Audiobooks by Patrick O'Brian

Beasts Royal is the second book written by Patrick O'Brian - made available, at last, for the first time since the 1930s and beautifully repackaged.Published when Patrick O'Brian was just nineteen, this is the enchanting, often bloodthirsty collection of twelve tales of animal adventure that would be published in 1934 as the author's second book. His first, Caesar, had been published in 1930 and was an instant success, seeing O'Brian hailed as the 'boy-Thoreau'. As with Caesar, Beasts Royal sheds fascinating light on the formation of the literary genius behind the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical adventure tales.With the dry wit and unsentimental precision O'Brian would come to be loved for, we see the tragedies of ...

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

No Pirates Nowadays and Other Stories

3 previously unpublished short stories by the great Patrick O'Brian - Noughts and Crosses, Two's Company and No Pirates Nowadays.Noughts and Crosses:When Sullivan and Ross decide to go shark fishing among the atolls of the Great Barrier Reef little do they know what awaits them. With their schooner beached for cleaning they take a small whaler out to sea, but when the very devil of a storm turns the whole of the sea white, it drives them to the nearest atoll for shelter. It is only when they set out once again that they discover the seas are now filled with sharks, driven to a bloodlust by the smell of their butchered fellows that clings to the whaler. Becalmed and surrounded by the world's most fearsome predators, Sullivan and Ross discover that the hunters have become the hunted.Two's Company:The lighthouse was one of the most lonely in the world, guarding a dangerous reef in the cold northern seas. It therefore seemed a good idea to Sullivan and Ross that they both be its keepers; after all, two's company. But long months of isolation and boredom can test even the stoutest of friendships. So when a great storm deposits the carcass of a huge whale on the rocks, attracting to it flocks of hungry seabirds and packs of deadly sharks, and later the arrival of two unexpected guests, it provides the two friends with a welcome distraction from their tedium. Yet as the months drag on, they find that there is only so long that man can live in peace with his fellow.No Pirates Nowadays:As their schooner inches through the dense yellow fog of the northern Pacific, Ross is beginning to regret agreeing to Sullivan's latest plan. Their search for the island of Sakhalien, to hunt for precious sea-otters, is leading them nowhere. The appearance of a fellow ship should be cause to lift their mood, yet the captain and swarthy Malay crew of the Santa Maria leave Ross feeling all the more uneasy. But when their paths cross once again it is Sullivan's nephew, Derrick, who has good cause to doubt that there are no pirates nowadays.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Final, Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

At the time of his death, Patrick O'Brian had begun to write a novel to follow on from Blue at the Mizzen. These are the chapters he had completed of the final voyage that have been recorded for the audiobook of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin - the greatest friendship of modern literatureThe story picks up from the end of Blue at the Mizzen when Jack Aubrey receives the news, in Chile, of his elevation to flag rank: Rear Admiral of the Blue Squadron, with orders to sail to the South Africa station. This new novel, unfinished and untitled at the time of O'Brian's death, would have been a chronicle of that mission, and much else besides.As the novel opens, we are able to visit these friends we have followed so very far in a rare state of almost perfect felicity. Jack has seen his illegitimate son ably discharging important duties. Sophie and his daughters are with him; Brigid is with her father, she's thriving, and Stephen is with a woman who is very dear to him. Jack, at last, is flying a rear-admiral's flag aboard a ship of the line.The chapters left on O'Brian's death are presented here both in printed version - including his corrections to the typescript - and a facsimilie of his manuscript, which goes several pages beyond the end of the typescript and includes marginal notes by O'Brian.And so this great 'roman fleuve' comes to an end with Jack, with his 'sacred blue flag', sailing through fair, sweet days - Stephen with his dissections and new love, Killick muttering darkly over the toasted cheese... Of course, we would rather have had the whole story; instead we have this proof that O'Brian's powers of observation, his humour and his understanding of his characters were undiminished to the end.'There is nothing in this century that rivals Patrick O'Brian's achievement in his chosen genre. His novels embrace with loving clarity the full richness of the 18th-century world. They embody the cruelty of battle, the comedy of men's lives, the uncertain fears that plague their hearts; and yet, not far away, is the vision of an ideal existence.' Amanda Foreman, New York Times

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Unknown Shore

Best-selling author Patrick O'Brian turns to Commodore Anson's famous 1740 voyage for this rich tale of exploration and adventure. In The Unknown Shore, the inspiration for and immediate precursor to the acclaimed and immensely popular Aubrey/Maturin series, O'Brian's splendid prose and enthralling attention to detail launches listeners-spellbound-into the Age of Discovery.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Patrick Tull (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Yellow Admiral

Life ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey in The Yellow Admiral, Patrick O'Brian's best-selling novel and eighteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Aubrey, now a considerable though impoverished landowner, has dimmed his prospects at the Admiralty by his erratic voting as a Member of Parliament; he is feuding with his neighbor, a man with strong Navy connections who wants to enclose the common land between their estates; he is on even worse terms with his wife, Sophie, whose mother has ferreted out a most damaging trove of old personal letters. Even Jack's exploits at sea turn sour: in the storm waters off Brest he captures a French privateer laden with gold and ivory, but this at the expense of missing a signal and deserting his post. Worst of all, in the spring of 1814, peace breaks out, and this feeds into Jack's private fears for his career. Fortunately, Jack is not left to his own devices. Stephen Maturin returns from a mission in France with the news that the Chileans, to secure their independence, require a navy, and the service of English officers. Jack is savoring this apparent reprieve for his career, as well as Sophie's forgiveness, when he receives an urgent dispatch ordering him to Gibraltar: Napoleon has escaped from Elba.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Patrick Tull (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Wine-Dark Sea

