The King's Gold

Arturo Perez-Reverte has enthralled readers and critics around the globe with his Captain Alatriste series. Having sold four and a half million copies to date in the Spanish-speaking world, the series has made Perez-Reverte a literary superstar and his fictional seventeenth-century mercenary a national icon.

The King's Gold picks up in Seville, 1626. After serving with honor at the bloody siege of Breda, Captain Alatriste and his protege, Inigo Balboa, have returned: battle-weary, short of cash, and with few prospects for honest work. But the Spanish empire is as dangerous as ever, and it's not long before Alatriste receives an intriguing offer of short-term employment. He and Inigo must recruit a dozen swordsmen and mercenaries for a risky job involving a dazzling amount of contraband gold and a heavily guarded Spanish galleon returning from the West Indies. The offer comes from the king himself, for at stake is nothing less than the Spanish Crown, and its dominion over the wealth of the Americas.

The seedy taverns, the teeming prisons of Seville, the sand dunes of Guadalquivir find Alatriste, Inigo, and their motley band of cutthroats embarking on a new adventure, one that brings them surprising new alliances and perilous encounters with old enemies.