• Agincourt, Bernard Cornwell’s previous stand-alone, was his bestselling novel to date, it hit the New York Times list at #4 and was an Indiebound bestseller. The Burning Land, the latest Saxon Tales novel, was also a Times bestseller, as were all of the books in the Saxon Tales series.

• The Fort is Cornwell’s first foray into the American Revolution in a stand-alone hardcover novel. Drawing from diaries, letters, and the transcripts of the enquiries and court-proceedings, the author recreates the events of the Penebscot Expedition in stunning detail. 
   

• Harper paperbacks will publish the trade paperback edition of The Burning Land in October 2010.
  
   

“The most prolific and successful historical novelist in the world today” (Wall Street Journal) turns his talent for accuracy and vivid detail to recreate one of the greatest yet little known skirmishes of the Revolution: the Penobscot Expedition—a battle waged on land and sea that would be recognized as the worst naval disaster in America’s history until Pearl Harbor.

While the major fighting of the Revolutionary War moves to the South in the summer of 1779, a British force of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry, backed by three sloops-of-war, sails to the desolate and fogbound coast of New England. Establishing a garrison and naval base at Penobscot Bay, the Scots—the only British troops between Canada and New York—harry rebel privateers and give shelter to American Loyalists.

In response, Massachusetts sends a fleet of over 40 vessels and some one thousand infantrymen to “captivate, kill or destroy” the foreign invaders. But ineptitude and irresolution lead to a mortifying defeat—and have stunning repercussions for two men on opposite sides: an untested 18-year-old Scottish Lieutenant named John Moore who will begin an illustrious military career, and a Boston silversmith and patriot named Paul Revere who will face court-martial for disobedience and cowardice.
 

Grounded firmly in history, inimitably told in Cornwell’s thrilling narrative style, The Fort is the extraordinary novel of this fascinating clash between a superpower and a nation in the making.