Thieves of Mercy: A Novel of the Civil War at Sea

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Harper Collins, Oct 13, 2009 - Fiction - 480 pages

Having survived the bloody Battle of New Orleans and the loss of their ironclad Yazoo River, captain Samuel Bowater, engineer Hieronymus Taylor, and the survivors of their crew are given new orders -- take command of an ironclad warship being built in Memphis, Tennessee.

Bowater and his men take passage upriver from "Mississippi" Mike Sullivan, one of the wild, undisciplined captains of the River Defense Squadron, only to find, on their arrival, that their ship is not even half built and the enemy is closing fast.

Against their better judgment, Bowater and crew join forces with the mercurial Sullivan on board his ad hoc river gunship the General Page. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Confederates once again fling themselves bravely at the overwhelming power of the Yankee invaders. The deadly back-and-forth fight along the Mississippi ends at last in the massive naval battle of Memphis, and the near-suicidal attempt by the Confederates to hold back the Northern flood.

Filled with wild characters and heart-pounding action, and set against the bold backdrop of the Civil War, Thieves of Mercy is a worthy successor to the W. Y. Boyd Award-winning novel Glory in the Name, the book Bernard Cornwell lauded as "by far, the best Civil War novel I've read."

From inside the book

Contents

Section 1
1
Section 2
7
Section 3
18
Section 4
30
Section 5
41
Section 6
45
Section 7
51
Section 8
63
Section 26
263
Section 27
274
Section 28
283
Section 29
301
Section 30
316
Section 31
323
Section 32
328
Section 33
330

Section 9
74
Section 10
88
Section 11
107
Section 12
116
Section 13
119
Section 14
127
Section 15
131
Section 16
149
Section 17
163
Section 18
178
Section 19
197
Section 20
204
Section 21
214
Section 22
228
Section 23
237
Section 24
248
Section 25
256
Section 34
348
Section 35
355
Section 36
363
Section 37
381
Section 38
386
Section 39
399
Section 40
403
Section 41
408
Section 42
420
Section 43
424
Section 44
438
Section 45
441
Section 46
447
Section 47
452
Section 48
455
Section 49
465
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

James L. Nelson has served as a seaman, rigger, boatswain, and officer on a number of sailing vessels. He is the author of By Force of Arms, The Maddest Idea, The Continental Risque, Lords of the Ocean, and All the Brave Fellows -- the five books of his Revolution at Sea Saga. -- as well as The Guardship: Book One of the Brethren of the Coast. He lives with his wife and children in Harpswell, Maine.

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