Product Description

Ambitious and handsome, Joshua Andrews had always valued his life too much to take unnecessary risks. Then he laid eyes on the elegant picture of perfection that is Peter Kenyon. Soon to be promoted to captain, Peter Kenyon is the darling of the Bermuda garrison. With a string of successes behind him and a suitable bride lined up to share his future, Peter seems completely out of reach to Joshua. But when the two men are thrown together to serve during a long voyage under a sadistic commander with a mutinous crew, they discover unexpected friendship. As the tension on board their vessel heats up, the closeness they feel for one another intensifies and both officers find themselves unable to rein in their passion. Let yourself be transported back to a time when love between two men in the British Navy was punishable by death, and to a story about love, about honor, but most of all, about a Captain-s Surrender.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #277646 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-15
• Released on: 2008-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 194 pages

From the Back Cover
Ambitious and handsome, Joshua Andrews had always valued his life too much to take unnecessary risks. Then he laid eyes on the elegant picture of perfection that is Peter Kenyon.

Soon to be promoted to captain, Peter Kenyon is the darling of the Bermuda garrison. With a string of successes behind him and a suitable bride lined up to share his future, Peter seems completely out of reach to Joshua.

But when the two men are thrown together to serve during a long voyage under a sadistic commander with a mutinous crew, they discover unexpected friendship. As the tension on board their vessel heats up, the closeness they feel for one another intensifies and both officers find themselves unable to reign in their passion.

Let yourself be transported back to a time when love between two men in the British Navy was punishable by death, and to a story about love, about honor, but most of all, about a Captain's Surrender.

About the Author
Alex Beecroft currently lives in Great Britain with her husband and two daughters. Raised in Cheshire, Alex studied English and Philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where she worked for a number of years.

Alex will tell you that she's thrilled to be doing what she always wanted to do, living her dream of being a writer, and a soon to be published romance author.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Another breath - he could no longer taste the rum on the air, but there was a meager feeling of consolation nevertheless; enough to make the second part of the statement stronger. "I have no wish to repay your goodness to me by corrupting you, by ruining your reputation, or perhaps even - God forbid - being the cause of your death."

Silence once more. A long silence and a slow change - like the loom of unseen land after months of blue water, something he could sense but could not explain. A quick glance showed Peter with the puzzled, inward look of a man chasing a revelation, hardly daring to move for fear of frightening it away. Strangely, despite the anguish and the ever present desire, a stab of amusement pricked him - how absurd this whole situation was! Was it not the final proof of man's ascendancy over nature, that his unnatural desires could be canceled out by his unnatural scruples? Would that I were not human then, he thought, and met Kenyon's suddenly focused gaze with a resolute, mocking smile.

But Peter's thoughts had clearly gone in quite a different direction. He closed the gap between them, and after a moment of just looking, examining Josh's face and figure with an open admiration that made heat boil into Josh's face and every part of him tingle, he raised a hand and slid it through Josh's hair. It came to rest at the nape of his neck, thumb stroking the curve of his jaw.

Trying not to shake too much, trying not to believe the best, trying not to merely melt, he arched into the touch, unable to stop himself. "Oh!"

"Josh," the dark voice was smoky with intimacy, and he could almost have died happy, just hearing his name so caressed. Instead, he looked up to meet a green gaze equally private, laced with wonder and a certain amount of rueful amusement - the traces of an understanding that had changed everything. "It occurs to me that you and I are very alike."

There was unusual warmth in his face; a small, sweet smile that undermined every defense, and Josh could not help but smile back, the uneasy clamoring of his conscience temporarily forgotten.

"You're trying to protect me - and at the cost of your own happiness."

Reaching up, Kenyon took hold of the end of his cravat, pulled the bow and the whole, long length of it undone with a slow, steady pressure - a seemingly endless crisp slide of linen over his skin.

Long fingers at his neck, easing open each of the buttons on his waistcoat one by one, and he could neither move nor speak for joy and lust and disbelief. If he tilted his head just slightly he could feel Peter's breath, warm against his bared throat, he could set his mouth against the bent head and feel the cool softness of hair against his lips. He did this now, lest delay allow the chance to disappear, closed his eyes and breathed in the scent.

