March 1814. Sir Richard returns from a wearing campaign in North American waters to take up a command in Malta. Meanwhile his nephew Adam remains behind as captain of a frigate on the American coast, as England's long war with Napoleon reaches its end.

In the days immediately following Waterloo, the British fleet confronts a new threat: Algerian pirates preying on hapless merchant ships. Adam Bolitho, Admiral Richard Bolitho's nephew and heir, finds himself in command of Unrivalled, a new kind of frigatesleek, fast, and heavily armed."

September 1815. In this, the newest novel in Alexander Kent's Bolitho series, Captain Adam Bolitho carries on the Royal Navy tradition of his seafaring family. Summoned to the Admiralty by Sir Edward Pellew, Adam is ordered to sail his 46-gun frigate Unrivalled into African waters to aid His Majesty's campaign against slave-runners. Preoccupied with avenging his uncle Richard's death while confronting an entrenched adversary and the aggressive opposition of the Algerian overlord, he fears he may be setting his crew on a course of doom.

Combining three novellas that cover the early years of Richard Bolitho's service in the Royal Navy-including the latest Bolitho novella Band of Brothers-this omnibus is the new first book in the Richard Bolitho series, taking the place of McBooks's Midshipman Bolitho. All three novellas are packed with trademark Kent descriptions of ships under sail, eighteenth century sea battles and the burdens of command in a crowded wooden world bent on warfare.