The Commodore
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
The seventeenth novel in the sweeping Aubrey-Maturin series of naval tales, which the New York Times Book Review has described as "the best historical novels ever written."
Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes.
Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and in drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where the French are mounting an invasion that will test Aubrey's seamanship and Maturin's resourcefulness as a secret intelligence agent.
The subtle interweaving of these disparate themes is an achievement of pure storytelling by one of our greatest living novelists.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Patrick O'Brian. (2011). The Commodore. W. W. Norton & Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Patrick O'Brian. 2011. The Commodore. W. W. Norton & Company.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Patrick O'Brian, The Commodore. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
MLA Citation (style guide)Patrick O'Brian. The Commodore. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0044-1/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0044-1/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0044-1/50A/FC7/C6/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0044-1/50A/FC7/C6/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780393088489
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B006C3QE5E
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780393088489
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780393314595
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Patrick O'Brian
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- The Commodore
- seriesId
- 553881
- dateAdded
- 2018-05-04T23:36:36.37Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=2313951
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- The Commodore
- crossRefId
- 2313951
- series
- Aubrey & Maturin
- id
- 50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F
- starRating
- 4.3
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: TheCommodore_9780393088489_2313951
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 1325766
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780393088489
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 7/30/2015
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=50afc7c6-e73f-4889-8843-43d1aa8a877f&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: TheCommodore_2313951
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B006C3QE5E
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 7/30/2015
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=50afc7c6-e73f-4889-8843-43d1aa8a877f&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: TheCommodore_9780393088489_2313951
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 1325745
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780393088489
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 7/30/2015
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=50afc7c6-e73f-4889-8843-43d1aa8a877f&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: Historical Fiction
- value: early 19th century
- value: aubrey and maturin series
- value: book 17
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: O'Brian, Patrick
- bioText: One of our greatest contemporary novelists, Patrick O'Brian is the author of the twenty volumes of the best-selling Aubrey/Maturin series, as well as many other books, including Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, and biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.
- name: Patrick O'Brian
- publishDate
- 2011-12-05T00:00:00-05:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- The Commodore
- fullDescription
The seventeenth novel in the sweeping Aubrey-Maturin series of naval tales, which the New York Times Book Review has described as "the best historical novels ever written."
Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes.
Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and in drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where the French are mounting an invasion that will test Aubrey's seamanship and Maturin's resourcefulness as a secret intelligence agent.
The subtle interweaving of these disparate themes is an achievement of pure storytelling by one of our greatest living novelists.
- seriesId
- 553881
- reviews
- premium: False
- source: E. O. Wilson;Boston Globe
- content: I haven't read novels [in the past ten years] except for all of the Patrick O'Brian series. It was, unfortunately, like tripping on heroin. I started on those books and couldn't stop.
- premium: False
- source: John Ferguson;Boston Sunday Globe
- content: The Commodore is so satisfying...because it is crowded with so many different kinds of pleasures. O'Brian's genius is in his ability to arrange all this material upon the well-constructed frame of an adventure plot....A lyric poet working in the epic form.
- premium: False
- source: Richard Snow;New York Times Book Review
- content: The best historical novels ever written... On every page Mr. O'Brian reminds us with subtle artistry of the most important of all historical lessons: that times change but people don't, that the griefs and follies and victories of the men and women who were here before us are in fact the maps of our own lives.
- premium: False
- source: Tamar Lewin;New York Times
- content: It has been something of a shock to find myself—an inveterate reader of girl books—obsessed with Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic-era historical novels... What keeps me hooked are the evolving relationships between Jack and Stephen and the women they love.
- premium: False
- source: Christopher Hitchens;Slate
- content: I devoured Patrick O'Brian's 20-volume masterpiece as if it had been so many tots of Jamaica grog.
- premium: False
- source: Keith Richards
- content: I fell in love with his writing straightaway, at first with Master and Commander. It wasn't primarily the Nelson and Napoleonic period, more the human relationships. ...And of course having characters isolated in the middle of the goddamn sea gives more scope. ...It's about friendship, camaraderie. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin always remind me a bit of Mick and me.
