Richard Sharpe Novels (abridged)

India, 1803. It is four years since Richard Sharpe earned his sergeant's stripes at the siege of Seringapatam, and four years in which Sharpe seems to have discovered the easiest billet in the British army. But that comfort is rudely shattered when he witnesses a murderous act of treachery by an English officer who has defected from the East India Company to join the mercenary army of the Mahratta Confederation commanded by the flamboyant Hanoverian, Anthony Pohlmann.

It is 1803, and closing on the retreating Mahrattas in western India is Sir Arthur Wellesley's army and with it Ensign Richard Sharpe, newly commissioned but wishing he had stayed a sergeant. Spurned by his new regiment, he is sent to the army's baggage train and there finds corruption, romance, treason, and enemies old and new, including the murderous Sergeant Hakeswill who has powerful friends, while Sharpe's only ally is an orphaned Arab boy.

It is 1805 and Ensign Richard Sharpe, having secured a reputation as a fighting soldier in India, is on his way home to join the newly formed Green Jackets. The voyage should be a period of rest but his ship is riven with treachery and threatened by a formidable French warship, the Revenant, which is terrorizing British shipping in the Indian ocean. An old opponent of Sharpe's is aboard his ship, and the voyage is further disturbed by the Lady Grace Hale, apparently as unreachable as she is beautiful.

It is 1807 and Sharpe, back from India and Trafalgar, has joined the newly formed Greenjackets, but his career is in ruins, and his future in the army apparently hopeless.

It is 1809 and Lieutenant Sharpe, who belongs to a small British army that has a precarious foothold in Portugal, is sent to look for Kate Savage, the daughter of an English wine shipper. But before he can discover the missing girl, the French onslaught on Portugal begins and the city of Oporto falls.

Bold, professional, and determined, Richard Sharpe embarks on a desperate mission. He must recover the treasure, vital to the success of the war, now hidden behind enemy lines.

Sharpe's Escape takes place in the summer of 1810, once again in the Peninsular War. The French are mounting their third and most dangerous invasion of Portugal. Captain Richard Sharpe with his company of redcoats and riflemen meets the invaders on the gaunt ridge of Bussaco. But there, despite a stunning British victory, the French are not stopped and the army have to fall back.

In the winter of 1811, the war seems lost. All Spain has fallen to the French, except for Cadiz which is now the Spanish capital and is under siege. Wellington and his British army are in Portugal, waiting for spring to spark the war to life again. Richard Sharpe and his company are part of a small expeditionary force sent to break a bridge across the River Guadiana.

Colonel Leroux answered to no man save the Emperor. With exquisite delicacy he could skin a man alive in search of the secrets he held; a parole given in "honour" was a means to an end. From the first moment Richard Sharpe came across the Frenchman he mistrusted him...and lusted after the sword Leroux had killed so many times with. But at each encounter the Colonel escaped Sharpe with almost contemptuous ease.