Dewey Lambdin Books In Order

The King’s Coat

The very first Alan Lewrie naval adventure in this classic series is now back in print!1780: Seventeen year old Alan Lewrie is a brash, rebellious young libertine. So much so that his callous father believes a bit of navy discipline will turn the boy around. Fresh aboard the tall masted Ariadne, Midshipman Lewrie heads for the war torn Americas, finding rather unexpectedly that he is a born sailor, equally at home with the randy pleasures of the port and the raging battles on the high seas. But in a hail of cannonballs comes a bawdy surprise…
. From the Paperback edition.

The French Admiral

From Library Journal: This second novel in a new sea adventure series continues the story of Alan Lewrie, the reluctant British midshipman. This time, Alan finds himself involved in the battle of Yorktown during the American Revolution. His unhappiness with the Royal Navyalso begins to be replaced by a sense of dedication and duty. The story is technically correct and historically accurate, but sea genre fans will be disappointed that so much of the action takes place on land. Though Lewrie observes the battle of the Chesapeake, he is on duty with the defenders of Yorktown and barely sees his ship during half the novel. Still, this is an excellent and exciting adventure inwhat promises to be the best naval series since C.S. Forester.

The King’s Commission

1782 First officer on brig o’war…
Fresh from duty on the frigate Desperate in her fight with the French Capricieuse off St. Kitts, Midshipman Alan Lewrie pas*ses his examination board for Lieutenancy and finds himself commissioned first officer of the brig o’war Shrike. There’s time for some dalliance with the fair sex, and then Lieutenant Lewrie must be off to patrol the North American coast and attempt to bring the Muskogees and Seminoles onto the British side against the American rebels dalliance with an Indian maiden is just part of the mission. Then it’s back to the Caribbean, to sail beside Captain Horatio Nelson in the Battle for Turks Island…
. Naval officer and rogue, Alan Lewrie is a man of his times and a hero for all times. His equals are Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin sailors beloved by readers all over the world. Praise for The Naval Adventures of Alan Lewrie’Plenty of action…
Fast paced, graphically descriptive and well plotted.’ The Virginian Pilot & The Ledger Star’Fast moving…
A hugely likable hero, a huge cast of sharply drawn supporting characters: there’s nothing missing. Wonderful stuff.’ Kirkus Reviews

The King’s Privateer

1783: His Majesty’s secret agentFresh from war in the Americas, young navy veteran Alan Lewrie finds London pure pleasure. Then, at Plymouth he boards the trading ship Telesto, to find out why merchantmen are disappearing in the East Indies. Between the pungent shores of Calcutta and teaming Canton, Lewrie reunited with his scoundrel father discovers a young French captain, backed by an armada of Mindanaon pirates, on a plundering rampage. While treaties tie the navy’s hands, a King’s privateer is free to plunge into the fire and blood of a dirty little war on the high South China Sea. Ladies’ man, officer, and rogue, Alan Lewrie is the ultimate man of adventure. In the worthy tradition of Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin, his exploits echo with the sounds of crowded ports and the crash of naval warfare. Praise for the Naval Adventures of Alan Lewrie’The best naval series since C. S. Forrester…
Recommended.’ Library Journal’Plenty of action…
Fast paced, graphically descriptive, and well plotted.’ The Virginian Pilot & The Ledger Star’Fast moving…
A hugely likable hero, a huge cast of sharply drawn supporting characters: there’s nothing missing. Wonderful stuff.’ Kirkus Reviews

The Gun Ketch

‘You could get addicted to this series. Easily.’ The New York Times Book Review1788 Bahamas Squadron…
A fighter, rogue, and ladies man, Alan Lewrie has done the unthinkable and gotten himself hitched to a woman and a ship! The woman is the lovely Caroline Chiswick. The ship is The Gun Ketch, Alacrity, bound for the Bahamas and a bloody game of cat and mouse with the pirates who ply the lunatic winds there. But while war comes naturally to the young husband, politics doesn’t. Sure that a powerful Bahamian merchant is behind a scourge of piracy, Lewrie runs afoul of the Royal Governor who holds the most precious hostage of all…
. From the windswept Carolinas to the exotic East Indies, Alan Lewrie fights and frolics with all the wild abandon of the high seas themselves. He’s a true swashbuckling naval hero in the age of great sailing ships.’Grand, satisfying…
Fans as well as newcomers will relish Lambdin’s unerring depiction of Navy politicking, the niceties of Nassau society…
and, in fact, all the rich details of late 18th century life at sea and shore.’ PublishersWeekly’Hair raising action…
Fascinating…
Grandly entertaining.’ The Flint Journal’Recommended…
Lambdin’s work is comparable to that of masters such as C. S. Forester.’ Library Journal

