Flashman Papers Books in Order

The first of the Flashman Papers finds the disgraced Rugby bully buying a cavalry commission, seducing the wrong woman and being shipped to India. Posted to Afghanistan, he endures occupation, betrayal and the disastrous retreat from Kabul, emerging with a hero's reputation he knows he does not deserve.

Inspired by the intrigues of 1848, this adventure sees Flashman blackmailed by Bismarck and entangled with Lola Montez. Forced to impersonate a German prince in the duchy of Strackenz, he must survive revolution, a perilous marriage and the kind of duel he always dreads.

A rigged card game and a furious father in law land Flashman on a slave ship bound for West Africa. From Dahomey to Mississippi plantations and the Underground Railroad, he poses under false names, meets a young Abraham Lincoln and does everything possible not to be heroic.

Trying to dodge a posting to Crimea, Flashman is instead given charge of a royal cousin and rides straight into the Charge of the Light Brigade. Captured in Russia, he stumbles onto a scheme to invade India and is dragged across Central Asia to stop it.

Ordered to investigate rumours of mutiny in India, Flashman finds himself disguised among native cavalry as the 1857 uprising explodes. From Meerut to Cawnpore and Lucknow he witnesses massacres, sieges and desperate marches, earning medals for acts of courage he never meant to perform.

Flashman's talent for cricket pulls him into London society, then a rich merchant's obsession with Elspeth leads to kidnapping, piracy and slavery. Chasing his wife to Borneo and Madagascar, he falls into the hands of Queen Ranavalona and must scheme his way off the island.

Fleeing New Orleans with a brothel owner and her girls, Flashman heads west on the overland trail and crosses paths with scalp hunters and Apaches. Decades later he is dragged back into the world of the Plains tribes and the road to Little Bighorn.

From Hong Kong into the heart of civil war China, Flashman agrees to escort what he thinks is opium and finds himself running guns for the Taiping rebels. Drawn between rebel leaders, British diplomats and a dangerous imperial concubine, he survives the Second Opium War.

Sent to the Punjab as tension rises with the Sikh kingdom, Flashman is ordered to spy on the Lahore court and the feared Khalsa army. Intrigue, open war and the fate of the Koh i Noor diamond leave him juggling loyalties to survive.

Flashman is kidnapped and shipped to America, where abolitionists, pro-slavery plotters and politicians all try to use him in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. He only wants to escape the gallows, but ends up an unwilling witness to history.

Three later episodes from Flashman's career show him meddling in high politics and scandal. He rides the first Orient Express into a plot against Emperor Franz Josef, witnesses the royal baccarat affair, and much later crosses paths with Tiger Moran, the Zulu War and Sherlock Holmes.

On the run after a Mexican escapade, Flashman is recruited to help Britain's 1868 expedition to Abyssinia. Between carrying silver to the army, courting rival queens and falling into Emperor Theodore's hands, he once again survives a brutal campaign by sheer luck.