CS Forester Books in Order

Set against a backdrop of European power politics, this story follows a relatively ordinary protagonist who finds himself used by greater figures, slowly realising how little control he has and what it might cost to stop being merely a pawn on other men’s boards.

Forester paints a portrait of Napoleon from his Corsican youth to his imperial zenith, then looks outward to the family members, courtiers and officials who filled his court, showing how their ambitions, rivalries and loyalties helped shape the rise and fall of his empire.

An early novel about a decent man drawn into other people’s schemes, exploring how easy it is to become the instrument of stronger wills and how hard it can be to step back once pride, obligation and fear are pulling in opposite directions.

A biography of Joséphine de Beauharnais, tracing her journey from a Caribbean childhood and Revolutionary turmoil to her marriage with Napoleon, her years as empress and her final life at Malmaison, with attention to both politics and the emotional cost of imperial glory.

A timid London bank clerk, crushed by debts and dull respectability, murders his well‑off nephew for the cash and hides the body. Prosperity follows, but so do guilt, blackmail and family decay, as he discovers that nothing about the crime will stay buried forever.

Narrated by a young novelist struggling to write, this story turns on the quarrels and small joys of early married life, showing how jealousy, insecurity and everyday tenderness with his wife Constance become the real material for the book he is trying to create.

This early mystery follows ordinary people who are drawn into a chain of extraordinary events over the course of seven days, as one impulsive decision after another turns a quiet life into a suspenseful tangle of danger, misunderstanding and chance.

Forester’s history of Italian unification follows Victor Emmanuel II from the aftermath of Napoleon to the creation of a united kingdom, explaining the diplomacy, wars and personalities that reshaped the peninsula up through the early twentieth century.

A concise life of Louis XIV that sketches his childhood amid civil war, his long personal rule from Versailles and the wars and policies that made France both dominant and exhausted, offering a clear portrait of Europe’s most famous absolute monarch.

An early novel of tangled loyalties and family tensions, following characters whose comfortable lives are disrupted by old grievances and new desires, and who must decide what they are willing to sacrifice when love and ambition no longer point in the same direction.

Leading Seaman Albert Brown, the sole fit survivor of a sunken cruiser, escapes onto a lonely Pacific island where a crippled German warship is repairing. With only a rifle, he snipes at work parties and sacrifices himself to buy time for pursuing British forces.

Forester’s short biography of Admiral Horatio Nelson traces his rise from sickly midshipman to the architect of victories like the Nile and Trafalgar, focusing on his style of command, his boldness in battle and the personal flaws that complicated his private life.

After his ship is sunk in wartime, a young sailor finds himself stranded on a remote island near a damaged enemy raider. Armed with a rifle and determination, he wages a one‑man campaign to delay repairs long enough for Allied warships to catch their prey.

A light, observant travel book in which Forester recounts a cruise in the small boat Annie Marble along rivers and canals, noting changing landscapes, minor mishaps, and the pleasures and irritations of living in cramped quarters on slow‑moving water.

Three advertising men, caught taking bribes, decide to murder the colleague who can expose them and make it look like an accident. Once they cross that line, greed, fear and blackmail drag them deeper into crime until their “perfect” plan unravels.

A struggling professional boxer unexpectedly becomes famous as a poet, and the life he thought he wanted collides with the demands of sudden literary success. The novel follows his uneasy choice between the brutal honesty of the ring and the gentler world that now claims him.

Cut off behind enemy lines in Portugal, Rifleman Matthew Dodd joins local partisans and wages a lonely, stubborn campaign against the French, harassing patrols and supply lines for months with no hope of recognition, driven only by duty and endurance.

In occupied Spain during the Peninsular War, a massive bronze cannon becomes the symbol and tool of resistance as guerrilla bands haul it over mountains, ambush French columns and fall, one by one, to betrayal, bullets and the sheer grind of war.

A shabby London schoolteacher escapes his joyless marriage through a secret scientific invention and an infatuation with his headmaster’s pacifist daughter. When a mysterious “Peacemaker” begins disrupting machinery to force disarmament, he must face what his ideals have unleashed.

In German East Africa at the outbreak of World War I, prim missionary Rose Sayer and rough engineer Charlie Allnutt take the little steamboat African Queen down a dangerous river, planning a suicidal attack on a German gunboat and finding love amid rapids, fever and war.

When Marjorie’s young sister is found dead in her kitchen, the death is ruled a suicide, but her tough‑minded mother suspects murder. As secrets about Marjorie’s bullying husband surface, a quiet domestic life turns into a slow, claustrophobic hunt for the truth.

Forester’s practical and surprisingly playful guide to amateur puppetry walks readers through building a home marionette theatre, carving and dressing figures, and staging small productions, all drawn from his own enthusiasm for putting on puppet shows.

Following Herbert Curzon from the Boer War to high command in World War I, this novel shows a brave but conventional officer promoted beyond his insight, ordering men to their deaths in trench battles he barely understands and paying a quiet, terrible price for his limitations.

In 1808 Captain Hornblower, commanding the frigate Lydia in distant waters, is ordered to support a Central American rebel and then confront a much more powerful Spanish warship. Political reversals, a dangerous romance and a desperate single‑ship action test him to the limit.

Escaping from French captivity with a small band of companions, Hornblower must cross enemy territory, improvise disguises and rely on strangers, all while believing he may be returning to a court‑martial for surrender. It’s a story of endurance, wit and quiet loyalty.

