As a powerful insurgent army closes on Liberia's capital, London is forced to act, and HMS Beaufort is dispatched to West Africa to pull British nationals from the teeth of encroaching danger. But when the volatile situation ashore unravels, the frigate's crew must draw deep on reserves of skill, ingenuity and sheer bloody-mindedness to save it. And with time running out, Beaufort's Captain makes the decision to take his ship upriver....

Adrian Bleese spent 12 years flying on police helicopters, and attended almost 3,000 incidents, as one of only a handful of civilian air observers working anywhere in the world. In Above the Law, he recounts the most intriguing, challenging, amusing, and downright baffling episodes in his career working for Suffolk Constabulary and the National Police Air Service. Rescuing lost walkers, chasing cars down narrow country lanes, searching for a rural cannabis factory, and disrupting an illegal forest rave…they’re all in a day’s work.

In this collection of heart-wrenching and life-affirming missions, we hear blow-by-blow descriptions of some of the most dramatic rescues from the last 20 years. We experience these through the eyes of the lifesavers as they must make life-or-death decisions, face fierce conditions and tackle difficult and dangerous situations. But we also see the optimism, passion and courage that is crucial to a successful rescue and experience the genuine joy felt by the volunteer crews and lifeguards in being a part of something so important. 

Max Seager was the best there was. His skills sharpened in the midst of a brutal African civil war, he was at once a policeman, soldier and detective - a tracker of men. He thought he’d left that life behind him, but then he learns that his particular expertise is required again. Two teenage girls have been abducted and are being held to ransom, hidden deep within the Zimbabwean bush that was once his hunting ground. The mother of one of the girls begs him to help and, unable to walk away, Max returns to Africa with a handpicked team of former comrades-in-arms.

He is known to the Germans as 'Sphinx', to others as Alex Wolff, a European businessman. He arrives suddenly in Cairo from out of the desert, armed with a radio set, a lethal blade and a copy of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca - a ruthless man with a burning, relentless conviction that he will win at all costs. The stakes are high, for the survival of the British campaign in North Africa is in the balance. Only Major William Vandam, an intelligence officer, and the beautiful courtesan Elene can put an end to Wolff's brilliant clandestine reports of British troop movements and strategic plans.

It started by stealth. At first, no one could see what was happening. By the time the alarm was raised it was too late. Ireland had been seized: a financial assault consolidated by a military one. But as the island is overrun, it’s soon clear that the invaders did not anticipate the fierce resolve of of their Celtic opponents. Nor the determination of the country’s powerful allies to throw out the occupiers....

Titus Quayle was the best MI6 ever had - an operative of exceptional and lethal ability. But they burned him, abandoned him and left him for dead. Holly Morton is the daughter of the spymaster who first recognised Quayle’s potential and the key to unlocking a global conspiracy her father died trying to bring down. To uncover the truth, Quayle must keep her safe from the threat of a powerful enemy in a globetrotting race against time. Nowhere is safe. 

It’s 1944 and Germany is facing its final defeat. 5,000 miles across the Allied dominated Atlantic, 22 men and five nuns aboard the Barquentine Deutschland are battling home to Kiel. Among them are a U-boat ace captured in a raid on Falmouth. A female American doctor caught in the nightmare of flying bombs. A gunboat commander who’s fought from the Solomons to the Channel and a rear admiral desperate to get some of the action. Allies and enemies, men and women, the hunters and the haunted all drawn into the eye of the storm.

The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, re-fitting in a Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau. For Captain Mark Gunnar - driven by the memory of his torture at the hands of the Viet Cong guerrillas - the new command is a chance to even the score against a ruthless, unrelenting enemy. But Payenhau is very different from his expectations....

Antarctic ice. In the world where hundreds of millions of people have been displaced from their homes by the Deluge - a hundred-foot-rise in sea level from melting ice caps - Partricia Beenan is lucky. She is still an American citizen with the right to live on the continent, unlike so many 'wetfoots' whose homes lie deep under the waves or the refugees from nations now completely under water.

As the Second World War progresses, the destruction of Allied shipping mounts. Fighter pilot Tim Rowan is posted to an escort carrier to help guard the precious convoys. His adventures take him first to the Arctic and then the Indian Ocean.

5 August 2005. While conducting a secret mission thirty miles off the remote cost of Kamchatka, the Russian Navy submarine AS-28 became snared in the thick cables anchored to 60-tonne concrete blocks. Without power the stricken boat sunk to the seafloor. Trapped too deep to escape her crew now had just seventy two hours before the air onboard ran out. Twenty-four hours later - still haunted by the loss of the Kursk - the Russian Navy requested assistance.

Indo-China 1941, and cruising somewhere off Saigon is the world’s largest, most dangerous submarine, the French Soufriere. The British navy must capture and use her in the defence of Singapore before she is used against them. For Commander Robert Ainslie it is the supreme challenge of his career.

It is February 1942, and the war in the Atlantic looks grim for the Allied convoys. The Great Blackout has started, leaving the spy centre of Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire at a loss as to what the Nazis are planning. U-boat command has changed the Hydra cipher. The enigma cannot be broken. Cipher experts can no longer eavesdrop on Nazi command, which leaves convoys open for attack by packs of marauding Nazi submarines.

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.