Azincourt

Slaget vid Azincourt är ett av världens mest berömda slag. En liten sjuk och hungrig armés seger över en fem gånger större ­ fiende. Kung Henrik V beslutar att anfalla Frankrike för att hävda sin rätt som kung, men lider ett massivt nederlag i Harfleur. Trots detta tar han sin svårt sargade här vidare mot ett till synes oundvikligt nederlag. Den 25 oktober 1415 står hans 6 000 män öga mot öga med 30 000 franska soldater i Azincourt. Vi får följa den råa sanningen om medeltida krigsföring i all dess chockerande brutalitet, smuts och äckel genom ögonen på bågskytten Nicholas Hook. Han har tidigare varit legosoldat i franska armén, men vid hemkomsten till England blir han, istället för dödad pga sitt svek mot hemlandet, upptäckt och värvad av kung Henrik V. Hooks enorma skicklighet med bågen kommer snart till användning igen. Bågskyttarna kom att spela en avgörande roll för utgången av detta fasansfulla blodbad. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Torsten Wahlund

Förlag: HörOpp!

Sharpe's Battle

In the spring of 1811, while quartered in the crumbling Portuguese fort of San Isidro, Richard Sharpe and his men are attacked by an elite French unit commanded by the formidable Brigadier Loup, and suffer heavy losses. Sharpe has already clashed once with Loup, and the Frenchman has sworn to have his revenge.After the attack, Sharpe is faced with the ruin of his career and reputation, as the army's high command tries to blame him for the disaster. With thousands of French troops massing at a tiny village nearby, Sharpe's only hope is to redeem himself on the battlefield. To save his honour, Sharpe must lead his men to glory in the narrow streets of Fuentes de Oñoro. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Devil

Five years after the Battle of Waterloo, Sharpe's peaceful retirement in Normandy is shattered by a plea for help. An old friend, Don Blas Vivar, is missing in Chile, reported dead at rebel hands – a report his wife refuses to believe. She appeals to Sharpe to find out the truth. So it is that the reluctant Sharpe and his constant companion in adventure, Patrick Harper, find themselves bound for Chile via St Helena, where they have a fateful meeting with the fallen Emperor Napoleon. Sharpe and Harper are convinced that they are on their way to collect a corpse; neither can imagine the dangers that await them in Chile. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Sean Bean

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Escape

Sharpe's Escape takes place in the summer of 1810, once again in the Peninsular War. The French are mounting their third and most dangerous invasion of Portugal. Captain Richard Sharpe with his company of redcoats and riflemen meets the invaders on the gaunt ridge of Bussaco. But there, despite a stunning British victory, the French are not stopped and the army have to fall back. Sharpe has made enemies among the Portuguese and during the retreat through Coimbra, he and Sergeant Harper are lured into a trap designed to kill them. With the help of an Englishwoman, Sharpe survives, but is cut off from the army. He has to rejoin his regiment if the command is not to fall to the ambitious Lieutenant Slinbsby. At the Lines of Torres Vedras, the vast defences built to stop the French before Lisbon, Sharpe confronts his enemies in a climactic battle. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Fortress

It is 1803 and Sir Arthur Wellesley's army is closing on the retreating Mahrattas in western India. Marching with the British is Ensign Richard Sharpe, newly made into an officer and wishing he had stayed a sergeant. Spurned by his new regiment, he is sent to the army's baggage train and there finds corruption, romance, treason and enemies old and new. Sergeant Hakeswill wants Sharpe dead, and Hakeswill has powerful friends while Sharpe has only an orphaned Arab boy as his ally. And waiting with the cornered Mahrattas is another enemy, the renegade Englishman, William Dodd, who does not envisage defeat, but only a glorious triumph. For the Mahrattas have taken refuge in Gawilghur, the greatest stronghold of India, perched high on its cliffs above the Deccan Plain. Who rules in Gawilghur, it is said, rules India, and Dodd knows that the fortress is impregnable. There, behind its double walls, in the towering twin forts, Sharpe must face his enemies in what will prove to be Wellesley's last battle on Indian soil. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Fury

