The best adventure novels from Next Chapter [February 2023]
Looking for your next read? You’re on the right page. Here, we’ve collected six adventure novels from Next Chapter authors, all available from major online bookstores including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Rakuten Kobo and Google Books. Whether it’s historical, modern, SF or fantasy adventure you’re into, we believe you’ll find what you’re looking for on this page!
We hope you enjoy the stories by our authors - and if you do, please don’t forget to leave the author a review! Don’t agree with our choices? Please leave a comment and let us know which adventure novel is your favorite :)
Books featured on this page
Dancing (The Rise Of An English Lawbreaker Book 1) by Malcolm Archibald
Kingmaker (The Hunter And Chekwe Adventures Book 1) by Aaron M. Fleming
God's Hammer (Hakon's Saga Book 1) by Eric Schumacher
Dancing (The Rise Of An English Lawbreaker Book 1) by Malcolm Archibald
Book excerpt
Breakfast at the inn was quiet, with only a handful of early-morning travellers in the taproom, and Ruth dishevelled as she served everybody.
Smith ate the usual mutton chop, washed it down with a small beer, and listened to the intermittent, early-morning conversation at the nearest table without much interest.
“Did you hear about Duguay?” The speaker was squat, bald, and unshaven.
There was a long pause before his companion, a fellow carter, replied. “No. Who is he?”
“Duguay, the French corsair, the privateer.”
“Oh, him, God rot his liver. What about him?”
The bald man slurped at his tankard. “The Navy captured him. HMS Partridge caught him cruising off Folkestone.”
Smith listened with more attention. Captain Duguay was one of the best known French privateers, a skilled freebooter who had been the scourge of British seamen since the beginning of the present war. If the Navy had captured him, they had delivered a grievous blow to the local French war effort.
“Does that affect me?” the second carter asked. “Is this Duguay fellow going to attack my cart or steal my horse?”
“Unlikely now that the Navy has him,” the bald man said.
“No, then I care less than nothing,” the second carter snapped his fingers. “That for your Duguay.”
Smith tucked the information away in case he needed it at a later date, although he could not imagine how. He finished his chop, looked up at the sound of a coach horn, and knew that the twice-weekly London Mail had pulled up at the Hounds Rest across the road.
“Go and fetch the newspaper,” Ruth gave the stable boy a casual slap on the backside. “Hurry now.”
The boy was back within two minutes, and Ruth pinned the newspaper to the wall before scanning the page.
“I see Ambrose Grant has another success,” she said casually. “He’s a rising star of the Preventative Service.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Smith said. “The government send him wherever the smuggling is most rife.”
“That’s correct,” Ruth said. “He won’t be coming to Kingsgate though, not now Sir Francis stopped the last cargo.” She removed Smith’s empty plate. “I’ll have to increase my prices unless the Free Traders get to work again.”
Smith rose to his feet. “Let’s hope for good news,” he said and nodded to the old man beside the fire.
Kingmaker (The Hunter And Chekwe Adventures Book 1) by Aaron M. Fleming
Book excerpt
Dahlia Rancher slapped the mayor of Dangritown right across the face. She put her whole arm into it and snapped her wrist and the crack of her palm hitting his cheek echoed off the garden walls. He was a tall, corpulent man, but he reeled, tripped over his own breakfast table, tried to catch himself on the tablecloth, and went sprawling in a jumble of scattered prawns, slices of beef, and spilled beer. She felt like a dozen hornets had stung her palm all at once, but she wasn’t done, and she pulled her knife out of her daily pouch.
“If you ever touch me again…” she snarled and took a step toward the mayor.
“Help!” he howled. “Hurry!”
The back gate of the garden burst open and a pair of sturdy men in matching orange tunics dashed into the garden. Then they saw Dahlia and skidded to a stop, confused. They were expecting trouble, but all they saw was a…woman? She could see confusion in their eyes.
“I thought your guards were busy helping the police,” Dahlia spat at the mayor. He sputtered and started to get up, but she made a jabbing motion at him with her knife, and he slumped back down. The guards took a step forward but stopped when she glared at them.
Dahlia heard familiar footsteps behind her.
“Ma? What’s going on, Ma?”
Paul, her son, came up beside her and gawked at the sprawling mayor who had a livid hand-mark on his cheek. Paul saw her knife, saw the guards, and reached for the knife he kept in his own belt.
“It’s alright, Paul,” Dahlia said. She slowly put her knife away, still glowering at the mayor. “This pig tried to put his hands on me, but I guess he won’t do that again. Maybe he won’t lie to me again, either. Guards too busy? Police too busy? Militia too busy? More like he’s too busy taking advantage of widows to do his job. Quam have mercy on his soul, because if he touches me again, I swear I will slit his gizzard,” she lashed. “Come on, Paul, we’re going.”
