Having survived the bloody Battle of New Orleans and the loss of their ironclad Yazoo River, captain Samuel Bowater, engineer Hieronymus Taylor, and the survivors of their crew are given new orders -- take command of an ironclad warship being built in Memphis, Tennessee.Bowater and his men take passage upriver from "Mississippi" Mike Sullivan, one of the wild, undisciplined captains of the River Defense Squadron, only to find, on their arrival, that their ship is not even half built and the enemy is closing fast. Against their better judgment, Bowater and crew join forces with the mercurial Sullivan on board his ad hoc river gunship the General Page. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Confederates once again fling themselves bravely at the overwhelming power of the Yankee invaders. The deadly back-and-forth fight along the Mississippi ends at last in the massive naval battle of Memphis, and the near-suicidal attempt by the Confederates to hold back the Northern flood.

Spring has come to Ireland, where Thorgrim Night Wolf, new-made Lord of Vík-ló, and the three hundred Viking warriors under his command have suffered through a brutal winter. Despite having accomplished much during the months of cold and rain, the patience of the men has worn thin and anger and frustration threaten to tear the ships’ crews apart. But just as the men are turning on one another, a local Irish lord arrives with a proposal, a plan for Irish and Norse to join together in a raid using Ireland’s rivers to float their longships far inland. The plan, however, soon turns into a nightmare of massacre and betrayal, and Thorgrim and his band must fight both the surprisingly skilled commander of the local forces as well as enemies in their own camp. It’s a fight in which victory or defeat will mean the difference between riches or death. **

In the wake of The Guardship and The Blackbirder comes The Pirate Round, the exciting conclusion to the Brethren of the Coast trilogy and the swashbuckling adventures of former pirate Thomas Marlowe.In 1706, war still rages in Europe, and the tobacco planters of the Virginia colony's Tidewater struggle against shrinking markets and pirates lurking off the coast. But American seafarers have found a new source of wealth: the Indian Ocean and ships carrying fabulous treasure to the great mogul of India.Faced with ruin, Thomas Marlowe is determined to find a way to the riches of the East. Carrying his crop of tobacco in his privateer, Elizabeth Galley, he secretly plans to continue on to the Indian Ocean to hunt the mogul's ships. But Marlowe does not know that he is sailing into a triangle of hatred and vengeance – a rendezvous with two bitter enemies from his past. Ultimately, none will emerge unscathed from the blood and thunder, the treachery and danger, of sailing the Pirate Round.

April 12, 1861. With one jerk of a lanyard, one shell arching into the sky, years of tension explode into civil war. And for those men who do not know in which direction their loyalty calls them, it is a time for decisions. Such a one is Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, an officer of the U.S. Navy and a native of Charleston, South Carolina. Hard-pressed to abandon the oath he swore to the United States, but unable to fight against his home state, Bowater accepts a commission in the nascent Confederate Navy, where captains who once strode the quarterdecks of the world's most powerful ships are now assuming command of paddle wheelers and towboats. Taking charge of the armed tugboat Cape Fear, and then the ironclad Yazoo River, Bowater and his men, against overwhelming odds, engage in the waterborne fight for Southern independence.

In a blind rage, King James, ex-slave and now Marlowe's comrade in arms, slaughters the crew of a slave ship and makes himself the most wanted man in Virginia. The governor gives Marlowe a choice: Hunt James down and bring him back to hang or lose everything Marlowe has built for himself and his wife, Elizabeth.Marlowe sets out in pursuit of the ex-slave turned pirate, struggling to maintain control over his crew -- rough privateers who care only for plunder -- and following James's trail of destruction. But Marlowe is not James's only threat, as factions aboard James's own ship vie for control and betrayal stalks him to the shores of Africa.

Acclaimed, award-winning author James L. Nelson - praised as "a master of both his period and the English language" by Patrick O'Brian - returns to the world of sea and sail in this page-turning historical novel.Jack Biddlecomb has much to live up to, being as he is the eldest son of the esteemed Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, wealthy merchant captain, leading light of the War for American Independence, and newly-minted congressman. Jack finds himself off to a promising start, however, when he's given command of the merchant vessel Abigail bound from Philadelphia for Barbados.But even before the docklines are cast off, the voyage, which should have been routine, begins to look like a stormy passage indeed. Jack is saddled with two passangers, one as unpleasant as he is highborn, the other a confidant of the Abigail's owner who cannot help but meddle in the running of the ship. What's more, with the French making prizes of American merchantmen,...

852 A.D. For centuries, the Vikings have swept out of the Norse countries and fallen on England, Ireland, whatever lands they could reach aboard their longships. Few could resist the power of their violent onslaught. They came at first to plunder, and then to settle, an encroachment fiercely resisted where ever they went. Such was the case in the southern lands of Ireland. En route to the Viking longphort there, known as Dubh-Linn, Thorgrim Night Wolf and Ornolf the Restless stumble across an Irish ship that carries aboard it a single item - a crown. The Vikings eagerly snatch the prize, unaware of its significance to the people of Ireland and the power granted to the king who wears it. Soon the Norsemen are plunged into the violence and intrigue of Medieval Ireland, where local kings fight with each other and with the invaders from the north for rule of the island nation. With enemies at every hand, and loyalties as fickle as the weather, Thorgrim must lead his men, the white invaders, the Fin Gall, in the fight of their lives, with both Irish and Dane eager to see them dead.

April 12, 1861. With one jerk of a lanyard, one shell arching into the sky, years of tension explode into civil war. And for those men who do not know in which direction their loyalty calls them, it is a time for decisions. Such a one is Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, an officer of the U.S. Navy and a native of Charleston, South Carolina. Hard-pressed to abandon the oath he swore to the United States, but unable to fight against his home state, Bowater accepts a commission in the nascent Confederate Navy, where captains who once strode the quarterdecks of the world's most powerful ships are now assuming command of paddle wheelers and towboats. Taking charge of the armed tugboat Cape Fear, and then the ironclad Yazoo River, Bowater and his men, against overwhelming odds, engage in the waterborne fight for Southern independence.