Showing results by narrator "David Lane Pusey" in All Categories

The French called it La Forteresse Maudite, the Cursed Fortress. Louisbourg stood at the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, massive and impregnable, a permanent provocation to the British colonies. It was Canada’s first line of defence, guarding the approaches to Quebec, from where all New France lay open to invasion.

Even before Spain joined the war in early 1762, it was obvious that it wouldn’t have the strategic effect that the cousins, King Louis and King Charles, had hoped. France needed a success to bring Britain to the negotiating table: nothing grand—Louis didn’t have the force for that—but something that would hurt the City of London in its pocket. A raid on the Newfoundland fisheries would have an immediate financial impact. In normal times the dried cod provided an important dietary supplement to the population of the Atlantic basin and a steady stream of gold for the City’s coffers.

Cousins at Arms offers listeners the thunder of guns and the clash of cutlasses, but at its heart it’s a thoughtful analysis of a nation’s ill-judged slide into war. This is the thirteenth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. It continues the journey through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies, and ultimately to their bid for independence.

When Spain joined the Seven Years War on the side of France, one of its aims was to conquer Britain’s ally, Portugal. They launched three separate land invasions, each of them ultimately unsuccessful, but each a deadly, existential threat to their neighbour. Portugal, meanwhile, was determined to hit back at Spain’s sprawling colonial empire, and the Debatable Lands between Brazil and the River Plate Estuary offered a tempting target.

A Spanish colonial governor and his family are pursued through the Caribbean by a pair of mysterious ships from the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. The British frigate Medina rescues the governor from his hurricane-wrecked ship, leading Captain Edward Carlisle and his first lieutenant George Holbrooke into a web of intrigue and half-truths. Are the Dutchmen operating under a letter of marque, or are they pirates, and why are they hunting the Spaniard? Only the diplomatic skills of Carlisle’s aristocratic wife, Lady Chiara, can solve the puzzle.

By late 1759 it is clear that France is losing the Seven Years War. In a desperate gamble, the French Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets combine to dominate the Channel and cover a landing in the south of England, but they are annihilated by Admiral Hawke at Quiberon Bay. Meanwhile, a diversionary landing is planned in the north of Britain, and it sails from Dunkirk before news of the disaster at Quiberon Bay can reach its commander.

It is 1758, and the Seven Years War is at its height. The Duke of Cumberland’s Hanoverian army has been pushed back to the river Elbe while the French are using the medieval fortified city of Emden to resupply their army and to anchor its left flank.

North America’s French and Indian War may be over, but at the end of 1760 the wider Seven Years War is still raging in Europe and across the seas of the world. Nevertheless, the New England merchants are growing restless at the restrictions on their trade with the French islands, and one Rhode Island company is determined to defy the law and bring home a cargo of contraband molasses.

Lillian Morgan would do anything to regain the status she lost by marrying beneath her and to cover the sordid details of her husband’s death. This includes blackmail and the hand of marriage of her own daughter. Tori’s father would have stopped his daughter’s misery. He’d have stopped it in a heartbeat, but he couldn’t because he was dead. He’d been dead for years. Murdered, in fact. Tori thought her life couldn’t get much worse, but when her fiancé attempts to further his high-profile career, she finds herself mixed up with Ash Hunter and his crew.

It is the summer of 1760 and the British navy reigns supreme on the oceans of the world; only in the Mediterranean is its mastery still seriously challenged. Admiral Saunders is sent with a squadron of ships-of-the-line to remind those nations that are still neutral of the consequences of siding with the French.

Rocks and Shoals is the seventh of the Carlisle & Holbrooke naval adventures. The series follows Carlisle and his protégé George Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies in the 1760s.

Treacherous Moon is the twelfth Carlisle and Holbrooke novel. The series follows the two sea officers through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American colonies prior to their bid for independence.

Fort Niagara is the key to the American continent. Whoever owns that lonely outpost at the edge of civilisation controls the entire Great Lakes region. Pitt’s grand strategy for 1759 is to launch a three-pronged attack on Canada. One army would move north from Lake Champlain, a second would sail up the St Lawrence to capture Quebec, and a third force would strike across the wilderness to Lake Ontario and French-held Fort Niagara. Commander George Holbrooke is seconded to command the six hundred boats to carry the army through the rivers and across Lake Ontario.

Amphibious warfare was in its infancy in the mid-18th century–it was the poor relation of the great fleet actions that the navy so loved.... That all changed in 1758 when the British government demanded a campaign of raids on the French Channel ports. Command arrangements were hastily devised and a whole new class of vessels was produced at breakneck speed: flatboats, the ancestors of the landing craft that put the allied forces ashore on D-Day.

Britain’s response was fast and decisive when Spain joined the Seven Years War on the side of France. Guarded by a naval battle squadron, regiments drawn from Britain, the American colonies, and the garrisons of captured French islands were sent to lay siege to Havana. With Havana in British hands the Flota’s route to carry the wealth of the Indies to Spain would be threatened and the Spanish economy would collapse, knocking Spain out of the war in one stroke. That was the plan, but the British invasion force soon learned the gruesome reality of campaigning in the tropics.

When Michael Stocks stands at the starting line of a 24-hour race on an athletics track in South London, it is noon and rain is beginning to fall. His aim is to run more than 150 miles by noon the following day, in order to fulfil his dream of being selected to run for Great Britain. He is 49 years old, and it will require the performance of a lifetime. One Track Mind tells the story of these 24 life-changing hours. It reveals the mental tools that make it possible to run six marathons in a single day, and how they can be applied to other parts of life.

This book is the ultimate guide to British slang. An all-encompassing hilarious dictionary of everything that's quintessentially British. A deep-dive into the most up to date and current slang spoken by Brits today.

530 BC. The Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great is at war with Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae on the Scythian steppe. On either side of that epic conflict, are immortal forces locked in a battle between good and evil which stretches back to the dawn of time.

Embarking on a salvage mission into the heart of the most treacherous mountain range in the Barsian Empire, the pirates aboard the sky ship Warrior know things are going to get wild. However, no-one suspects this contract is anything other than lucrative. But, with a perfectly placed punt, Destiny’s Boot launches the Warrior like a particularly oblivious seagull into the path of a whirling propeller. A cascade of horror awaits them. Undead wyverns, fanatical mages, and an ancient entity so powerful it has been locked away for centuries.

Finding the killer was just the beginning. The sound of a gunshot rips through the peace of a sunny Sunday morning in Milan. High-flier Lieutenant Raphael Conza, the son of an Italian diplomat, is tasked with unraveling the mystery behind the murder outside the Hotel Napoli. For the first time in his career, Conza begins to doubt his instincts. The Milan Contract takes the listener on an extraordinary journey across Italy, the UK and Germany as Conza attempts to unravel the secrets behind the killing of a grey-haired man in Milan.