"For nearly three years, Thorgrim Night Wolf has fought his way across Ireland, Engla-land, and Frisia, seeking riches and battling to keep him and his men alive. Through all that hardship, his foremost thought has been to return to his farm in Norway and to give up the life of a raider. With word that his eldest son Odd is fighting for his life against King Halfdan the Black, Thorgrim is more desperate than ever to return home. With Norway just beyond the horizon, Thorgrim, Harald, and the rest must still contest every mile, thanks to the Norns who weave men's fates, and the many enemies who lie in wait.
For Odd, too, fate has nearly run its course. Determined to finally crush him and the rebellion he's led, and frightened by rumors of the Night Wolf's return, King Halfdan has gathered his kingdom's best warriors. Now, he vows to lead them into battle, to destroy Odd, crush Thorgrim, and settle the matter of the kingdom's rule in one last fight to the death."
"With the Spanish Empire brutally driving the buccaneers from their hunting grounds, the half-wild men must look for a new refuge in the West Indies. They find it just a few miles off the northwest coast of Hispaniola: the island of Tortuga.
Rugged, sparsely settled, but poised on the edge of Spain's trade routes, Tortuga is an ideal base for the outcast hunters. Among them is the hulking, enigmatic Jean-Baptiste LeBoeuf, now a reluctant leader of the buccaneers. But LeBoeuf's interest in Tortuga involves more than simply escaping the Spanish Empire. Ownership of a plantation on the island has fallen into his hands, and it is his dream, his vision, to lay claim to that property and put an end to his savage and nomadic life.
But once again Spain stands in his way, as a powerful fleet sent from Seville comes to route the buccaneers from their latest foothold. Among the expedition's leaders is Don Alonso Menéndez, lieutenant governor of the West Indies, who has designs of his own for the island and the land LeBoeuf intends to claim. Now the two men will battle for the beautiful Henriette and the hundred acres of paradise that is the Tortuga plantation."
"Thorgrim Night Wolf and his men, hunkered down behind their ad hoc defenses and facing off against the powerful army of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, must find some means to continue their voyage home. But Æthelwulf, too, is trapped, unable to set sail on his pilgrimage to Rome while the powerful fleet of Northmen remains at his doorstep. It's only when the enigmatic Felix proposes a solution, acceptable to both sides, that the impasse is broken. It is a solution that will take them across the narrow seas that separate England from Frankia, one that will take Thorgrim and Louis de Roumois that much closer to their homes, and into even greater danger on the other side.
As Thorgrim fights for his survival, his son Odd, leader of the nascent rebellion against Halfdan the Black, takes his first tentative steps out of hiding. Odd and his brothers-in-arms, still outlaws and wanted men, must gauge the threat that awaits them as they make their secret way toward their former homes. The truth, however, is soon revealed; Halfdan's fury has not abated, and he and his men will stop at nothing to run Odd to earth and crush him and his rebellion once and for all."
"Acclaimed, award-winning author James L. Nelson—praised as “a master of both his period and the English language” by Patrick O’Brian—returns to the world of sea and sail in The French Prize.
Jack Biddlecomb has much to live up to, being as he is the eldest son of the esteemed Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, wealthy merchant captain, leading light of the War for American Independence, and newly minted congressman. Jack finds himself off to a promising start, however, when he’s given command of the merchant vessel Abigail bound from Philadelphia for Barbados.
But even before the dock lines are cast off, the voyage, which should have been routine, begins to look like a stormy passage indeed. Jack is saddled with two passengers, one as unpleasant as he is highborn, the other a confidant of the Abigail’s owner who cannot help meddling in the running of the ship. What’s more, with the French making prizes of American merchantmen, Abigail’s owner has armed the ship and instructed Jack to fight if need be, thrusting the first-time captain and his small crew into a naval war for which they are totally unprepared.
What Jack does not know, but soon begins to suspect, is that he is being used as part of a bigger plot, one that will have repercussions on an international scale."
"Fed up with an outlaw existence, Calico Jack Rackam swears off the pirate life, but he hasn’t reckoned with Anne Bonny, a woman who would as soon stab a man as give him a good tumble—that is, unless he’s a pirate.
Soon Jack finds himself out on the high seas again, with Anne by his side and his men spoiling for action. And when they capture a Dutch merchant ship, they pick up an unlikely crewmate as well, an expert sword fighter and topmast seaman who has a secret: he just happens to be a woman named Mary.
Together Jack, Anne, and Mary cut a bold swath through the West Indies, stealing naval sloops, plundering rich merchant ships, and choosing to live a life of freedom—the only life that mattered."
"More than one hundred years after Columbus blundered onto Hispaniola, the West Indies are held in Spain's iron fist, and no threat to that absolute rule is tolerated. But such total control cannot last, not with the riches of an empire at stake, and French, English, and Dutch all struggle to pry open the Spanish grip. But one threat will emerge as the most dangerous of all: the buccaneers.
