s in his baggage and a fortune in silver in the bank. Where he had got it and what he was looking for no one could guess, although they wondered - at Scotland Yard, in City offices, in the glittering theatreland of the West End, in the highest circles of Society (even King Edward was puzzled) and in the humble pub at Castle Lancing. Tall dark and dangerous, soft spoken and alone, with London at his feet and a dark shadow in his past, he was a mystery to all of them, rustics and royalty, squires and suffragettes, the women who loved him and the men who feared and hated him. He came from a far frontier in another world, yet he was by no means a stranger... even old General Flashman, who knew men and mischief better than most, never guessed the whole truth about "Mr American".
Now available in ebook format, 'The Pyrates' is a swashbuckling romp of a novel.
The Pyrates is all the swashbucklers that ever were, rolled into one great Technicoloured pantomime - tall ships and desert islands, impossibly gallant adventurers and glamorous heroines, buried treasure and Black Spots, devilish Dons and ghastly dungeons, plots, duels, escapes, savage rituals, tender romance and steaming passion, all to the accompaniment of ringing steel, thunderous broadsides, sweeping film music, and the sound of cursing extras falling in the water and exchanging period dialogue. Even Hollywood buccaneers were never like this.
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.
Many have marvelled at General Napier's daring 1868 expedition through the treacherous peaks and bottomless chasms of Abyssinia to rescue a small group of British citizens held captive by the mad tyrant Emperor Theodore. But the vital role of Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., in the success of this campaign has hitherto gone unrecorded.
Flashman's undeserved reputation for heroism renders him the British Army's candidate of choice when it comes to skulking behind enemy lines in Ali Baba attire. After all, who but the great amorist could contemplate navigating a land populated by hostile tribes and the loveliest (and most savage) women in Africa, from leather-clad nymphs with a penchant for torture to a voluptuous barbarian queen with a reputation for throwing disobliging guests to her pet lions?
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.
In addition to the other famous adventures come three episodes in the career of this eminent if disreputable adventurer.
Plumbing the depths of dishonour, Flashman's up
to his old tricks again. Whether embroiled in a
plot to assassinate Emperor Franz-Josef, saving the
Prince of Wales from scandal, or being chased by a
horde of Zulus, Harry Flashman never disappoints.
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.
'When all other trusts fail, turn to Flashman' Abraham Lincoln
In China in 1860, a lot of people mistakenly put their trust in Flashman: the English vicar's daughter with her cargo of opium; Lord Elgin in search of an intelligence chief; the Emperor's ravishing concubine, seeking a champion in her struggles for power; and Szu-Zhan, the female bandit colossus, as practised in the arts of love as in the arts of war.
They were not to know that behind his Victoria Cross, Harry Flashman was a base coward and a charlatan. They took him at face value. And he took them, for all he could, while China seethed through the bloodiest civil war in history and the British and French armies hacked their way to the heart of the Forbidden City...
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.
If only Flashman had got on with his dinner and ignored the handkerchief dropped by a flirtatious hussy in a Calcutta hotel ... Well, American history would have been different, a disastrous civil war might have been avoided, and Flashman himself would have been spared one of the most hair-raising adventures of his misspent life.
If only ... But, alas, the arch-rotter of the Victorian age could never resist the lure of a pretty foot. This latest extract of the Flashman Papers soon finds Flashman careering towards the little Virginian town of Harper's Ferry, where John Brown and his gang of rugged fanatics were to fire the first shot in the great war against slavery.
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.
What caused the Indian Mutiny? The greased cartridge, religious fanaticism, political blundering, yes - but one hitherto unsuspected factor is now revealed to be the furtive figure who fled across India in 1857 with such frantic haste: Flashman.
Plumbing new depths of anxious knavery in his role as secret agent extraordinaire, Flashman saw far more of the Great Mutiny than he wanted. How he survived Thugs and Tsarist agents, Eastern beauties and cabinet ministers and kept his skin intact is a mystery revealed here in this volume of The Flashman Papers.
Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all.Celebrated Victorian bounder, cad, and lecher, Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., returns to play his (reluctant) part in the charge of the Light Brigade in this of the critically acclaimed Flashman Papers.As the British cavalry prepared to launch themselves against the Russian guns at Balaclava, Harry Flashman was petrified.But the Crimea was only the beginning: beyond lay the snowbound wastes of the great Russian slave empire, torture and death, headlong escapes from relentless enemies, savage tribal hordes to the right of him, passionate females to the left of him...Then, finally, that unknown but desperate war on the roof of the world, when India was the prize, and there was nothing to stop the armed might of Imperial Russia but the wavering sabre and terrified ingenuity of old Flashman himself.
