The year 1807 starts out badly for Captain Alan Lewrie. His frigate HMS Reliant has a new captain, he's living at his father's estate at Anglesgreen among spiteful neighbors and family and he's recovering from a wound suffered in the South Atlantic. At last, there's a bright spot. When fit, Admiralty awards him a new commission. Lewrie's ordered to Gibraltar but Foreign Office Secret Branch's spies and manipulators have use for him again.

"In Kings and Emperors, the twenty-first book in Dewey Lambdin's beloved Alan Lewrie series, Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is still in Gibraltar, his schemes for raids along the coast of Southern Spain shot to a halt. He is reduced to commanding a clutch of harbor defense gunboats in the bay while his ship, HMS Sapphire, slowly grounds herself on a reef of beef bones! Until Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of peaceful Portugal and his so-called collaborative...

Fresh from duty on the firgate Desperate in her fight with the French Capricieuse off St. Kitts, Midshipman Alan Lewrie passes his examination board for lieutenancy and finds himself commissioned first officer of the brig o'war Shrike. There's time for some dalliance with the fair sex, and then Lieutenant Lewrie must be off to patrol the North American coast and attempt to bring the Muskogees and Seminoles onto the Bridish side against the American...

Captain Alan Lewrie of the Royal Navy is ordered to head to Cuba and Spanish Florida to search for French and Spanish privateers who have been preying on British merchantmen and discover if the privateers have been getting aid from the Americans..

Participating in the 1805 Battle of Cape Town after the death of Admiral Nelson, Captain Lewrie voyages to South America to assist Britain's campaigns on the Spanish colonies only to confront a formidable adversary.

Fresh from a stunning victory against the formidable Spanish Armada in the Battle of St. Vincent's Cape, Lewrie is promoted and rewarded with the command of an enviable new warship. Shortly after being installed as the captain of the H.M.S. Proteus, he must contend with a treasonable mass mutiny, a bitter enemy bent on revenge, and several rather complicated romantic entanglements.