Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O'Brian; The Aubrey-Maturin Series, Book 20; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Simon Vance

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, but the ensuing peace becomes ugly for Captain Jack Aubrey, with violent celebrations of the English sailors in Gibraltar and the desertion of nearly half his crew. To cap it all off, the Surprise is nearly sunk in a shattering night collision on the first leg of her journey to South America, where Jack and Stephen are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain.

The delay for repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences, and then the South American expedition is a desperate affair, starting with near disaster in the ice-choked seas far south of the Horn. In the end, Jack, again the daring frigate commander of old, stakes all on a desperate solo night raid against the might of the Spanish viceroy in Peru.

“O'Brian is not that hard a taste to acquire, but he is very tough to shake....[The Aubrey-Maturin series] is a great work.”—Boston Globe

“[O'Brian is] better than anybody at historical fiction...as able and graceful with the English language as a writer can be.”—Denver Post

“The book contains the usual splendid blend of nautical detail and political intrigue, savage battles and naturalists' musing, all ratified by O'Brian's seemingly effortless ability to deploy the vocabulary and idioms of the time.”—New Yorker

“This is a work of genius, and in the face of its inevitable end, I can only think with pleasure at the now 20 volumes on my shelf.”—J. W. Foster, BookPage

The late Patrick O'Brian was the author of more than twenty Aubrey-Maturin historical adventures. There are over five million copies of his books in print.

Simon Vance, a former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader, is a full-time actor who has appeared on both stage and television. He has recorded over four hundred audiobooks and has earned over twenty Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, including one for his narration of Theft by Peter Carey. A twelve-time Audie finalist, Simon has won three Audie Awards, including one for Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and the 2008 Booklist Voice of Choice Award. He has also been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.