Armada

A breezy mix of romance, history and a seaman's knowledge of ships and the sea, set in the time of the Spanish Armada, Gidley's hefty novel features as its hero Cornishman Tristram Pascoe, son of a bullying privateer who is jealous of his abilities. After sundry adventures before the mast and a stint as a slave in a Portuguese galley, Tristram becomes a spy in the service of Queen Elizabeth I, his mission to report on preparations for the Armada. He falls in love with an Irish beauty married to a decadent Portuguese noble, enters into a hasty and risky marriage with a voluptuous Spaniard and sails with the great Armada, whose disastrous running encounter with the British fleet under Howard and Drake provides the story with its stirring and extended climax. Robust entertainment from the author of The Raging of the Sea. (February)