Paola Merla Libros

"The old master has us again in the palm of his hand." ― Los Angeles Times Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America―where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain―the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences. The South American expedition is a desperate affair; and in the end Jack's bold initiative to strike at the vastly superior Spanish fleet precipitates a spectacular naval action that will determine both Chile's fate and his own.

Amid sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent explore ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich - ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet.

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the thirteenth book in the series.

Captain Bligh (yes, the guy from the Bounty) needs to be rescued, and the Royal Navy has the perfect man for the job: Captain Jack Aubrey. With his friend and cloak-and-dagger expert Stephen Maturin in tow, Aubrey sets off for Australia. Several factors, including an attractive spy and a small-scale epidemic, conspire to change his plans, and before long his frigate is being pursued into Antarctic waters by a Dutch man-of-war.

The first book in the Treasures of the Nile series Anippe has grown up in the shadows of Egypt’s good god Pharaoh, aware that Anubis, god of the afterlife, may take her--or her siblings--at any moment. She watched him snatch her mother and infant brother during childbirth, a moment which awakens in her a terrible dread of ever bearing a child. When she learns that she is to be become the bride of Sebak, a kind but quick-tempered Captain of Pharaoh Tut’s army, Anippe launches a series of deceptions with the help of the Hebrew midwives—women ordered by Tut to drown the sons of their own people in the Nile—in order to provide Sebak the heir he deserves and yet protect herself from the underworld gods. When she finds a baby floating in a basket on the great river, Anippe believes Egypt’s gods have answered her pleas, entrenching her more deeply in deception and placing her and her son Mehy, whom handmaiden Miriam calls Moses, in mortal danger. As bloodshed and savage politics shift the balance of power in Egypt, the gods reveal their fickle natures and Anippe wonders if her son, a boy of Hebrew blood, could one day become king. Or does the god of her Hebrew servants, the one they call El Shaddai, have a different plan for them all?

1786. Il comandante di vascello William Rennie e il suo secondo James Hayter sono a terra, desiderosi di tornare a navigare dopo una preoccupante pausa nella loro carriera nella marina militare, quando ricevono una missione particolarmente importante: la messa a punto della nave di Sua Maestà Expedient, una fregata da trentasei cannoni. Dopo un varo difficile e l'ancor più complessa organizzazione di un equipaggio non proprio di prim'ordine, superano il mitico capo Horn e veleggiano nel Pacifico, apparentemente incaricati di svolgere una missione scientifica. Ma gli ordini segreti, rivelati solo in mare aperto, sono differenti...

Entre el cabo de Creus y Gibraltar, a comienzos del siglo XIX se suceden los combates de la Armada Inglesa contra navíos de vela que atraviesan el Mediterráneo, especialmente los franceses, en plena expansión napoleónica. La Shopie -corbeta un tanto rechoncha y desvencijada al servicio de su majestad-, con sus dos palos, doce cañones y una tripulación que deja bastante que desear, ha de escoltar a doce barcos mercantes. A bordo también se enfrentan distintas formas de afrontar la guerra y la vida en el mar. Mientras el capitán Jack Aubrey le mueve su ansia por conseguir botines, al cirujano Maturín le interesa la ciencia, y el impecable oficial Dillons lucha por honor.

A primera vista, Margrave parece uno de esos pueblos apacibles donde nunca pasa nada. Jack Reacher, un exmilitar convertido en trotamundos, acaba de llegar allí y tarda menos de una hora en comprobar que las apariencias engañan. Detenido mientras desayunaba en una cafetería, Reacher, el único forastero de la ciudad, es acusado de asesinato. A pesar de su inocencia, los indicios empiezan a acumularse en su contra. Si quiere escapar con vida del nido de serpientes en el que se encuentra, tendrá que aguzar sus sentidos y demostrar por qué es un superviviente nato. La primera novela protagonizada por Jack Reacher es una poderosa muestra del talento de Lee Child para narrar historias que atrapan desde la primera página.

Jonathan Strange y el seǫr Norrell es una novela fabulosa en todos los sentidos: por su ambicin̤ narrativa y por las historias extraordinarias que cuenta. Mezcla prodigiosa de fantasa̕ e Historia, de caballeros magos y personajes reales como el duque de Wellington, Jorge III o lord Byron, la novela plantea una versin̤ alternativa de la historia de Inglaterra, una versin̤ en la que la magia, una magia seria de carc̀ter casi cientf̕ico, desempeą un papel destacado. El resultado es absolutamente convincente, y el asombroso despliegue de personajes y aventuras hipnotiza al lector desde la primera pg̀ina hasta la l︢tima

Graham Greene's The Third Man meets Paul Auster as the Cold War heats up amidst the ruins of occupied Berlin.

A romantic historical adventure, set in the tyrannical court of King Ismail, the17th-century ruler of Morocco.

Essere al comando di un veliero, dare la caccia alle navi nemiche nel Mediterraneo o in pieno Atlantico, vivere in prima persona arrembaggi e duelli: questi sono i sogni di Jack Aubrey, uomo di mare temerario e irruente, fedele suddito di Sua Maestà Britannica e capitano di corvetta fresco di nomina. E se la Sophie - la sua prima nave, il suo «primo comando» - non brilla ancora di particolare gloria, Aubrey è deciso a trasformarla in una nave modello, orgoglio della Royal Navy e spauracchio dei nemici a tutte le latitudini. Ma la dura vita di bordo gli riserverà grosse sorprese... Avvincente e serrato nell'intreccio, straordinariamente documentato nella ricostruzione storica e meticolosamente preciso nella descrizione della vita marinaresca del XIX secolo: Primo comando è uno dei migliori romanzi storici di avventure sui mari che siano mai stati scritti.