H.M.S. Co*ckerel

‘You could get addicted to this series. Easily.’ The New York Times Book Review1793 In the seas of revolution…
A farmer, a bloody farmer! Knee deep in dung and fathoms from the nearest port, Alan Lewrie, swashbuckling naval warrior turned family man, longs for battle. And when it comes, a battle royal it is! Called to the H.M.S. Co*ckerel, a sleek frigate captained by a malaria stricken tyrant, First Officer Lewrie soon vaults to command, taking Co*ckerel from the lush pleasures of the Kingdom of Naples to a smoking cauldron called Toulon. There, an outnumbered coalition of former enemies is being drawn into a terrible land sea battle against the revolutionary French in a siege of blood and terror that will send shock waves around the world…
. He’s fought and loved on land and bounding sea from America to the East Indies. Alan Lewrie is the unforgettable hero rogue of the age of wooden walled, spray lashed fighting ships.’THIS IS LAMBDIN’S USUAL SATISFYING BREW…
. A fast moving yarn loaded with action, colorful characters, and marvelous period detail.’ Publishers Weekly’GREAT FUN…
Lambdin continues to plunk Alan Lewrie down in the midst of interesting times with humor and plenty of authentic detail.’ Kirkus Reviews

A King’s Commander

1793 For love of war and money…
Once a French corvette, she was reborn HMS Jester, sleek and fast. At her sea sprayed helm is former Midshipman Alan Lewrie, turned grizzled warrior by trade. But when Commander Lewrie reaches the island of Corsica he gets orders for which even he is not prepared: lure his archenemy, French commander Guillaume Choundas, into battle and personally strike him dead…
. From splintering hulled ships battling broadside to exotic ports of call, the adventures of Alan Lewrie capture an age of heroism and action on the great, wind lashed fighting ships.

Jester’s Fortune

1796: A diminutive, Corsican born French general has inherited a ragtag army and turned it into an unstoppable fighting force. Within months Napoleon’s storm rolls across Italy and strikes a lethal blow against the Austrian empire. But while the soil of Piedmont and Tuscany runs with blood, another battle takes shape on the mysterious Adriatic Sea. Alan Lewrie and his eighteen gun sloop, HMS Jester, part of a squadron of four British warships, sail into the thick of it. But with England s alies failing, Napoleon busy rearranging the world map, and their squadron streched dangerously thin along the Croation coast the British squadron commander strikes a devil s bargain: enlisting the aid of Serbian pirates.

King’s Captain

Following the footsteps of Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, whose ripping adventures capture thousands of new readers each year, comes the heir apparent to the mantle of Forester and O’Brian: Dewey Lambdin, and his acclaimed Alan Lewrie series. In this latest adventure Lewrie is promoted for his quick action in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, but before he’s even had a chance to settle into his new role, a mutiny rages through the fleet, and the sudden reappearance of an old enemy has Lewrie fighting not just for his command, but for his life.

Sea of Grey

Captain Alan Lewrie returns for his tenth roaring adventure on the high seas. This time, it’s off to a failing British intervention on the ultra rich French colony of Saint Domingue, wracked by an utterly cruel and bloodthirsty slave rebellion led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, the future father of Haitian independence. Beset and distracted though he might be, it will take all of Lewrie’s pluck, daring, skill, and his usual tongue in cheek deviousness, to navigate all the perils in a Sea of Grey.

Havoc’s Sword

Dewey Lambdin’s lovable but incorrigible rogue, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is back to cut a wide and wicked swatch through the war torn Caribbean in an entirely new high seas adventure. It’s 1798, and Lewrie and his crew of the Proteus frigate have their work cut out for them. First, he has rashly vowed to uphold a friend’s honour in a duel to the death. Second, he faces the horridly unwelcome arrival of HM Government’s Foreign Office agents out to use him as their cat’s paw in impossibly vaunting schemes against the French. And last, he must engineer the showdown with his arch foe and nemesis, the hideous ogre of the French Revolution’s Terror, that clever fiend Guillaume Choundas!We know Lewrie can fight, but can he be a diplomat, too? He must deal with the newly reborn United States Navy, that uneasy, unofficial ‘ally’, and the stunning, life altering surprise they bring. For good or ill, Lewrie’s in the ‘quag’ up to his neck, this time. Can sword, pistol, and broadsides avail, or will words, low cunning, and Lewrie’s irrepressible wit be the key to his victory and survival, as even the seas cry ‘Havoc’?

