First Lines from New E-Books Out Today: December 5, 2011
Patrick O’Brian’s Entire 20-Book Aubrey/Maturin Series is Now Available in E-Book Format.
“The music-room in the Governor’s House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli’s C major quartet.”
Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin #1) by Patrick O’Brian
“Marriage was once represented as a field of battle rather than a bed of roses, and perhaps there are some who may still support this view; but just as Dr. Maturin had made a far more unsuitable match than most, so he set about dealing with the situation in a far more compendious, peaceable and efficacious way than the great majority of husbands.”
The Ionian Mission (Aubrey/Maturin #8) by Patrick O’Brian
“‘Pass the word for Captain Aubrey, pass the word for Captain Aubrey,’ cried a sequence of voices, at first dim and muffled far aft on the flagship’s maindeck, then growing louder and more distinct as the call wafted up to the quarterdeck and so along the gangway to the forecastle, where Captain Aubrey stood by the starboard thirty-two-pounder carronade contemplating the Emperor of Morocco’s purple galley as it lay off Jumper’s Bastion with the vast grey and tawny Rock of Gibraltar soaring behind it, while Mr. Blake, once a puny member of his midshipman’s berth but now a tall, stout lieutenant almost as massive as his former captain, explained the new carriage he had invented, a carriage that should enable carronades to fire twice as fast, with no fear of oversetting, twice as far, and with perfect accuracy, thus virtually putting an end to war.”
The Far Side of the World (Aubrey/Maturin #10) by Patrick O’Brian
“A purple ocean, vast under the sky and devoid of all visible life apart from two minute ships racing across its immensity. They were as close-hauled to the somewhat irregular north-east trades as ever they could be, with every sail they could safely carry and even more, their bowlines twanging taut: they had been running like this day after day, sometimes so far apart that each saw only the other’s topsail above the horizon, sometimes within gunshot; and when this was the case they fired at one another with their chasers.”
The Wine-Dark Sea (Aubrey/Maturin #16) by Patrick O’Brian