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. This is the sixteenth Aubrey-Maturin maritime novel.At the opening of a voyage filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are in pursuit of a privateer sailing under American colours through the Great South Sea. Stephen's objective is to set the revolutionary tinder of South America ablaze to relieve the pressure on the British government which has blundered into war with the young and uncomfortably vigorous United States. The shock and barbarity of hand-to-hand fighting are sharpened by O'Brian's exact sense of period, his eye for landscape and his feel for a ship under sail.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Far Side of the World

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written.It is still the War of 1812. Patrick O'Brian takes his hero Jack Aubrey and his tetchy, sardonic friend Stephen Maturin on a voyage as fascinating as anything he has ever written. They set course across the South Atlantic to intercept a powerful American frigate outward bound to play havoc with the British whaling trade.If they do not come up with her before she rounds the Horn, they must follow her into the Great South Sea and as far across the Pacific as she may lead them. It is a commission after Jack's own heart. Maturin has fish of his own to fry in the world of secret intelligence.Aubrey has to cope with a succession of disasters - men overboard, castaways, encounters with savages, storms, typhoons, groundings, shipwrecks, to say nothing of murder and criminal insanity. That the enemy is in fact faithfully dealt with, no one who has the honour of Captain Aubrey's acquaintance can take leave to doubt.

Patrick O'Brian, Patrick O’brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

Master and Commander

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales now are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written.Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O'Brian's now famous Aubrey/Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. It establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship's surgeon and an intelligence agent. It contains all the action and excitement which could possibly be hoped for in a historical novel, but it also displays the qualities which have put O'Brian far ahead of any of his competitors: his depiction of the detail of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war, of weapons, food, conversation and ambience, of the landscape and of the sea. O'Brian's portrayal of each of these is faultless and the sense of period throughout is acute. His power of characterisation is above all masterly.This brilliant historical novel marked the début of a writer who has grown into one of the most remarkable literary novelists now writing, the author of what Alan Judd, writing in the Sunday Times, has described as 'the most significant extended story since Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time'.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Mauritius Command

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are now widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written.Captain Jack Aubrey is ashore on half-pay without a command - until his friend, and occasional intelligence agent, Stephen Maturin, arrives with secret orders for Aubrey to take a frigate to the Cape of Good Hope, under a Commodore's pennant. But the difficulties of carrying out his orders are compounded by two of his own captains - Lord Clonfert, a pleasure-seeking dilettante, and Captain Corbett, whose severity can push his crews to the verge of mutiny.Based on the actual campaign of 1810 in the Indian Ocean, O'Brian's attention to detail of eighteenth-century life ashore and at sea is meticulous. This tale is as beautifully written and as gripping as any in the series; it also stands on its own as a superlative work of fiction.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Yellow Admiral

The Yellow Admiral - the eighteenth novel in the sequence hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written - sets the fall and rise of Jack Aubrey in brilliant counterpoint to the fall and rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.Life ashore may once again be the undoing of Jack Aubrey. Even Jack's exploits at sea turn sour in the storm waters off Brest. Worst of all, in the spring of 1814 peace breaks out. But Stephen Maturin returns from a mission in France with news that the Chileans require the service of English officers. Jack is savouring this reprieve for his career when he receives an urgent despatch ordering him to Gibraltar: Napoleon has escaped from Elba.

Patrick O'Brian, Patrick O’brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

Post Captain

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written.Patrick O'Brian is regarded by many as the greatest historical novelist now writing. Post Captain, the second novel in his remarkable Aubrey/Maturin series, led Mary Renault to write: 'Master and Commander raised dangerously high expectations; Post Captain triumphantly surpasses them.'This tale begins with Jack Aubrey arriving home from his exploits in the Mediterranean to find England at peace following the Treaty of Amiens. He and his friend Stephen Maturin, surgeon and secret agent, begin to live the lives of country gentlemen, hunting, entertaining and enjoying more amorous adventures. Their comfortable existence, however, is cut short when Jack is overnight reduced to a pauper with enough debts to keep him in prison for life. He flees to the continent to seek refuge: instead he finds himself a hunted fugitive as Napoleon has ordered the internment of all Englishmen in France. Aubrey's adventures in escaping from France and the debtors' prison will grip the reader as fast as his unequalled actions at sea.

Patrick O'Brian, Patrick O’brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook

HMS Surprise

"Lucky" Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin accept a commission to the East Indies in this tale of Nelson's navy.H.M.S. Surprise follows the variable fortunes of Captain Jack Aubrey's career in Nelson's navy as he attempts to hold his ground against admirals, colleagues and the enemy, accepting a mission to convey a British ambassador to the East Indies. The voyage takes him and his friend Stephen Maturin to the strange sights and smells of the Indian sub-continent, and through the archipelago of spice islands where the French have a near-overwhelming superiority.Rarely has a novel managed to convey more vividly the fragility of a sailing ship in a wild sea. Rarely has a historical novelist combined action and lyricism of style in the way that O' Brian does. His superb sense of place, brilliant characterisation, and a vigour and joy of writing lift O'Brian above any but the most exalted of comparisons.

Patrick O'Brian (Author), Robert Hardy (Narrator)

Audiobook