The Captain’s Vengeance

It is early February, 1799, a year of war.

Sailing in the Caribbean, Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, is once again pursuing a chimera.
A rich French prize ship he d left at anchor at Dominica has gone missing, along with six of his sailors. What starts as a straightforward search for it, and them, from Hispaniola to Barbados, far down the Antilles, leads Lewrie to a gruesome discovery on the Dry Tortugas and to a vile cabal of the most pitiless and depraved pirates ever to sail under the Jolly Roger…
and the suspicion that one of his trusted hands just may be the worst of them all!
Against his will again the usually irrepressible Lewrie is made his superiors cat’s paw once more, and his covert mission this time is to go up the Mississippi in enemy held Spanish Louisiana to the romantic but sordid port of New Orleans in search of pirates and prize, where one false step could betray Lewrie and his small party as spies. Beguilements, betrayal, and death lurk round every corner of the Vieux Carr , and it s up to Lewrie s quick but cynical to win the day wits for their survival and wreak a very personal vengeance on his foes!

A King’s Trade

The powder packed thirteenth installment in a classic naval adventure series.

Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is just discovering the truth of the old adage that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished!
After a bout of Yellow Fever decimated the crew of Lewrie’s HMS Proteus in 1797, it had seemed like a knacky idea to abscond with a dozen slaves from a coastal Jamaican plantation to help man his frigate, a grand jape on their purse proud master and a righteous act, to boot. But now…
two years later, the embittered Beauman clan at last suspects Lewrie of the deed. Slave stealing is a hanging offense, and suddenly Alan Lewrie s neck is at risk of a fatal stretching!
Patrons finagle an official escape from Jamaica to England, where the nefarious and manipulative master Foreign Office spy, Zachariah Twigg, is just too nice and helpful to be credited on his behalf, arranging a long voyage even further out of the law s reach, to Cape Town and India, as escort to an East India Company convoy led by one of Lewrie s old captains, who still despises him worse than cold, boiled mutton!
To the Cape of Good Hope, where French cruisers prowl, where a British circus and theatrical troupe joins the convoy, just teeming with tempting female acrobats, nubile young bareback riders, and alluring actresses like the seductive but deadly archer, Eudoxia Durschenko!
It will take all Lewrie s shrewd guile, wit, low cunning, and steely self control to worm his way out of trouble, this time, and keep his breeches chastely buttoned up to avoid even more troubles…
or will he?

Troubled Waters

The fourteenth tale in Dewey Lambdin’s classic naval adventure series Spring of 1800, and Captain Alan Lewrie, fresh from victory in the South Atlantic, is reckoned a hero on a par with Nelson in all the papers. Back in England, he s fitting out his new frigate, HMS Savage, the fruits of that victory, the largest and best armed frigate he s ever commanded. But you can t leave Lewrie ashore too long without trouble arising.A Jamaica court has tried him in absentia and sentenced him to hang for the theft of a dozen Black slaves to man his old ship, HMS Proteus. A crime, or was it liberation, as his London barrister argues? The vengeful slaveowner, Hugh Beauman, has come to London to seek Lewrie s end…
with or without the majesty of the Law!Then there s the matter of those anonymous letters sent to his wife, Caroline, portraying him as a faithless rakehell and serving up the most florid lies…
along with some unfortunately florid truths. Lewrie appeals to the retired Foreign Office spy, Zachariah Twigg, to smoak out the hand that guides the poison pen, even while wondering why Twigg seems so eager to help his legal case, of a sudden. Is the devious old devil ready to sacrifice him for some motive of his own?A fortunate legal ruling, which only delays the matter of Lewrie s utter ruin, leaves him free to take Savage to sea upon the King s business, to join the close blockade of the Gironde River in Sou west France, and plug the threat of enemy warships, privateers, and neutrals smuggling goods in and out of Bordeaux. It could be a dull and plodding dreariness, but…
a bored Captain Alan Lewrie, safe in his post for the moment, can be a dangerous fellow to his country s foes. If only to relieve the tedium!

