Hundred days (Harper Collins Publishers)

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery.

This is the nineteenth book in the series. Following the extraordinary success of The Yellow Admiral, this latest Aubrey-Maturin novel brings alive the sights and sounds of North Africa as well as the great naval battles in the days immediately following Napoleon's escape from Elba.

Aubrey and Maturin are in the thick of the plots and counterplots to prevent his regaining power. Coloured aby conspiracies in the Adriatic, in the Berber and Arab lands of the southern shores of the Mediterranean, żeby night actions, fierce pursuits, slave-trading and lion hunts, The Hundred Days is a masterpiece.

'O'Brian is far and away the best of the Napoleonic storytellers and The Hundred Days is one of the best of the series: a classic naval adventure, crammed with incident, superbly plotted and utterly gripping...This is O'Brian at his brilliant, entertaining best and when he is on this form the rest of us who write of the Napoleonic conflict might as well give up and try a new career.Fans of the series will need no encouragement to buy this book, but if you are new to Aubrey and Maturin then this is as splendid an introduction as you could wish for.' Bernard Cornwell