Clarissa Oakes

In this instalment of the Aubrey-Maturin naval series, Captain Jack Aubrey's Surprise, leaving the East Indies, takes aboard escaped convicts from New South Wales, among them Clarissa Harvill, who forms a liaison with midshipman Oakes and is married to him. The presence of a woman on a man-of-war strains discipline while Stephen Maturin pursues intelligence work in the Pacific. The ship is drawn into a mission involving a British whaler, island politics, and a confrontation that tests Aubrey's authority. The novel is naval fiction of the Napoleonic period: shipboard routine, private histories, and a diplomatic errand far from European waters.

Bound in dark bue buckram, cover blocked in gilt and colour with a design by Neil Gower. Map endpapers printed dark grey on light blue. Blue slipcase.