{"title":"Dawlish Chronicles","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"britannia-s-guile-book-antoine-vanner-9781943404384","title":"Britannia's Guile","description":"1877: Lieutenant Nicholas Dawlish is hungry for promotion. He's chosen service on the Royal Navy's hazardous Anti-Slavery patrol off East Africa for the opportunities it brings to make his name. But a shipment of slaves has slipped through his fingers and now his reputation, and his chance of promotion, are at risk. He'll stop at nothing to save them, even if the means are illegal . . . But greater events are underway in Europe. The Russian and Ottoman Empires are drifting ever closer to a war that could draw in other great powers. And Britain cannot stand aside - a Russian victory would spell disaster for her strategic links to India.The Royal Navy is preparing for a war that might never take place. Dozens of young officers, all as qualified as Dawlish, are hoping for their own commands. He's just one of many . . . and he lacks the advantages of patronage or family influence. But only a handful of powerful men know how unexpectedly vulnerable Britain will be if war comes. Could this offer Dawlish his chance to advance?Far from civilisation, dependent on a new and as yet unproven weapon, he'll face a clever and ruthless enemy in unforeseeable and appalling circumstances.Only stubborn resolution - and unlikely allies -- can bring him through. But at what price?Britannia's Guile is set early in the Dawlish Chronicles series (directly ahead of Britannia's Wolf) and tells how Dawlish met several people who will play major roles in his future career. 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But now a group of revolutionaries threaten that power's economic basis. Their weapon is the invention of a na ve genius, their sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests, conventional British military or naval power cannot touch them. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA daring act of piracy drags the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, into this deadly maelstrom. Drawn in too is his wife Florence, for whom a glimpse of a half-forgotten face evokes memories of earlier tragedy. For both a nightmare lies ahead, made worse by a weakness Dawlish never suspected he had. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAmid the wealth and squalor of America's Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny, and manipulated ruthlessly from London by the shadowy Admiral Topcliffe, Nicholas and Florence Dawlish must make very strange alliances if they are to survive - and prevail. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eBritannia's Shark\u003c\/b\u003e continues not just Nicholas Dawlish's story but that of his courageous and resourceful wife Florence. He fell in love with her in \u003cb\u003eBritannia's Wolf\u003c\/b\u003e and he has risked social ostracism and career limitation by marrying her. Now, faced with challenges that threaten to overwhelm him, he is more dependent on her than on any other. Daring and initiative have already bought him rapid advancement in the Royal Navy and he has hungered for more - but can the price be too high, not just for himself but for Florence too? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eBritannia's Shark\u003c\/b\u003e is more than a work of historical naval fiction or a tale of war and military conflict. Revolutionary forces that will ultimately destroy the comfortable assumptions of the late-nineteenth century are already stirring and a lethal new technology which will be crucial in both World Wars is being born. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eKey roles are played in this tale of action and adventure by two real-life characters. John Phillip Holland, is obsessed with creation of a functional submarine and is prepared to look anywhere for the funding to make his dream reality. And Adam Worth, alias Henry Raymond, real-life model of Sherlock Holmes' fictional adversary Professor Moriarity, is prepared to facilitate Dawlish's efforts, though at a surprising price. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Dawlish Chronicles\u003c\/b\u003e move naval fiction forward from the Age of Fighting Sail to the new world of steam, breech-loaders and torpedoes As a boy in the late 1850s Nicholas Dawlish joined a navy still commanded by veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, men familiar with sails, carronades and broadsides. But now, in the early 1880s sail is yielding to steam, new technologies are creating new weapons and established international power-balances are shifting. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAgainst the background of real historical events Dawlish has to confront challenges inconceivable to earlier generations of officers. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom a review in Quarterdeck Magazine, March-April 2015\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis historical spy thriller reveals attempts by the insurgents to design, build and operate the first submersible craft in a deadly underwater campaign, which thwarts the Royal Navy's conventional capabilities....... pace is fast and furious, with plot twists and turns, as Dawlish tries to capture the prototype submarine and ... as the plot turns to Cuba, the submarine ends up on a bay on the coast of Cuba in the middle of an insurrection against Spain. 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It continues the story of the ambitious Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish, last seen in Britannia's Wolf. It's November 1879 and on a broad river deep in the heart of South America, a flotilla of paddle steamers thrashes slowly upstream. It is laden with troops, horses and artillery, and intent on conquest and revenge. Ahead lies a commercial empire that was wrested from a British consortium in a bloody revolution. Now the investors are determined to recoup their losses and are funding a vicious war to do so. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNicholas Dawlish, on leave from the Royal Navy, is playing a leading role in the expedition. 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A Russian victory will pose a threat for Britain's strategic interests. To protect them an ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, is assigned to the Ottoman Navy to ravage Russian supply-lines in the Black Sea. In the depths of a savage winter, as Turkish forces face defeat on all fronts, Dawlish confronts enemy ironclads, Cossack lances and merciless Kurdish irregulars and finds himself a pawn in the rivalry of the Sultan's half-brothers for control of the collapsing empire. And in the midst of this chaos, unwillingly and unexpectedly, Dawlish finds himself drawn to a woman whom he believes he should not love. Not for his own sake, and not for hers... Britannia's Wolf introduces a naval hero who is more familiar with steam, breech-loaders and torpedoes than with sails, carronades and broadsides. Dawlish joined as a boy a Royal Navy still commanded by veterans of Trafalgar but will he will help forge the Dreadnought navy of Jutland and the Great War. 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