In the winter of 1811 the war seemed lost. All Spain has fallen to the French, except for Cadiz which is now the Spanish capital and is under siege. Wellington and his British army are in Portugal, waiting for spring to spark the war to life again. Richard Sharpe and his company are part of a small expeditionary force sent to break a bridge across the River Guadiana. What begins as a brilliant piece of soldiering turns into disaster, thanks to the brutal savagery of the French Colonel Vandal who is leading his battalion to join the siege of Cadiz. Sharpe extricates a handful of men from the debacle and is driven south into the threatened city. There, in Cadiz, he discovers more than one enemy. Many Spaniards doubt Britain's motives and believe their future would be brighter if they made peace with the French, and one of them, a baleful priest, secures a powerful weapon to break the British alliance. He will use a beautiful whore and the letters she received from a wealthy man. The priest will use blackmail, and Sharpe must defeat him in a sinister war of knife and treachery in the dark alleys of the city. Yet the alliance will only survive if the French siege can be lifted. An allied army marches from the city to take on the more powerful French and, once again, a brilliant piece of soldiering turns to disaster, this time because the Spanish refuse to fight. A small British force is trapped by a French army, and the only hope now lies with the outnumbered redcoats who, on a hill beside the sea, refuse to admit defeat. And there, in the sweltering horror of Barossa, Sharpe finds Colonel Vandal again. Sharpe's Fury is based on the real events of the winter of 1811 that led to the extraordinary victory of Barossa, the battle which saw the British capture the first French eagle of the Napoleonic Wars. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Gold

Bold, professional and determined, Richard Sharpe embarks on a desperate mission. He must recover the treasure, vital to the success of the war, now hidden behind enemy lines. The gold is in the possession of a powerful guerrilla leader, feared by ally and enemy alike. And he has no love for Sharpe, the man who has stolen his woman. But Sharpe's fiercest battles lie with the British officers, ignorant of his deadly secret and mistrustful of his ruthless methods. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Havoc

It is 1809 and Lieutenant Sharpe, who belongs to a small British army that has a precarious foothold in Portugal, is sent to look for Kate Savage, the daughter of an English wine shipper. But before he can discover the missing girl, the French onslaught on Portugal begins and the city of Oporto falls. Sharpe is stranded behind enemy lines, but he has Patrick Harper, he has his riflemen and he has the assistance of a young, idealistic Portuguese officer. Together, they have to find the missing girl and extricate themselves from the entanglements cast by Colonel Christopher, a mysterious Englishman who has his own ideas on how the French can be ejected from Portugal. Those ideas are as fantastic as they are dangerous, but the French are rampant, Lisbon is threatened and Christopher sees Sharpe and his riflemen as the only obstacles to his subtle scheme. But there is a newly arrived British commander in Lisbon, Sir Arthur Wellesley, and just when Sharpe and his men seem doomed, Sir Arthur mounts his own counter attack, an operation that will send the French army reeling back into the northern mountains. Sharpe becomes a hunter instead of the hunted and he will exercise a dreadful revenge on the men who double crossed him. Sharpe's Havoc is a classic Sharpe story, a return to Portugal in the company of Sergeant Patrick Harper, Captain Hogan and Sharpe's beloved Greenjackets. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Prey

It is 1807 and Sharpe, back from India and Trafalgar, has joined the newly formed Greenjackets – but his career is in ruins, and his future in the army apparently hopeless. He is rescued from disgrace by General Sir David Baird, an old comrade from India, who needs a 'disposable' man for a mission in Copenhagen. An army is travelling to the Danish capital to enforce British policy, but unless Sharpe can complete the mission against enemies as subtle and clever as any he has ever faced, that army will meet disaster. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Sword

Richard Sharpe is once again at war. But this time his enemy is a single man – the ruthless, sadistic Colonel Leroux. Sharpe's mission is to safeguard El Mirador, the spy whose network of agents is vital to the British victory. So Sharpe must enter a new world of political and military intrigue. And in the unfamiliar surroundings of aristocratic Spanish society, his only guide is the beautiful Marquesa – a woman with her own secrets to conceal… Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Tiger

