The Nathan Peake Novels
1 primary work • 8 total works
Book 1
In the Time of Terror, friends turn against friends, patriots are betrayed, and lovers must pay the ultimate price.1793: British navy commander Nathan Peake patrols the English coast, looking for smugglers. Desperate for some real action, Peake gets his chance when France declares war on England and descends into the bloody madness of the Terror. Peake is entrusted with a mission to wreck the French economy by smuggling fake banknotes into Paris. His activities take him down Paris streets patrolled by violent mobs and into the sinister catacombs beneath the French capital. As opposition to the Terror mounts, Peake fights to carry out his mission—and to save the life of the woman he loves.
1794: as war rips through the Caribbean, newly promoted Captain Nathan Peake is despatched to take command of the British navy's latest frigate, the Unicorn, after her previous captain has washed up in New Orleans with his throat cut. Meanwhile, the revolutionary authorities in Paris have sent the best frigate in the French fleet, the Virginie, on a secret mission to spread war, rebellion and mayhem from Cuba and Haiti to Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta. While the Unicorn embarks on her epic duel with the Birginie, Nathan confronts the seductive charms of savine Deltour, alias Adedike, witch queen of the Army of Lucumi.
Captain Nathan Peake survives a ferocious battle on the treacherous seas off Brittany, only to be cast into the even more dangerous waters of post-Revolutionary Paris. There he encounters two of the most beautiful and scandalous courtesans in history - and an ambitious Corsican adventurer otherwise known as Napoleone Buonaparte. Nathan is sent to join another young glory-seeker, Captain Horatio Nelson, in a bid to wreck Buonaparte's plans for the invasion of Italy. But Nathan has his own private agenda - to find love amid the chaos of war.
The Mouth of the Nile, 9th August, 1798: Admiral Nelson has sent Captain Nathan Peake on a desperate journey across the Middle East to convey a grim warning to British India. Bonaparte's army is poised to deliver a fatal blow to the source of Britain's wealth and power by marching overland to India. Arriving in Bombay, Nathan takes command of the East India Company's naval wing - the Bombay Marine - an under-armed and poorly crewed flotilla of sloops and gunboats. With these meager resources he must stop the flow of French supplies to their Indian ally and protect the Company's trade from the pirates and privateers swarming in the Bay of Bengal. But when Nathan discovers the truth behind the East India Company's honourable facade he confronts some tough personal choices.
1796: Nathan Peake, captain of the frigate Unicorn is sent into the troubled waters of the Adriatic. His mission: to scourge the sea of pirates and turn the Serene Republic of Venice against Revolutionary France. But Nathan is soon drawn into a much more sinister web. At its heart two of the most feared women of the age: Emma Hamilton, the courtesan turned courtier, and the nun Caterina Caresini, uncrowned queen of Venice. And most feared of all, the mysterious agent of the Three Inquisitors, known as Il Diavolo, the Devil. As Nathan confronts the politics of 'intrigue, poison and the stiletto', he plays a deadly game with the ambitious young general Napoleon Bonaparte. In a bid to save the British fleet, Nathan escapes and joins forces with Horatio Nelson for a dramatic break-out from the Mediterranean and a perilous battle off Cape Saint Vincent that could change the course of the war.
1797: Britain stands alone against the forces of Revolutionary France. A victorious French Army, led by the youthful Napoleon Bonaparte, is poised to invade Britain. And in his country's darkest hour, Captain Nathan Peake finds himself imprisoned by his own side on the Rock of Gibraltar - charged with treason. To prove his innocence Nathan must uncover the great deception that masks the French war aims. Is the great armada being assembled in Toulon bound for the shores of Great Britain - or Egypt? His secret mission to discover the truth about Napoleon's invasion plans will hurl him into two of the greatest battles of the 18th century.
