The first installment of Bernard Cornwell's New York Times bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, "like Game of Thrones, but real" (The Observer, London)—the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit Netflix series.

This is the exciting—yet little known—story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated

From New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell, the first exciting adventure in the world-renowned Sharpe series, chronicling the rise of Richard Sharpe, a Private in His Majesty's Army at the siege of Seringapatam.

"The greatest writer of historical adventures today."
—Washington Post

Richard Sharpe. Soldier, hero,

An honored veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Sharpe has become a peaceful farmer following Waterloo. But he comes out of retirement to undertake a perilous mission to find his old friend Don Blas Vivar, Captain-General of the Spanish colony of Chile, who vanished without a trace half a world away.

With intrepid Irishman Patrick Harper at his side, Sharpe journeys to Chile, a land seething with corruption and

Wellington must call on the only man brave and ruthless enough to win at any cost—Richard Sharpe.

Only a year after its stunning victory at Talavera in July of 1809, Wellington's Peninsular army—vastly outnumbered, its coffers empty—is on the brink of collapse. The Spanish government has fallen, and the last Spanish armies have been crushed by the French. But Wellington has one hope left: in the dangerous Portuguese hills