Throughout the series, there are references to Sharpe's early soldiering life in India. With the same meticulous research and attention to detail that is found in the Peninsular War books, Bernard Cornwell has sumptuously recreated the 1799 campaign against Seringapatam which made the British masters of southern India, a campaign that pitted brutalized soldiers against an ancient and splendid civilization. Sharpe, the rest of his battalion and rising star of the general staff Arthur Wellesley, are about to embark upon the siege of the island citadel of the Tippoo of Mysore, Seringapatam. The British must remove this potentate from his Tiger Throne, but he has gone to great lengths to defend his city from attack. When a senior British officer is captured by the Tippoo's forces, Sharpe is offered a chance to attempt a rescue and infiltrate the Tippoo's forces. Sharpe needs no invitation to get away from the tyrannical Sergeant Hakeswill, but once inside the dangerous world of the Tippoo he realises he will need all his wits just to stay alive, let alone save the British army from catastrophe. Set against the background of dazzling wealth, ruinous poverty, gorgeous palaces, sudden cruelty and pitiless battles, Sharpe's Tiger is his greatest adventure yet. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Sean Bean

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Trafalgar

His voyage home should be a period of rest, but his ship is riven with treachery and threatened by the Revenant, a French sea raider that is terrorising British shipping in the Indian Ocean. Betrayed and defeated, Sharpe is imprisoned on the Ile de France, doomed to rot there until the war ends. But an unlikey ally secures his escape into a British warship that is hunting the Revenant. That hunt turns into a pursuit as the French ship races home, and when she encounters the combined French and Spanish fleets of Cadiz, it seems Sharpe's enemies are safe. But over the horizon is another fleet, led by Nelson, and Sharpe's revenge will come when the two armadas meet on a calm October day off Cape Trafalgar. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sharpe's Triumph

As millions of readers came to know Bernard Cornwell's brilliant creation Richard Sharpe as he fought his way through the Peninsular War, so they discovered that Sharpe had started his soldiering career in India. In 1997, Sharpe's Tiger finally lifted the veil on this exciting early life and became the biggest selling Sharpe novel of all. Now, the year is 1804 and young Sergeant Richard Sharpe is still in India where, following his successes in Sharpe's Tiger, he is on the trail of a renegade East India Company officer. The pursuit takes him through the vicious siege of Ahmednuggur to the bloody battlefield of Assaye where the future Duke of Wellington won what he considered to be his greatest victory, with Richard Sharpe, naturally, at his side. Full of the action and drama and atmosphere that have made this series so immensely popular with both readers and television viewers, Sharpe's Triumph will be one of the most eagerly awaited novels of the year. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Paul McGann

Förlag: Harper Collins

Starbuck Chronicles 2 - Copperhead

A copperhead is a turncoat a northerner who sympathises with the South. Captain Nate Starbuck, forced out of his beloved Legion by the enmity of its founder, General Washington Faulconer, becomes caught up in a dangerous double game of espionage. He is given no choice but to travel from a prison cell in Richmond, Virginia, to the secret centre of the high Northen command in a desperate attempt to thwart Yankee strategy which threatens to overwhelm the South. Starbuck plays a difficult and complex game of bluff and betrayal in a winner takes all effort to save his own life and return to the Legion but at a high cost to his personal and professional loyalties as a friend and a man of war. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: David Rintoul

Förlag: Harper Collins

Starbuck Chronicles 3 - Battle flag

Captain Nate Starbuck, yankee fighting for the Southern cause, has to survive and win with his ragged Company in the bitter struggle not only against the formidable Northern army but equally in opposition to his own superiors who would like nothing better than to see Nate Starbuck dead and dishonoured. Starbuck's courage is tested to the limit in his desperate manoeuvres to retrieve his own and the Legion's honour in this the thrid narrative of Bernard Cornwell's sweeping epic of the American Civil War. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: David Rintoul

