Indian Ocean

Murder and Mayhem in Mauritius presents a selection of historical crime stories ranging from the trial and execution of rebellious slaves, to tragedies arising from adultery and love triangles, and desperate acts of exploited workers. Alongside the better known cases of career criminal Nanard and exiled Malagasy noble Ratsitatane, this collection introduces readers to the tale of the Mauritian attorney who ended up in a Nazi concentration camp, and to the Indian workers on a Chagos atoll who murdered their manager and hijacked a ship, among other sometimes moving, sometimes shocking true ...

As in The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore tells the tale of another ill-fated ship on Anson’s expedition round the world – the Wager. Parted from her squadron in the fearful storms off Cape Horn, the Wager struggles on alone up the ironbound coast of Chile, before she is driven onto rocks and sinks. The survivors include Jack Byron, a midshipman, and his eccentric protégé Toby, an alarmingly naive surgeon’s mate with a single-minded devotion to zoology.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.