David Donachie – författare

It is 1793. John Pearce and his Pelicans are going home - to gain their freedom and put the treacherous Captain Ralph Barclay in the dock. Emily Barclay discovers Pearce has papers that would ruin her husband’s career and her future security. And then comes that dread thing: a fire aboard a wooden ship of war! Cast adrift, Pearce and his Pelicans find help from an unlikely source. Finally, back on British soil, they hope they have reached the end of their troubles, but with the documents missing, the real concerns have only just begun. Emily Barclay holds the key, but where do her loyalties lie?

John Pearce, having negotiated the highly questionable sale of the two French prizes taken in The Devil to Pay, has left HMS Flirt, as well as the crew and the wounded Henry Digby, in Brindisi and is now headed for Naples to see his lover. In an uncomfortable journey he seeks to work out a way to best both Admiral Sir William Hotham and Captain Ralph Barclay, men who are his sworn enemies. All his calculations are thrown into turmoil when he discovers that Emily is pregnant which, while it is a cause for joy, is also a reason to worry; she is still married to Ralph Barclay and by the laws of the time he can claim the child as his own.

Lieutenant John Pearce is in London seeking protection for his friends, the Pelicans, from a reluctant Admiralty. Sitting in the tavern where they were first press ganged, Pearce considers his future. Lacking the evidence of perjury he once had to bring Captain Ralph Barclay to justice, his prospects are not promising. Ralph Barclay’s young wife, Emily, is refusing to live under the same roof as him and she has the means to get her own way: the evidence Pearce believes was lost at sea. Pearce’s companions finally arrive in London just in time to join Pearce in fetching a ship laden with contraband back from France—an illegal act but very profitable. Are Pearce and his Pelicans sailing into prosperity or danger?

The sixteenth volume in the popular John Pearce Adventures set on the high seas

1796: John Pearce is stuck with a difficult mission – a raw crew of Quota Men forced to enlist in the Royal Navy and four brand-new midshipmen as well as Samuel Oliphant, companion cum spy, whom he finds a constant irritant. In his favour he commands the sound and speedy warship HMS Hazard, a pair of competent officers and, of course, his trusty old friends the Pelicans. Their primary mission is to head for the Mediterranean Fleet and warn Admiral Sir John Jervis of impending danger he will face fighting a combined French/Spanish fleet. But there is a serious distraction: the imminent arrival of a Spanish vessel from South America carrying silver, for which the Spaniards are waiting before declaring war. Stop that and they will lack the funds to truly engage as an enemy of Britannia – but it is a distraction from Pearce's main task and specific orders. Can he resist the lure of such a valuable capture and risk his ship in a dangerous battle to gain it, or will his duty come first?

Free from jail, John Pearce is not free from the smugglers whose boat he stole. They want bloody revenge and are prepared to chase him to the ends of the earth to get it. The court martial papers that threaten to also damn Pearce are at risk due to the calculating schemes of Ralph Barclay. But the danger is only just beginning, for Pearce must undertake a dangerous mission in support of a massive revolt in the Vendée region of France. As high rebellious ambition turns to bloody disaster, Pearce faces real peril, climaxing in one of the greatest battles of the French Revolutionary Wars: the Glorious First of June.

1794: In the wake of the Glorious First of June, Lieutenant John Pearce has pressing matters to attend to. He must undertake an urgent commission from Lord Hood, track down midshipman Toby Burns, and placate Emily Barclay. Meanwhile smugglers whose ship Pearce inadvertently stole are on his tail. And it is not only John Pearce who has his fair share of trouble. The triumphant Channel Fleet returns, but the battle is already the subject of controversy—and Ralph Barclay is accused of holding back from the action. Pearce turns the table on his enemies and sets off for the Mediterranean with Emily Barclay. He can only hope that his troubles will end along with his mission. But are they only just beginning?

The seventeenth volume in the popular John Pearce Adventures set on the high seas

John Pearce discovers that Madrid plans to desert the British-led coalition and join the enemy. In company with Lord Langholm, he has taken a Spanish treasure ship. But a violent Atlantic westerly forces them into a deep bay overlooked by Spaniards, who have created a trap with cannon on the heights aimed at the narrow entrance.

Pearce must take the lead, exposed to plunging fire, lucky the guns do not quite have the range. Then, having succeeded, he must get Langholm’s frigate and the damaged Santa Leocadia through the same bottleneck. Only quick thinking and an act of sheer inspiration make it possible.

His orders take him via Gibraltar, then on to Admiral Jervis, who hates him, to warn of Spanish duplicity. Finally, Jervis sends him to Bastia in Corsica, where the Viceroy, Sir Gilbert Elliot, is seeking to hold the island for Britannia in the face of Napoleon’s successes in Italy.

In night actions, outnumbered on land and sea, Pearce must fight the Francophile Corsicans, who are arming themselves for an insurrection. Will he succeed, or will he, HMS Hazard, and the Pelicans pay the ultimate price of failure?

The first installment in Donachie's sweeping Roads to War series set in the pre-WWII European powder keg

1935: Cal Jardine is a soldier of fortune. Forced to leave Hamburg where he has been helping Jews flee the Nazis, he is recruited by a secretive British committee to smuggle guns to Abyssinia, a country threatened by Italian invasion. But first Jardine must procure the weapons from Rumania, a country full of treacherous locals as well as German agents seeking his arrest. By sleight of hand, he contrives to steal the weapons he wanted to buy before escaping the country, leaving both the Rumanians and Germans floundering. Taken to the Horn of Africa, the arms are then transported over a harsh landscape, along an old slave trader’s route full of danger, and into the hands of the Ethiopian Army.

On his travels, Jardine acquires more baggage than he anticipated—including a beautiful but difficult American woman in search of her archaeologist mother, a determined reporter, and a daredevil French flyer—and avoids a painful death by sheer good fortune. But the Ethiopians are ill-equipped to face a modern Italian army using tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Trained for war, can Jardine simply walk away, or will he be drawn into a bloody conflict against massive odds? And can he manage to save those who now depend on him?

The second installment in Donachie's sweeping Roads to War series set in the pre-WWII European powder keg

1936: Soldier of fortune Cal Jardine travels to Barcelona to help with the athletic games rivalling the Berlin Olympics. But as the first shots of civil war ring out, friendship, love, and political conviction converge to persuade Jardine to once again embroil himself in a foreign war.

Discovering that the British athletes attending the games are keen to enlist for the fight, Jardine agrees to train them into a professional force. With old army comrade Vince Castellano and his beautiful interpreter Florencia Gardiola by his side, Jardine leads the athletes through the street battles of Barcelona and on to the fighting in the Catalan countryside. But when murderous betrayal blights his previous fortune, Jardine will go to any lengths to seek suitable revenge . . .

The final installment in Donachie's sweeping Roads to War series set in the pre-WWII European powder keg

1938: As Hitler sets his sights on the Sudetenland, not everyone in Britain is willing to appease him. Convinced that the Führer's land hunger is insatiable, the head of the SIS recruits Cal Jardine to help him prove that Czechoslovakia is threatened with invasion. But before heading undercover to Prague, Jardine must first extricate himself from France, where his attempts to smuggle guns to Spain have been held up by a group of fanatical fascists. In their struggle to overthrow the French government, they are prepared to kill for the sake of procuring weapons.

When Cal finally arrives in Czechoslovakia, working undercover for the SIS proves no less dangerous as jealousy and mutual suspicions within Secret Service ranks make it impossible for him to tell friend from foe.