Förlag: Harper Collins

Starbuck Chronicles 4 - The Bloody Ground

Right at the moment Nate Starbuck begins to doubt his own courage, the Faulconer Legion is spitefully stripped from him and he is given command of the Yellowlegs a battalion of cowards, malingerers, stragglers, skulkers and convicts led by cowards and bullies. In order to restore the honour of the Special Battalion, Starbuck pits himself and his Yellowlegs against the Union army at Sharpsburg in one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War. But not all his enemies are northerners: among his own ranks are white demons, bad as they come, whose rifles, revolvers and resentments are aimed at Starbuck's back. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: David Rintoul

Förlag: Harper Collins

Sword song

Our hero, Uhtred, has been made Governor of London. This fourth book in the series is set mostly in London and covers Alfred's building of fortified towns to hold Wessex and his push into Mercia. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Jamie Glover

Förlag: Harper Collins

The Grail Quest 3 - Heretic

In 1347 the English capture Calais and the war with France is suspended by a truce. But for Thomas of Hookton, the hero of Harlequin and Vagabond, there is no end to the fighting. He is pursuing the grail, the most sacred of Christendom's relics, and is sent to his ancestral homeland, Gascony, to engineer a confrontation with his deadliest enemy, Guy Vexille. Once in the south country Thomas becomes a raider, leading his archers in savage forays that will draw his enemy to his arrows. But then his fortunes change. Thomas becomes the hunted as his campaign is destroyed by the church. With only one companion, a girl condemned to burn as a heretic, Thomas goes to the valley of Astarac where he believes the grail was once hidden and might still be concealed, and there he plays a deadly game of hide and seek with an overwhelming enemy. Then, just as Thomas succeeds in meeting his enemy face to face, fate intervenes as the deadliest plague in the history of mankind erupts into Europe. What had been a landscape of castles, monasteries, vineyards and villages, becomes death's kingdom and the need for the grail, as a sign of God's favour, is more urgent than ever. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Tim Pigott-Smith

Förlag: Harper Collins

The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom is set in the England of the ninth and tenth centuries. These were the years when the Danish Vikings had invaded and occupied three of England's four kingdoms, and when King Alfred, his son and grandson fought back and won the freedom of the country again. The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed English nobleman. Captured as a child and raised by the Danes, he now finds his allegiances divided. But the one thing he knows is that he wants to recover his father's land, the fort by the wild northern sea that we now know as Bamburgh. Bernard Cornwell is a master of historical fiction and this new series looking with a fresh light at Alfred the Great, his kingdom and his legacy will be as outstanding and as popular as the Grail Quest and the Warlord Chronicles. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Jamie Glover

Förlag: Harper Collins

The Lords of the North

The year is 878 and Wessex is free from the Vikings.Uhtred, the dispossessed son of a Northumbrian lord, helped Alfred win that victory, but now he is disgusted by Alfred's lack of generosity and repelled by the king's insistent piety. He flees Wessex, going back north to seek revenge for the killing of his foster father and to rescue his stepsister, captured in the same raid. He needs to find his old enemy, Kjartan, a renegade Danish lord who lurks in the formidable stronghold of Dunholm. Uhtred arrives in the north to discover rebellion, chaos and fear. His only ally is Hild, a West Saxon nun fleeing her calling, and his best hope is his sword, with which he has made a formidable reputation as a warrior. He will need the assistance of other warriors if he is to attack Dunholm and he finds Guthred, a slave who believes he is a king. He takes him across the Pennines to where a desperate alliance of fanatical Christians and beleaguered Danes form a new army to confront the terrible Viking lords who rule Northumbria. 'The Lords of the North' is a powerful story of betrayal, romance and struggle, set in an England of turmoil, upheaval and glory. Uhtred, a Northumbrian raised as a Viking, a man without lands, a warrior without a country, has become a splendid heroic figure. Författare: Bernard Cornwell

Uppläsare: Jamie Glover

Förlag: Harper Collins