The final Horatio Hornblower story tells of Napoleon's plans to invade England ...Set in 1805, "Hornblower and the Crisis" finds Horatio Hornblower in possession of confidential dispatches from Bonaparte after a vicious hand-to-hand encounter with a French brig. The admiralty rewards Hornblower by sending him on a dangerous espionage mission that will light the powder trail leading to the battle of Trafalgar. "Hornblower and the Crisis" was unfinished at the time of Forester's death, but the author left notes - included here - telling us how the tale would end. Also included are two further stories - "Hornblower and the Widow McCool" and "The Last Encounter" - that tell of Hornblower as a very young and very old man, respectively. This is the final book chronicling the adventures of C. S. Forester's inimitable nautical hero, Horatio Hornblower.

Author Biography

C.S Forester was born in Cairo in 1899, where his father was stationed as a government official. He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, and after leaving Guy's without a degree he turned to writing as a career. On the outbreak of war he entered the Ministry of Information and later he sailed with the Royal Navy to collect material for The Ship. He made a voyage to the Bering Sea to gather material for a similar book on the United States Navy, and it was during this trip that he was stricken with arteriosclerosis, a disease which left him crippled. However, he continued to write and in the Hornblower novels created the most renowned sailor in contemporary fiction. He died in 1966.