"So it seems to me that you already care for me, and your stipulations are intended entirely to prevent me from feeling affection for you in return. Is that right?"

Far too coolheaded, far too in control of the situation, while Josh was fast unraveling beneath his hands. Hands that were already lifting coat and loosened waistcoat off his shoulders, leaving him exposed - and so nervous that he wondered suddenly how much of his caution had been self defense, not nobly motivated at all. Since he was being systematically bared, it seemed appropriate to surrender this too. "Yes."

Kenyon folded the clothes and placed them carefully on the cleanest barrel. "Shall I tell you something?"

"Please."

"It's too late."

Josh needed a drink, something to steady his nerves, calm him down before he utterly committed himself to something he was persuaded was a very bad idea. What he got instead was Peter returning, having taken off his own jacket, in a shirt so worn and threadbare it was all but transparent. "W- What?"

"I already care about you, you fool. If I didn't," Peter frowned over the the too-stiff little buttons of the collar, undid them with practical briskness, and slid his hand under the material, watching it with curious, fascinated eyes. "If I didn't," he said, the hand closing hard, drawing Josh unresisting towards him, "would I be doing this?" He bent his head and kissed Josh's exposed throat, mouthing from shoulder to ear. And there was ..teeth, and - god - tongue, and there might be a logical flaw in his argument but Josh was too busy grabbing him by that worn shirt and shoving him hard into the wall to care. At the impact, Peter gave a little shudder of surprise, his breath caught and his eyes widened - Josh could feel the surrender under his hands, both of them a little taken aback by it, and delighted.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful.
I almost didn't buy this book. The cover was a decided turn-off.

But then I read some enthusiastic reviews for it and finally had to read the book for myself, to know if it was really that good.

It is.

The cover might lead you to believe this is just another raunchy, endless-sex-scene-every-other-page gay "romance" (emphasis not so much on the romance). Ignore the cover! It doesn't even come close to living up to the story within.

Captain's Surrender is a romance for those of us who are unabashedly romantic at heart and know a good love story when we read it. From first glance, Joshua falls head over heels with Peter, and so did I. Peter's handsome, as well as immediately likeable. But he's also wonderfully flawed--a little arrogant and too placidly confident that he always knows what's expected of him and that he's entirely capable of living up to everyone's expectations, including his own. It takes a self-aware and emotional man like Joshua to shake Peter to the core and upset his tidy world-view. Joshua's the wiser, but more vulnerable in a way, because he is afraid to let himself think he's capable of falling in love. He has seen himself as something perverse for so long, his feelings for Peter are a revelation--and his vulnerability in that regard endears him utterly to the reader. He falls first and falls hard--and the reader hopes desperately with him that his love doesn't go unrequited.

Peter's got plenty to deal with, himself, in trying to fend off both a potential mutiny aboard ship and the matchmaking efforts of a friend hoping to marry off his only child to the dashing, eligible lieutenant. Usually I dislike female characters in gay romance novels. They are usually either obnoxious BFFs of the main characters or they are overbearing relatives, usually moms who can't quit meddling. In Captain's Surrender, I am happy to say that Emily was a breath of fresh, feminine air. She was independent without being obnoxious about it, and still innocent and vulnerable without being the damsel-in-distress. She came across like a real woman of her time period and I liked her and rooted for her and wondered how the author would work it out that no hearts ended up broken.

One particular appeal of this novel is that it does have its unpredictable twists. Just when you think it will go a certain way, it goes another, and keeps you reading to find out where the new path will lead. All the characters, including secondary ones, are so well-rounded, I could easily visualize them and understand what drove each one, even when their mindsets led them to choices that were maddening or exasperating. That's another strength of the book. The author's characters live in *their* world, in their time period, and they respond to each other and the rest of society accordingly. It makes for some powerfully affecting and interesting situations, particularly for Peter.

One other thing I must mention--if you love lyrical prose and description that makes another time period come to life all around you as you read--then you will thoroughly enjoy this book. I adored the descriptions of time and place. The author can turn a phrase with that kind of rare beauty that makes you want to stop for an instant and re-read just to savor the way it is written.

