Bloody Jack

by L. A. Meyer

Mary "Jacky" Faber, a young orphan, is managing fairly well on the streets of London. But it’s 1797, times are very hard, and one thing leads to another until she ships out on board HMS Dolphin as a cabin boy. Delightful, imaginative, and well-crafted, Bloody Jack works in bits from lots of familiar stories and ballads there’s even a moment when, at anchor, we see HMS Surprise in the harbor. Audiobook is splendidly read by Katharine Kellgren, who dazzles with such challenges as “a boy from East London doing a bad imitation of a younger boy from East London who is himself doing a good imitation of Jamaican English.”