The Baltic Gambit

January 1801, and Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, known as St. Alan the Liberator for freeing stealing! a dozen black slaves on Jamaica to man his frigate years before, is at last being brought to trial for it, with his life on the line. At the same time, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are forming a League of Armed Neutrality, to Napoleon Bonaparte’s delight, to deny Great Britain their vital exports, even if it means war. England will need all her experienced sea dogs, but even Alan Lewrie? Ultimately Lewis is acquitted, but he s also ignored by the Navy, so it s half pay on civvy street for him, and with idle time on his mischievous hands, Lewrie is sure to get himself in trouble again! especially if there are young women and his wastrel public school friends involved and they are! A brawl in a Panton Saint brothel, a drunk, infatuated young Russian count, precede Lewrie s summons to Admiralty and the command of the Thermopylae frigate to replace an ill captain as the fleet gathers to face down the League of the North, and its instigator, the mad Tsar Paul. Lewrie must take the Thermopylae into the Baltic in the dead of winter, alone and with no support, to scout the enemy fleets and iced in harbours, deal with a fellow officer who is less of a friend than he thought, and be saddled with a pair of Russian noblemen as a last minute peace delegation, but if the wily Foreign Office spy master, Zachariah Twigg, sent them, what else might their mission be? All that and the Battle of Copenhagen, too, and it s broadsides at close quarters, and treachery for Lewrie, forcing him to use all his wiles to survive!

King, Ship, and Sword

December, 1801. The Peace of Amiens ends the long war with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, but Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is appalled by its consequences. What is a dashing and successful frigate captain to do with himself ashore on half pay? And where will Lewrie twiddle his thumbs until the war begins again, as he s sure it will? Rejoin his wife and in laws who mostly despise him like the Devil hates Holy Water, on his rented farm in Surrey? Peace and domesticity are hellish hard on the rakehells! Yet by the spring of 1802, Lewrie and his Caroline have somewhat reconciled and are off to make a go of a second honeymoon in Paris, France, of all places! There, Lewrie finds himself rubbing shoulders with soldiers, spies, and even First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte himself. When Lewrie can t help spurring Napoleon into a kick furniture rage, he and Caroline must flee for their lives. When war breaks out again in May of 1803, Lewrie has fresh orders, a new frigate, and a chance to punish and pursue the French, but it s no longer for duty or king and country now it s personal!

The Invasion Year

The Seventeenth Tale in Dewey Lambdin’s Smashing Naval Adventure SeriesFor a fellow like Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, who despises the French worse than the Devil hates Holy Water, it s hellish hard to gain a reputation for saving them, not once but twice, when the French refugees from Haiti surrender to England rather than the vengeful ex slave armies in November of 1803!Back in England for the first time in two years, there are honours from the Crown for gallant service…
a lot more than he expected from King George III, who was having a bad morning, then a chance to move in Society after an introduction to an intriguing daughter of a peer. But then come secret orders to experiment with several types of infernal engines of war, which might delay or postpone the dreaded cross Channel invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, his huge army, and his thousands of invasion craft. For the rest of 1804, Alan Lewrie and his crew of the Reliant frigate will deal with things more dangerous to them than they may prove to be to the French!

Reefs and Shoals

Pity poor Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy! He’s been wind muzzled for weeks in Portsmouth, snugly tucked into a warm shore bed with lovely, and loving, Lydia Stangbourne, a Viscount s daughter, and beginning to enjoy indulging his idle streak, when Admiralty tears Lewrie away and order him to the Bahamas, into the teeth of ferocious winter storms. It s enough to make a rakehell such as he weep and kick furniture!At least his new orders allow Lewrie to form a small squadron from what ships he can dredge up at Bermuda and New Providence and hoist his first broad pendant, even if it is the lesser version, and style himself a Commodore. Lewrie is to scour the shores of Cuba and Spanish Florida, the Keys and the Florida Straits in search of French and Spanish privateers which have been taking British merchantmen at an appalling rate, and call upon neutral American seaports to determine if privateers are getting aid and comfort from that quarter. Lewrie is to be Diplomatic. Diplomatic? Lewrie? Not bloody likely!To solve the problem and find the answers will put Lewrie in touch with old friends, old foes, and more frustration than a dog has fleas. As usual, though, Captain Alan Lewrie will find his own unique way to fulfill his duties, and in the doing, find some fun in his own irrepressible manner!

What Lies Buried

Respected political leader Harry Tresmayne has been found murdered beside a lonely road on Cape Fear. Harry’s friend, Matthew Livesey, is drawn to investigate the truth, and the more Livesey learns about Harry’s private life, the more reasons for murder he finds.