The Baltic Gambit

Royal Navy Captain Alan Lewrie returns in the fifteenth novel in the historical naval adventure series "you could get addicted to . . . easily" (The New York Times Book Review). January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as "St. Alan the Liberator" for freeing (stealing!) a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte's delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. Lewrie is summoned by the Admiralty and given command of the Thermopylae frigate as the fleet gathers to face down the League of the North, and its instigator, the mad Tsar Paul. He must take the Thermopylae into the Baltic in the dead of winter, alone and with no support, to scout the enemy fleets and iced-in harbors, and deal with a fellow officer who is less of a friend than he thought. He is saddled with a pair of Russian noblemen as a last-minute peace delegation, but if the wily Foreign Office spy-master, Zachariah Twigg, sent them, what else might their mission be? All that and the Battle of Copenhagen, too, and it's broadsides at close quarters, and treachery for Lewrie, forcing him to use all his wiles to survive! "Stunning naval adventure, reeking of powder and mayhem. I wish I had written this series." ―Bernard Cornwell, New York Times–bestselling author "Great naval action and deep historical detail in the vein of O'Brian and Forester." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)