- premium: False
- source: David Mamet;New York Times
- content: [O'Brian's] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today's putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade.
- premium: False
- source: Ken Ringle;Washington Post
- content: The Aubrey-Maturin series... far beyond any episodic chronicle, ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart.
- premium: False
- source: George Will
- content: O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin volumes actually constitute a single 6,443-page novel, one that should have been on those lists of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
- premium: False
- source: A. S. Byatt
- content: Gripping and vivid... a whole, solidly living world for the imagination to inhabit.
- premium: False
- source: Stephen Becker;Chicago Sun-Times
- content: There is not a writer alive whose work I value over his.
- premium: False
- source: James Hamilton-Paterson;New Republic
- content: Patrick O'Brian is unquestionably the Homer of the Napoleonic wars.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
April 15, 1996
This 17th installment in O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series of historical naval tales spent two weeks on PW's bestseller list.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
April 17, 1995
Having spent 16 previous volumes so wonderfully delineating his pair of 18th-century heroes, Captain Jack Aubrey and physician/secret agent Stephen Maturin, and the world in which they live, O'Brian apparently feels that series fans will be delighted to share any aspect of their lives. He's probably right. In this 17th seagoing adventure (after The Wine-Dark Sea), O'Brian successfully manages the trick of devoting much of the book to matters more domestic than naval. Stephen's words to Jack's wife, Sophie, hardly smell of gunpowder and brine: "`...that was a sumptuous feast you gave us.... I returned to the venison pasty not once but three times.'" Jack is greeted with an unexpected promotion to full Commodore when he arrives back in England. Meanwhile, Stephen finds that his wife, Diane, has run away because of her guilt over the apparent autism of their young daughter, whom Stephen meets for the first time, and with whom he is painfully unable to communicate. When next they head out to sea, both men depart under clouds: a jealousy-induced disagreement with Sophie weighs on Jack's mind, while plotting by Stephen's enemies has put his fortune and friends in jeopardy. Re-engaging in the Napoleonic Wars, the new Commodore takes his motley and often fractious squadron on a foray to disrupt slave traders in the Gulf of Guinea and then to the seas off Ireland to engage the French. As always, O'Brian tells his tale with great historical and nautical accuracy. Those who have sailed these seas before will happily go along on this latest voyage.
- popularity
- 88
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/50afc7c6-e73f-4889-8843-43d1aa8a877f/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- 50afc7c6-e73f-4889-8843-43d1aa8a877f
- starRating
- 4.3
- readingOrder
- 17
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0044-1/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0044-1/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0044-1/50A/FC7/C6/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0044-1/50A/FC7/C6/{50AFC7C6-E73F-4889-8843-43D1AA8A877F}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fantasy
- value: Fiction
- value: Thriller
- value: Historical Fiction
- publishDateText
- 12/05/2011
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780393314595
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
The seventeenth novel in the sweeping Aubrey-Maturin series of naval tales, which the New York Times Book Review has described as "the best historical novels ever written."
Having survived a long and desperate adventure in the Great South Sea, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin return to England to very different circumstances. For Jack it is a happy homecoming, at least initially, but for Stephen it is disastrous: his little daughter appears to be autistic, incapable of speech or contact, while his wife, Diana, unable to bear this situation, has disappeared, her house being looked after by the widowed Clarissa Oakes.
Much of The Commodore takes place on land, in sitting rooms and in drafty castles, but the roar of the great guns is never far from our hearing. Aubrey and Maturin are sent on a bizarre decoy mission to the fever-ridden lagoons of the Gulf of Guinea to suppress the slave trade. But their ultimate destination is Ireland, where...
- sortTitle
- Commodore
- crossRefId
- 2313951
- series
- Aubrey & Maturin
- publisher
- W. W. Norton & Company
- bisacCodes
- code: FIC002000
- description: Fiction / Action & Adventure
- code: FIC014000
- description: FICTION / Historical / General
- code: FIC047000
- description: Fiction / Sea Stories
