MASTER AND COMMANDER is the first volume in the O'Brian's delightful series about the English Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, in which Jack Aubrey (a captain in the Royal Navy) and Stephen Maturin (who will become his ship's surgeon and closest friend) first meet, in April 1800 at a performance of Locatelli's C-major Quartet at a concert in Minorca. This first installment is a beautifully written and observed novel of war, friendship, love, and--not incidentally--natural history, amateur music-making, the British intelligence network, and 18th-century life in general. The book was the basis for the successful and critically acclaimed 2003 movie.

The "wine-dark sea" of the title is the Great South Sea, and Jack Aubrey and the crew of the Surprise are pursuing an American privateer. They are beset not only by the eruption of a volcano which takes innumerable lives, but by revolution, storms, frostbite, and the sudden appearance of Aubrey's illegitimate son.

Stripped of his rank and without a ship, Jack Aubrey assumes command of a privateer, hoping to redeem himself and win reinstatement in the British Navy. With his crony, ship's physician Stephen Maturin, he sets out on what proves to be a harrowing adventure in his old ship, the "Surprise," which Stephen has purchased with his newly inherited wealth. And, on top of that, he and Diana Villiers are expecting a child.

The fourth volume in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. Now married to the beautiful Sophie, Captain Jack Aubrey must cope with two extremely difficult colleagues--one a dissolute rake, the other a brutal martinet--on a mission to take the island of Mauritius from the French.

The fifth volume in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. In one of the most exciting novels in this series, Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship's physician, Stephen Maturin, sail to Australia with a shipload of dangerous convicts and a beautiful spy, Louisa Wogan. A mysterious disease strikes, taking the lives of many of the crew, and the severely undermanned ship must outrun a Dutch warship in the frigid Antarctic waters.

Because of a convoluted scheme inaugurated by French intelligence, Jack Aubrey finds himself accused of stock manipulation and sentenced not only to prison and the pillory, but stripped of his rank and command. His friend, Stephen Maturin, sticks by him, and Stephen's own personal life is complicated by a misunderstanding between himself and Diana Villiers.

In the second volume of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, Jack Aubrey escapes from a French prison and returns to England to face his creditors. He meets Sophia Williams--destined to become his wife--while Stephen Maturin becomes involved with the faithless Diana Villiers. A near-mutiny and a particularly bloody encounter with a French ship provide Jack and Stephen with their usual share of adventure on the high seas.

Aubrey and Maturin must cope not only with the capture of a British whaler by a chief in the Sandwich Islands, but a stowaway named Clarissa Harvill who holds a secret vital to Maturin's intelligence operations.

The action ranges from the long and frustrating blockage of the Toulon harbor to a dangerous mission to Greece. Captain Jack Aubrey's seamanship is sorely tested, but his friendship with Stephen Maturin--whose ramblings in natural history form an entertaining part of this novel--remains firm. It is further cemented when Stephen saves Jack's life in the midst of a treacherous situation in Malta.

The sixth volume in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. Stephen Maturin and Jack Aubrey find themselves imprisoned in Boston at the outbreak of the War of 1812, and Diana Villiers turns up in the same place. Stephen's espionage skills are crucial as they find a way back home.

The third volume in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. On the Indian subcontinent, Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship, the "Surprise," fight for an unusually lavish treasure carried by a fleet of French ships. Meanwhile, the romance between the ship's surgeon, Stephen Maturin, and the impossible Diana Villiers takes an unfortunate turn.

The British Navy is faced with Napoleon's escape from Elba and the "hundred days" until his final defeat at Waterloo in mid-1815. Aubrey and Maturin are in a race against time to intercept his forces before French aid arrives.

Feuds old and new fuel the conflict in O'Brien's 18th work of fiction. When Mick Bugler inherits land and returns to the rural west of Ireland to claim it, his neighbor Joseph Brennan disputes his ownership. To complicate matters, Joseph's devoted sister Breege falls in love with Bugler. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

Nell Steadman, one of O'Brien's country innocents, flees her stifling family life to marry an older man who turns out to be just as repressive. Her long struggle to free herself, and to keep custody of her two sons, ends when she finally achieves a divorce--after which she takes up with a series of almost equally unsuitable men.

McGreevy, an I.R.A. gunman fleeing from the police, encounters Josie O'Meara, a widow who lives in a remote farmhouse. McGreevy hides in Josie's house, holding her hostage. Thrown together in a hostile situation, each with a different pain, each with a different history, they find that their relationship gradually changes--and transforms them as individuals.

Based on a true story, this novel is about a young man who kills--a lifelong psychopath who stuns his small Irish town with his crimes. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Edna O'Brien's life of Joyce (which she distinguishes from a "biography") emphasizes his exile, his marriage, and the magic of his language. A lifelong admirer of Joyce and his work, O'Brien has written an accessible and informative study of the writer from his rebellious youth in Dublin to his eccentric, alcoholic, and distinguished old age. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.