Arrow Books Send a Gunboat Reeman Douglas

The latest from Douglas Reeman - our greatest living naval writer • January 1970, and the final chapter in the Blackwood history appears to have closed with the murder in Cyprus of Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Blackwood, and the subsequent sale of the ancestral home. Disillusioned and grieving for his distinguished father, Lieutenant Ross Blackwood believes there is no future for him in the Corps. The Royal Marines have been reduced in strength, and their role in a modern world, after so splendid a tradition, diminished to policing and paperwork. But Ross remains a Blackwood and a Royal Marine, and the loyalty and dedication of a Blackwood to the Corps sustain him from vicious guerilla warfare in Malaysia through the moral and political minefields of Northern Ireland, where one man's terrorist is another's patriot, to the South Atlantic, and a conflict as bloody as it is unpredictable

1914-1918 ... This is the third book in the Blackwood saga. For three generations, members of the Blackwood family served the Royal Marines with distinction. With the outbreak of World War I, at last comes Jonathan Blackwood's turn to carry the family name into battle • But as the young marines embark for the Dardanelles, and a new kind of warfare, it dawns on them that the days of scarlet coats and an unchanging tradition of honour and glory have gone forever. First in Gallipoli, and two years later at Flanders, comes their horrifying initiation into a wholesale slaughter for which no training could ever have prepared them • Caught up in the savagery of a conflict beyond any officer's control, Blackwood's future rests on the 'horizon' - the dark lip of the trench which was the last fateful sight for so many

Other sailors volunteered to fight. They volunteered to die • They were the men and women of the Royal Navy's legendary Special Operations units, spoken of in hushed tones by even the most battle-hardened seamen. Volunteering to carrying out lightning raids on hostile coasts, they became a navy within a navy - each hand-picked for their individual skills, and all of them courageous beyond words in the face of immense danger • Against the mighty backdrop of World War II they performed their small but deadly operations - living often beyond hope, sometimes beyond mercy

A classic of naval fiction from 'the master of the modern sea story' • With his own boat, the motor yacht Sea Fox, former naval officer Philip Vivian had hoped to earn a living free from the petty restrictions of everyday life, close to the sea he loved. Now, however, his dream is threatened by financial difficulties. So when a profitable, if legally dubious, proposition is put to him by an old naval comrade in arms, Vivian is willing to listen. But what starts out as a harmless adventure soon turns into something altogether more sinister. And Vivian finds himself trapped in a treacherous web of violence and crime, dangerously torn between his stubborn sense of past loyalties and his duty to a society he has always despised

The Western Ocean. 1942: from the bridge of HMS Gladiator, Lieutenant-Commander David Howard's orders were chillingly clear. There could be no mercy • To the men who fought to protect the vital, threatened Merchant Navy convoys in the Western Approaches, the Battle of the Atlantic was a full-scale war; a relentless, savage war against an ever-present enemy and a violent sea - in an arena known only to its embittered survivors as the killing ground • HMS Gladiator was part of that war. An ordinary, hard-worked destroyer and her company of men. Fighting for survival in a war with no rules

Three very different girls sign up as student nurses in 1936, while England is still mourning the death of George V. Dora is a tough East Ender, driven by ambition, but also desperate to escape her squalid, overcrowded home and her abusive stepfather. Helen is the quiet one, a mystery to her fellow nurses, avoiding fun, gossip and the limelight. In fact she is in the formidable shadow of her overbearing mother, who dominates every aspect of her life. Can a nursing career free Helen at last? The third of our heroines is naughty, rebellious Millie an aristocrat on the run from her conventional upper class life. She is doomed to clash over and over again with terrifying Sister Hyde and to get into scrape after scrape especially where men are concerned

It’s the final year of training for three young nurses at The Nightingale Hospital… • Helen is at a crossroads in her life as she battles with her domineering mother over both her love life and her future career • Dora can't stop loving Nick, who is married to her best friend, Ruby. But Ruby is hiding a dark secret with the potential to destroy Ruby's marriage • Millie is anxious about her fiance, sent to Spain to cover the Civil War, and things only get worse when she encounters a fortune teller who gives her a sinister warning • With war looming in Europe, and the East End of London squaring up to the threat of Oswald Mosley's blackshirts, the women of the Nightingale have to face their own challenges, at work and in love • From the author of The Nightingale Girls and The Nightingale Sisters, this is the perfect read for fans of Call the Midwife

East London, 1917 • Anna is over the moon when her sweetheart Edward returns from the front line. As he recovers from injuries sustained in war, they make plans to be married. But the horrors of the trenches cast a long shadow • Caring for shell-shocked soldiers brings untold challenges for Grace, and her parents have very different dreams for her future. Will she have the strength to forge her own path? • Meanwhile Dulcie has her sights firmly set on her own happy ending. Yet sometimes we find love where we least expect to • Each nurse has her own battle to fight but they must pull together to find true happiness

To the student nurses at The Nightingale hospital, the ward sisters are heartless and frightening, with impossibly high standards. But the sisters have troubles of their own • Violet • The new night sister is not all that she seems. Who is she and what dark secret is she hiding? As the mystery deepens, Sister Wren is determined to find out the truth • Dora • The student nurse is struggling with her own secret, and with her heartbreak over Nick, the man who got away. A new arrival on the ward brings the chance to put a smile back on her face. But can she really get over Nick so easily? • Millie • Dora’s fellow student is also torn between the two men in her life. But then an unexpected friendship with an elderly patient makes her question where her heart – and her future – really lies

November, 1941: The War in the Pacific • Lieutenant Ralph Trewin, D.S.C., arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the shallow-draught gunboat, H.M.S. Porcupine • To Trewin, still shocked from wounds received during the evacuation of Crete, the gunboat and her five elderly consorts seem to symbolise the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore. And the captain of the Porcupine is as unwilling as the rest to take heed of Trewin's alarm, for to him the gunboat represents his last chance • The following month, the Japanese invade Malaya. In three months, Singapore, the impregnable fortress, knows the humiliation of surrender • Through the misery and despair of this bloody campaign, Trewin and his captain are forced to draw on each other's beliefs and weaknesses, and together they weld the little gunboat into a symbol of bravery and pride

Memories are short on HMS Royston - they have to be • As mother ship to a battered, war-torn bunch of MTBs she must carry out her vital role whatever the conditions, whatever the risk • Sub-Lieutenant Royce is newly assigned to MTB 1991, joining a crew already seasoned by death and fear • Now with only three months' sea-experience behind him, Royce must learn the job the hard way - in the tough school of combat • A classic tale of naval warfare from Douglas Reeman, the all-time bestselling master of naval fiction, who served with the Royal Navy on convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic and the North Sea. He has written dozens of naval books under his own name and the pseudonym Alexander Kent, including the famous Richard Bolitho books set during the Napoleonic Wars

It takes courage to overcome the odds • Liverpool 1928: abandoned by her mother at a very young age, Dot McCann lives a lonely life with her distant aunt and uncle. A cuckoo in the nest, she spends her days trying to keep out of trouble • When Dot overhears a conversation whilst playing in the street, her life changes for ever. What she discovers could send one man to prison and another to the gallows. In a desperate attempt to right a wrong, Dot teams up with runaway orphan Corky, Emma, a local jeweller whose shop has been burgled, and Nick, a handsome young reporter investigating the crime • But Dot and Emma have been recognised and they soon find themselves in very real danger. Will they uncover the truth before it’s too late?