Camped on the shore of Hispaniola, these half-wild men eke out a living hunting the island's feral livestock. Among them, Jean-Baptiste LeBoeuf—hulking, silent, deadly with musket and blade—lives out his exile, content that no one in the hunters' camp is at all curious about his past. But when a deadly hurricane sweeps through the Caribbean, it upends the buccaneers' rough existence. And it leaves in its wake opportunity as well, a chance for a new life for LeBoeuf and his fellow hunters. This stroke of luck, however, is not all it seems, and when even greater violence is visited upon them they find themselves locked in battle with some of the most powerful and ruthless men in the Spanish Empire."
"Thorgrim Night Wolf, now somewhere on the south coast of Engla-land, may be closer to his goal of returning home than he has been since reaching Ireland years before, but he is still very, very far away. His son Harald, however, has ambitions beyond just getting home. Given command of one of the ships in the fleet, Harald sees a chance to put his courage on display, unleashing consequences that will lead Thorgrim into a fight against the powerful armies of Wessex, a fight he does not want.
As Thorgrim struggles to keep his men alive, his eldest son Odd leads the resistance to King Halfdan's ruthless attempts to expand his rule over Norway. When a plan to bring Halfdan to heel goes terribly wrong, Odd alone is taken prisoner, and brutally punished as an example to those who would defy their king. But Halfdan's brutality does not cow the freemen: rather it stokes their anger into a red-hot rage that only freeing Odd and extracting further vengeance can cool."
"With their longships storm-blown to the southern coast of Engla-land, Thorgrim Night Wolf and his men find themselves rich with plunder and safely ensconced in a priory called Christchurch. But that cannot last. Thorgrim, in a wolf dream, has seen the enemy armies closing in, and he knows that their peace will soon be at an end. The gods do not go so easy on him and his men. He has learned that through experience and hard use. Nor are the gods the only threat they face. As Nothwulf, brother of the murdered ealdorman of Dorset, and Cynewise, his sister-in-law, fight for rule of the shire, each seeks to make the raiders unwitting pawns in their game, maneuvering toward a final battle that each hopes will spell the end of the other and crush the Norse strangers who have invaded their shores."
"Summer comes to Ireland and an uneasy peace holds at Loch Garman. The Northmen, eager to get to sea, work relentlessly on their ships, with the aid of their unlikely allies, the Irish, who are just as eager to see them go. But not everyone is willing to just let them sail away. Certain that God demands the heathens be punished, the one-eyed warrior-turned-monk Brother Bécc is determined that Thorgrim and his men will not simply go free. And when another band of raiders arrives, Bécc finds the excuse he needs to take action.
Meanwhile, in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, murder leads to a violent struggle for the seat of ealdorman, ruler of the shire of Dorset. Desperate as each side is to tip the balance of power their way, no one imagines that the upper hand might come from the direction they least expect—from the sea."
"Driven ashore on the coast of Ireland, their longships nearly wrecked by the gods who seem unwilling to let them leave, Thorgrim Night Wolf and his band of Northmen once again face a fight for their survival. Helpless without their ships, they must find some refuge in that hostile country and begin the laborious work of making the vessels seaworthy again. But for all the shipbuilding skills that Thorgrim and the others possess, there is one thing they cannot do—weave cloth to replace the sails shredded in the gale that drove them ashore. For that they must strike a bargain with the Irish, the very people who most want them dead. But no such bargain can last for long, and soon betrayal and deceit have the Northmen trapped by an enemy determined to crush them once and for all."
"After the treachery and slaughter they met during the raid on Glendalough, Thorgrim Night Wolf and his small band of surviving Northmen have returned to Vík-ló, where Thorgrim again sits as lord of the Viking longphort. But the Northmen are a restless lot, and soon they find themselves eager to put to sea. Loading weapons and supplies aboard the four longships under Thorgrim's command, they set out in search of the rich merchant ships that now ply Irish waters. But not all cargoes are the same, nor all merchant captains easy targets for the Norse raiders. Crossing wakes with a Frisian shipmaster who could be Thorgrim's equal in seamanship and cunning, the Northmen soon find themselves seeking vengeance even as they fight to keep from a watery grave."
"With their ill-fated raid on the monastary at Glendalough torn apart by betrayal and defeat, Thorgrim Night Wolf and his handful of survivors from the crew of Sea Hammer find themselves in desperate and tenuous straits. Stranded far from the safety of Vík-ló, surrounded by enemies, and with barely enough men to work the longship's oars, the Norsemen must make their way back through a dangerous and uncertain country. Thorgrim, however, is not interested in mere survival. His one thought, his one desire, is to take revenge on those whose treachery led to the slaughter of so many of his men. Assembling an ad hoc army of unlikely allies, Thorgrim leads his warriors to a final showdown that can end only in his enemies' death or his own."
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