I am currently blessed with a lot of books that I really want to read, each waiting for my attention on my nightstand and various stacks and shelves around the house. And yet, when An Upright Man, the 14th book in Chris Durbin's series of mid-18th century naval adventures, arrived in the mail, it moved right into the next available slot in my reading list.

I really enjoy this series. While it involves the usual set of foes of the genre -- the British vs. the French and, at times, the Spanish -- it's set a few decades before the French Revolution and Napoleonic era that dominates most of the literature. It's refreshing to read about a different collection of sea battles and campaigns than those that are used and reused by so many writers of the age.

Durbin's books tend to alternate between Edward Carlisle, a Virginia-born senior post-captain in the Royal Navy, and his protege, George Holbrooke, an English-born junior post-captain who is making a name for himself in the naval records. This book features Holbrooke, and he's faced with an ambitious French commander operating under orders to disrupt England's fisheries in remote Newfoundland and a Spanish captain seeking to take advantage of Spain's late entry into the war.

The story begins on a simple escort mission. Holbrooke, commanding the frigate HMS Argonaut, is shepherding a merchant fleet from the Leeward Islands to the American colonies. En route, while ferrying Carlisle's wife, their son and her cousin to Virginia, he runs afoul of a Spanish ship that brought news of the alliance between France and Spain to the Caribbean. The Spanish captain hopes to take an early prize, but Holbrooke has a few tricks up his sleeve.

Later, back in England, Holbrooke is tasked with following a small French fleet to see where it's heading and what mischief it might be trying to cause, even as the long war drags toward its end. The pursuit takes him all the way to Newfoundland, where the French commander has been ordered to destroy English fishing vessels and coastal fisheries. Soon, Holbrooke finds himself involved in a land assault on a captured English fort at St. John's.

Perhaps Holbrooke benefits from a few too many coincidences that allow him to best superior foes -- or, at least, escape tricky situations relatively unscathed -- but these books are incredibly fun, and the setting during England's Seven Years' War with France is a refreshing break from the well-trodden later wars.

An Upright Man is set in 1762, so the war is nearly over. I'm eager to see how Durbin involves Holbrooke and Carlisle in the war's inevitable end -- and to see what happens next for two intrepid naval commanders just over a decade away from another war ... that might put them on opposite sides of the conflict.