There was very little I didn't like about the book. One thing I would've liked more of was the developing relationship between Josh and Peter early on. The author gives some of it in a flashback-y way that, while evocative and romantic, only left me wishing for more details of their courtship, as secret as it was and had to be. I also had some trouble following a lot of the nautical terms, but this is the first real sea story I've ever read, apart from YA books twenty years ago, so I am not up on the lingo. More experienced readers would probably follow it just fine. It was a little too much for me and I had to do some re-reading to figure out what was going on in the big battle scenes. The depth and care with which details are included do immerse you wonderfully into the story. I am also extremely appreciative of certain details left out, namely long, graphic sex scenes. The intimacy in Captain's Surrender is tender, sexy, sweet, and just exactly right.

One more thing--in case the publisher reads Amazon author reviews. Dear Linden Bay: How about a romantic, elegant, beautiful cover to go with a romantic, elegant, beautiful book? You are obviously capable of signing up first-class writers. It'd be great if you provided covers worthy of their stories. You might also want to look more closely at the formatting, because it was somewhat off in places, in the copy I received.

A beautiful Age of Sail novel
Ok, I only had a few hours sleep last night, because I couldn't put this book away until I had finished it, and now that I'm at work I can't concentrate properly, because Josh and Peter constantly pop up in my head. So why should I say something nice about this book?

Just kidding. This is a great book. After just a few pages I was set back to a time when boarding a ship to the Caribbean had nothing to do with a journey on a luxury cruise ship, but with one on which you could very well die. I'm no expert on sea stories but in my opinion Alex Beecroft did a great job with her description of the life on a brig or frigat. The atmosphere is so dense that you can nearly touch the wood or smell the gunpowder.

Especially in the first chapters this also made me squirm a bit, because the book starts off with an execution, which is the reason the two main characters meet, and a lot of punishments like floggings follow. Alex Beecroft proves her love for details also in these scenes. But these descriptions doesn't seem to be exaggerated, but a detailed image of the atmosphere of brutality and terror on some of the naval ships in these times and thus are an integral part of the overall mood in which the main characters get to know each other.

The relationship between the main characters Josh and Peter starts off slowly. It's first a friendship which deepens on their journey to Bermuda and then becomes a love relationship. The struggle of both characters with their love for each other in a time in which it was forbidden and punishable is perfectly carved out. Josh is mostly concerned about Peter, of hurting him, of denying him the possibility to marry and lead a "normal" life. Peter is mostly concerned about himself, of not doing what is expected of him from his superiors, from society, from God.

Altogether this is a beautiful romance set in the Age of Sail and definitely a must read. By the way, here's a tip for anyone who isn't satisfied with the erotic factor of the book, even though the love scenes in the book were in my opinion very romantic and beautiful. Alex Beecroft wrote a free story with Josh and Peter called "Insubordination". You can find a download link here on her blog or on her homepage. I'll just say: Hot! ;-)

Captain's Surrender- A Joyfully Recommended Title
The year is 1779. Welcome aboard the Nimrod where 793 crewmen and 45 officers serve under the tyrannical Captain Walker. Be forewarned, do your duty and trust no one, as the Captain's spies could be any one of your crewmates. Punishments vary from five dozen to twenty dozen lashes, handed out for infractions such as being the last one down from the booms, speaking in Irish, any perceived disrespect towards the Captain, or slovenliness in completing assigned tasks. The next step for the crew is mutiny.

Amidst these trying times, Joshua Andrews, a young handsome gay twenty-year-old meets soon to be promoted to captain, Peter Kenyon on the voyage to the British Bermuda Garrison. Peter has a promising Navy career path and marriage on his horizons. In a world where same sex relationships are punishable by death, Joshua and Peter are drawn together first by friendship and then by desire, and later torn apart by society and circumstances.

Alex Beecroft has written a truly engrossing tale of life in the British Navy. The story is written with seamanship expertness that puts the reader in the middle of the action. In Captain's Surrender, the bounds of honor, loyalty, fidelity and love are all tested and divergent paths and possibilities are explored for both Joshua and Peter. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to more from Alex Beecroft.

Beth Anne
reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed