Patrick OBrians Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. All eighteen books are to be re-issued in hardback by HarperCollins with stunning new jackets.

Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon, Stephen Maturin, sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy and a treacherous disease which decimates the crew.

The ingredients of a wonderfully powerful and dramatic OBrian novel are heightened by descriptive writing of rare quality. Nowhere in contemporary prose have the majesty and terror of the sea been more effectively rendered than in the thrilling chase through an Antarctic storm in which Jacks ship, under-manned and out-gunned, is the quarry not the hunter.