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Adventure Books
What branch of fiction combines romance, travel, history, and fun? Swashbuckling adventure!
OK, don't look at us like that. What good is having a Twenty-First Century, and all it
entails, if you can't have a good romp through the previous ones?
So we're doing a line of fiction by masters of Adventure. We start with Rafael Sabatini,
the acknowledged 20th-Century master of the genre. If you're already sold on adventure fiction
in e-books, you can buy them directly from our many retailers: Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble.
Six "Lost" Sabatini Adventures Collected for the First Time
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The King of England is Dead! Murdered by a treasonous Parliament, beheaded and buried in a desecrated grave. His son, the rightful King Charles II, is a fugitive, living in exile in Scotland surrounded only by his closest friends and retainers. One of these is Lionel Faversham, loyal Cavalier and swordsman, handsome and elegant, the toast of what passes for society among the dour Scottish Presbyterians and the court-in-exile. His adventures, escapades, and his greatest romance make up the six stories of this book. Out of print for more than eighty years, and never before collected in book form, the "Lal" stories form the second of our new e-book editions of "unknown" Sabatini stories. Edited, and with an introduction by, Sabatini scholar Jesse F. Knight. Classic adventures, of the kind that only Sabatini could write. Be with Lal on his joyful return, as a desperate nation begs its King to come home and reign; follow Lal as he defeats his enemies and exposes the treacheries that endanger the King; as he wins, and then loses, and now finally comes to happiness with the great love of his life. 96 pages; file size 376 kB [PDF]On sale now!
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Long Before Dot-Com, There Was the South Sea Bubble
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In The Lion's Skin, a man is raised in France from infancy to destroy his true father;
for his father deserted and abandoned his mother and left him to die. Now he's in England for the first time, carrying a message that will suck Lord Ostermore into a doomed conspiracy to throw out the King of England and replace him with the Stewart Pretender. But now he meets and challenges his brother, and meets and falls desperately in love with his father's ward. The King's spies can't find the evidence that will put him in prison; but he finds himself entranced, and entrapped, and finally on the point of death. And now things really get complex.
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One of Rafael Sabatini's Most Famous Books
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Possibly the best-known of Sabatini's novels is Captain Blood, a classic pirate tale of a gentleman physician of England, unjustly accused of treason in Monmouth's Rebellion against
King James II, and sent to the Caribbean as an indentured slave to a plantation owner. Blood is
strong and defiant, and a raid by a Spanish warship gives him chance of escape, and a new career
as the most-feared pirate of the Spanish Main. But he cannot forget his desire for the niece
of the man who held him slave, and she haunts him through his triumphs over the Spanish, the
French...and the English! Part of our cultural heritage; read the book and see why.
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He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad
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Scaramouche is the story of a man born on the wrong side of
the blanket, fugitive from the King's justice, star of traveling players, and the finest
swordsman in all of France. Scaramouche, who without believing in Egalité helps to
incite the French Revolution
and then has to deal with the consequences. Scaramouche, who is tormented by a love for a
woman who will not have him, and a hatred for a vile noble whose fate is linked to his in mysterious
ways. In Scaramouche, Sabatini gave us an unforgettable character, and the archetype of
the loyal adventurer who can incite a revolution but must live always with part of himself missing. Inscribed on Sabatini's gravestone is this sentence, the opening line of the novel that made him famous: "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
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A new story collection by Rafael Sabatini
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Available right now: the first time
these stories have ever been available to the the mass market. The Outlaws of Falkensteig
contains seven stories about, well, the Outlaws of the Falkensteig mountain region, in a fabulous 17th-Century Germany that lives only in our imagination. And what an imagination Sabatini gave us to play with!
Kings and courtiers, bad men and captains of the guard; fops and swordfighters and rustic innkeepers; and
women who love, and threaten our hero and save his life, drive him to the edge of destruction
and bring him true happiness. We
haven't even mentioned the plot twists that turn the world inside out, and the secret information that
the reader is privy to—or maybe not!
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Sabatini scholar Jesse F. Knight has written an introduction
that places these stories in Sabatini's oeuvre, and Karen Schaffer has created a cover based on
one of the original magazine illustrations hand-colored in the style of an engraving of the period.
This book is a Hidden Knowledge exclusive, and is not available in any other electronic format.
Classic Sabatini novels now available in high-quality e-book formats
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A little-known gem by Sabatini is Bardelys the Magnificent.
Bardelys "the Magnificent," brilliant but erratic courtier to the great King Louis XIII of France,
wagers that he can win the hand of the beautiful
but reluctant Roxalanne of Lavédan. But he has reckoned without the confusions of the
Orléanist rebellion, and a case of mistaken identity that furthers his romantic mission seems
destined to make him fodder for the Hangman. Danger, excitement, swordplay, romantic
interludes—you name it, this book has it. The 1926 silent film [now, incredibly,
lost forever!] starred John Gilbert and Eleanor Boardman in no-holds-barred performances. [It was
also notable for having included the first credited part for John Wayne.]
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One of his most famous books: The Sea-Hawk—which you can sometimes
catch on the movie channels in the famous cinema version starring Errol Flynn. Sir Oliver Tressilian
is betrayed by his brother and sold into slavery, and spurned by the woman he loves.
Escaping the slavers, he becomes the leader of the Barbary pirates of Algiers. Now is the
time for his revenge; a stunning raid on the Cornish coast yields not only his brother,
but his ex-fiancée.... A must-read!
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Love-at-Arms is an exuberant romp through love and
war, heroism and treachery in late 15th-Century Italy. A strong and noble Count must
save the Prince's beautiful niece from the unwanted attentions of a loathsome Duke
and a treacherous courtier. As the Duke's armies lay siege to the impregnable castle, which
must survive on supplies of much wine and little powder, the count turns the tables on
his enemies. You'll see why Sabatini is considered the all-time greatest writer of
historical adventure.
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Don't confuse these high-quality e-book editions with the other e-texts you can find on the Web (or in some Web storefronts). Our books are laid out the way you know books should be laid out, with appropriate text (and bold and Italic) formats, error and spell-checking, and corrections back to the original book text. They're optimized for use in e-book readers and software packages.
OK, enough of this here; let's go buckle some swash!
Places you can go on the Hidden Knowledge websites:
| Hidden Knowledge Home
| Latest News
| About e-Books |
| Rafael Sabatini Home Page |
| Magazine Cover Art Archive
| Travel History Home Page |
| Burton Holmes Travelogues
| The Trans-Siberian Railroad
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Adventure page created 31 July 2005; latest update 2 April 2019
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