It seems that having discovered a new world, we have been doomed to then loseit. The year is 1775. Captain James Cook is forty-seven years old and the toast ofthe Admiralty, the Royal Society and the English public after his triumphant secondworld voyage. His wife, Elizabeth, pregnant with their sixth child, relishes the fact thather now-famous husband is home for good. He has been absent far too long. But James cannot resist the call of the sea. Offered the chance to discover a long-soughtpassage from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic, he accepts the challenge. Muchagainst Elizabeth’s wishes, he sets sail for the Pacific, where destiny awaits on theshores of a distant tropical island. The stunning conclusion the trilogy that began withThe Secret Life of James Cook and continued with James Cook’s New World.

This marvelous collection of travel stories from the South Pacific reveals Paul Gauguin's shocking Tahitian secrets, retraces the last tragic days of Robert Louis Stevenson, and recounts the author's own haunting by Herman Melville, as well as his attempts to seduce the Slovenian Olympic ski team in the Cook Islands.

A fictionalised account of Captain James Cook′s early life, THE SECRET LIFE OF JAMES COOK depicts an imaginative form Cook′s life and ambitions, his naval career in Canada and beyond, and his marriage to Elizabeth and their family life. Drawing on his deep knowledge of the South Pacific and Australasia, novelist Graeme Lay recreates the peerless navigator′s life up to, and including, his first circumnavigation of the world. In particular, Graeme examines the relationship between James and his equally remarkable wife, Elizabeth, the woman he married when he was 34 and she 21, and by whom he had six children, all born while he was away at sea. THE SECRET LIFE OF JAMES COOK also depicts an often-stormy relationship between the dashing and privileged naturalist, Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his first world voyage.

The story of Fletcher Christian, sailor, adventurer and mutineer of the HMS Bounty. From New Zealand's master historical novelist comes an enthralling maritime saga of the most notorious and far-reaching rebellion in naval history, and the relationship between Englishman Fletcher Christian and Isabella, his Tahitian lover.On 28 April 1789 Fletcher and his followers take control of HMAV Bounty and set commander William Bligh adrift in the ship's launch. What follows is a story brimming with conflict as Fletcher, his fellow-mutineers and their Tahitian women seek sanctuary from the wrath of the Royal Navy, then attempt to build a new society on remote Pitcairn Island.But their attempts are doomed, as envy, lust and racism destroy the Utopia that Fletcher and Isabella dreamed of. This is historical fiction at its finest.