Hornblower at last gains command of a powerful two‑decker and is thrown into brutal fleet actions and coastal raids. Success at sea brings him honours, but a desperate stand against superior forces leaves him facing defeat, capture and the loss of everything he has built.

Told through the eyes of Don Narciso Rich, this novel follows Christopher Columbus’s troubled third voyage to the New World, exploring greed, ambition, misplaced idealism and the disillusion that follows when the promised earthly paradise proves far more complicated.

During the War of 1812, American captain Josiah Peabody slips his frigate through a blizzard and out past a British blockade, then raids enemy commerce in the Caribbean while navigating uneasy truces, a determined British rival and an unexpected romance.

Set over a single tense afternoon, this novel takes readers aboard the cruiser HMS Artemis as she escorts a vital convoy to Malta and prepares to face a superior Italian fleet, cutting between officers and crew to show how many small lives feed one great battle.

Promoted to commodore, Hornblower must weld a small squadron into an effective force in the Baltic, juggling diplomacy with Russia and Sweden while carrying out amphibious raids and blockades that may help bring Napoleon’s power to an end.

In the final days of the Napoleonic Wars, Hornblower is sent to quell a mutiny, only to be drawn into French politics, guerrilla fighting and awkward personal entanglements. Victory brings him rank and honour, but also reminders of how costly success can be.

Loa rules his Central African tribe as both king and god, confident in his absolute power, until European agents arrive to carve up his world. What follows is a stark, sometimes brutal story of conquest, resistance and a leader forced to see himself anew.

A series of linked adventures chart Hornblower’s first years at sea, from crippling seasickness and awkward duels to prize‑taking and daring escapes, as a bookish, insecure midshipman slowly discovers that he has the nerve and ingenuity to command.

After a hasty marriage and a killing that lands him in prison, Randall looks back over his life, from the horror of First World War trenches to a murder trial that may end it. The novel follows one man swept along by chance and bad choices toward an uncertain future.

Told largely through the eyes of William Bush, this book shows Hornblower as a junior lieutenant under an increasingly unstable captain, trapped between duty and mutiny as a Caribbean mission turns into a test of courage, judgment and quiet loyalty.

Hornblower’s first command of a ship of his own, the small Atropos, takes him from organising Nelson’s funeral to leading a dangerous salvage operation for sunken treasure in Turkish waters, where diplomacy and daring seamanship prove equally vital.

Edited and shaped by Forester, this book presents the vivid diary of seaman John Wetherell, describing harsh life in the early nineteenth‑century Royal Navy, shipwreck, imprisonment in France and the stubborn resilience that kept him, and thousands like him, going.

Set during the Battle of the Atlantic, this novel follows Commander Krause through fifty‑two exhausting hours on the bridge of his destroyer as he shepherds a vulnerable convoy through U‑boat‑infested waters, battling the enemy, the sea and his own self‑doubt.

Written for younger readers, this history of the Barbary Wars follows American sailors and marines to the shores of Tripoli, explaining how corsairs preyed on merchant ships and how a small, untested U.S. Navy fought back in daring raids and coastal battles.

In these later adventures Hornblower, now an admiral on the West Indies station, tackles slave‑traders, would‑be emperors and fragile new republics, using tact as often as gunfire while wrestling with age, status and the uneasy freedom that comes after long war.

A vivid, narrative history of the War of 1812 at sea, tracing famous ship‑to‑ship actions and lesser‑known engagements while setting them against the wider politics that allowed a young republic to challenge, and sometimes humble, the Royal Navy.

Forester’s account of the naval war between the United States and Britain examines the major frigate duels, lake campaigns and convoy battles of 1812–1815, explaining how design, seamanship and leadership shaped a conflict that embarrassed a great sea power.

A tense narrative history of the 1941 chase of the German battleship Bismarck, following British ships and crews from the first sighting to the final battle, and showing how intelligence, luck and relentless pursuit combined to bring a seemingly invincible raider down.

Newly promoted and newly married, Hornblower takes command of the sloop Hotspur on blockade duty off the French coast, enduring grinding routine, sudden danger and the slow strain that separation and responsibility put on a young captain’s nerves and marriage.

A companion volume to the Hornblower saga, combining Forester’s personal commentary on how the novels were written with detailed maps and illustrations that trace Hornblower’s voyages and battles, helping readers follow the action across real coastlines and seas.

An unfinished Hornblower novel that finds Captain Hornblower on a secret intelligence mission just before Trafalgar, carrying forged orders meant to mislead Napoleon’s forces while he weighs the personal risks of espionage alongside his duty to the Navy.

Forester’s brief autobiography looks back on his lonely apprenticeship as a writer, from abandoned medical studies and early failures to the first small successes, ending with candid notes about how Horatio Hornblower was conceived and shaped on the page.

A collaborative true‑crime book in which Nigel Balchin, C. S. Forester, Eric Linklater and Christopher Sykes each retell a notorious case, from William Joyce to royal assassinations, blending narrative drive with reflection on motive, justice and historical evidence.

Young Harold "Poo-Poo" Heavyside Brown stumbles on a full‑grown dragon named Horatio and brings him home, soon sharing family life with a trio of helpful but troublesome dragons whose antics turn ordinary days into a chain of comic adventures.