Rafael Sabatini, página 2 de 5

Negli anni precedenti la Rivoluzione Francese, la vita di Andre-Louis Moreau figlioccio di un notabile di provincia e destinato a una grigia carriera legale cambia allimprovviso quando assiste alluccisione in duello del suo migliore amico a opera del marchese de la Tour dAzyr.Giurando di vendicarsi, lascia tutto e si trova a spalleggiare i rivoluzionari e, per scampare allarresto, si unisce a una compagnia di attori girovaghi, camuffandosi sotto la maschera di Scaramouche.In queste vesti si trovera di nuovo a fronteggiare il marchese, diventato intanto suo rivale in amore. Per portare a termine la vendetta, ad Andre non resta che diventare uno spadaccino ancora piu temibile del rivale...

El gran clásico de las novelas de aventuras náuticas. La vida del capitán Blood, inspirada directamente en la biografía de Henry Morgan, es un continuo proceso de búsqueda de la libertad, manteniéndose fiel a unos principios de igualdad, en una epoca en la que la pirateria estaba legitimada y era tolerada por los gobiernos europeos. Elegido almirante por los bucaneros, Blood emprende una expedicion contra Puerto Principe y Porto Bello, pero la mas espectacular es su entrada en Panama, la llamada Taza de Oro, de la que se retira con un cuantioso botin. Nombrado gobernador de Jamaica, no tarda en ser desposeido de su cargo, pues la firmeza de sus principios y su fuerte caracter casan mal con la diplomacia necesaria para representar al gobierno britanico en las Antillas.

Dr Peter Blood has put his soldiering past behind him. He is happy tending his geraniums and his patients in a quiet English town. But a moment of mercy sees him sent to be a slave in Barbados - and puts him on the path to becoming a fearsome pirate captain.In this swashbuckling, globe-spanning adventure, Blood is caught up in the Duke of Monmouths rebellion and saves the life of one of the rebels.Notorious "hanging judge" Jeffreys sentences him to 10 years as a slave. There, he falls in love with the daughter of the man who owns him. But he risks it all by stealing a Spanish ship that attacked the town and then sailing off to form a band of pirates.The glory of the high seas and the sound of clashing swords thrills Captain Blood. All of the time, he yearns to be with the woman he loves - who refuses to be with a thief and a pirate.It looks hopeless. But there may just be a chance...Captain Blood was made into a 1935 film starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone, who later played Sherlock Holmes.For fans of King Solomons Mines by H. Rider Haggard and The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson.

El halcón del mar es una historia de traiciones entre hermanos, en la que el sentido del honor y el de la amistad cobran especial importancia. A través de las aventuras de su protagonista, Oliver Tressilian, convertido a su pesar en uno de los piratas mas temidos y respetados del Mediterraneo despues de sobreponerse a muchas penalidades, Rafael Sabatini despliega todo su talento en la recreacion de la vida en el norte de Africa en el siglo XVI, en la narracion de apasionantes combates navales, en la caracterizacion de unos personajes que cobran vida ante los ojos del lector y en la construccion de una emocionante trama que atrapa al lector en su voragine de accion.

Editor: David Widger

Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani. This house of such a startlingly singular and Italianate grace for so remote a corner of Cornwall deserves, together with the story of its construction, a word in passing. The Italian Bagnolo who combined with his salient artistic talents a quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a brawl in a Southwark tavern. As a result he fled the town, nor paused in his headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until he had all but reached the very ends of England. Under what circumstances he became acquainted with Tressilian the elder I do not know. But certain it is that the meeting was a very timely one for both of them. To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilianwho appears to have been inveterately partial to the company of rascals of all denominationsafforded shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow. Having taken the task in hand he went about it with all the enthusiasm of your true artist, and achieved for his protector a residence that was a marvel of grace in that crude age and outlandish district.

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for the lads rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real relationship between Andre-Louis Moreauas the lad had been namedand Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering below.

Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater. Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but went disregarded. Mr. Bloods attention was divided between his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured for the second time that day towards Castle Field, where earlier in the afternoon Ferguson, the Dukes chaplain, had preached a sermon containing more treason than divinity.

The history of Frey Tómas de Torquemada is the history of the establishment of the Modern Inquisition. It is not so much the history of a man as of an abstract genius presiding over a gigantic and cruel engine of its own perfecting. Of this engine we may examine for ourselves to-day the details of the complex machinery. Through the records that survive we may observe its cold, smooth action, and trace in this the awful intelligence of its architect. But of that architect himself we are permitted to catch no more than an occasional and fleeting glimpse. It is only in the rarest and briefest moments that he stands clearly before us, revealed as a man of flesh and blood. We see him, now fervidly urging a reluctant queen to do her duty by her God and unsheathe the sword of persecution, now harshly threatening his sovereigns with the wrath of Heaven when they are in danger of relenting in the wielding of that same sword. But in the main he must be studied, not in his actions, but in his enactmentsthe emanations of his relentless spirit. In these he is to be seen devoutly compassing evil in the perfervid quest of good.

Set against a backdrop of pre-Renaissance Italy, convent-bred orphan Bellarion is sidetracked almost immediately upon setting out on a journey from the monastery at Cigliano to study at Pavia. The adventure and practical lessons he finds along the way replace the further education he craves.