Dahlia took Paul’s arm and hauled him away. She stomped back through halls of the villa, fuming at the luxury of its polished tile floors and mosaiced walls. She stormed past a flustered butler, who gasped in horror when Dahlia hawked and spat a gob on the floor before she slammed open the mahogany front door and marched out.
Dahlia paused on the veranda, breathing hard.
“What happened, Ma?” Paul asked.
Dahlia breathed deep and tried to control the trembling in her voice. She was as angry as hell but scared too. She didn’t want Paul to sense either.
Alternate Purpose by Christopher Coates
Book excerpt
Devin and Sawyer stepped off the porch and moved away from the house. The firefighters were arriving and the boys didn’t want to be in the way. Sawyer started to say something as they were walking away, but Devin gave a firm wave of his hand. He wanted to be sure they were nowhere near anyone who might overhear their conversation. They stepped under a tall cedar tree that was away from all the action unfolding at the house.
“Did you know that would happen?” Sawyer said.
“No! Of course not. That was as much a surprise for me as it was for you.”
“Did it just happen, or did you have to tell it somehow to happen?”
“It just happened. I wasn’t even thinking about healing. I touched her and it was as automatic as when I heal myself. It just happened.”
“Did you feel anything passing between you and her?” Sawyer asked. His questions were coming so fast that Devin barely had time to answer.
Devin paused and thought back. “There was something. I’m not sure what. It was like I felt something leaving me, but I didn’t feel weak or drained. I was just shocked at what was happening.”
Sawyer shook his head. “That is just amazing. What about you? Looking at your clothes, you should be badly burned. But you’re okay, right?”
“It was horribly painful. I could feel my flesh burning, but it was healing almost as fast. I certainly seem to be healing much faster than before.” He paused. “Let’s try to get out of here. With so much of my clothing burned away, I’m freezing. Let’s go back to the Mustang and get back on the road before anyone wants to ask us some questions.”
“Sure, let’s go.”
The boys headed to the driveway and followed it toward the street. They walked past two fire trucks and stepped over a bunch of hoses of different sizes. They were almost to the road when they heard someone approach them from behind.
They stopped and turned, and saw a tall uniformed police officer approaching.
“Boys, please hold up a minute.”
“Did we do something wrong officer?” Sawyer said.
“Wrong? Certainly not. It sounds like you’re heroes. We just have some questions to ask you.”
“Can I go to my car and grab a jacket first?” Devin said. “I’m freezing.”
The officer took a closer look at Devin and said. “Are you hurt? You look like you’ve been burned.”
Beyond The Veil by Ronald Bagliere
Book excerpt
Claire peered out the passenger-side window as a long peninsula jutting out into the ocean crept into view below. Wisps of thin clouds were casting faint shadows on its muted hills. In the seat beside her, Thad was busy with his thesis research. Behind them, sat Jorge and Molly, both second year grad students. Jorge was going for his doctorate in social anthropology and Molly in evolutionary anthropology with a second understudy in computer sciences. Just now, Molly was preaching to Jorge about her upgraded search engine for the department. But Claire wasn’t listening. For the last three hours, she had been fighting persistent background nausea, and it was getting stronger.
Thad turned a friendly smile toward Claire, nodded over his shoulder and pursed his lips.
Claire took a deep breath and leaned over and peeked at the open document on his laptop. “How’s it going?”
“All right I guess,” he muttered. “Just can’t find a lot of data to draw conclusions from.”
“Perhaps your subject matter is a little too obscure.” she said. As his advisor, she had warned him about tackling the migrations of the South Pacific peoples during their Neolithic period. “Why don’t you shift your argument away from why they left and focus on their arrival and cultural myths?”
Thad shook his head. “It’s been done to death.”
“Yeah, but there’s always something new to discover,” she suggested.
Thad sighed. “That’s what Molly said.”
“She’s right,” Claire pointed out. “So you’re working with her then?”
Thad shrugged. “Yeah. Ms. Tech-Head offered to help me dig through the web, so I took her up on it.”
Claire shook her head. Though Thad wouldn’t ever admit it, she knew he liked Molly, but seeing how she was Noah’s niece, knew better than to spit into the wind. “I’ll leave you to your torture then,” she said, opening to the first page of an article she had been working on over the last two weeks for Anthropology Today.
They landed at Chavez International Airport four hours later, and after playing twenty questions with the customs agent, Claire and her team pushed through the terminal’s front doors into the oppressive heat of Lima’s afternoon sun. Claire looked right, then left before seeing Owen standing next to a red mini-van that was ready to fall apart at any moment. Behind the mini-van, sat a bus boasting painted trees and plants on its side panel. Two smiling bronzed men in pressed tan shorts and button-down shirts stood in front of it.
“Ya made it!” Owen said walking toward her with an outstretched hand.
God's Hammer (Hakon's Saga Book 1) by Eric Schumacher
Book excerpt
When the bells chimed for Vespers, the students were released from their studies for the rest of the afternoon. As always, Hakon darted through the gates into the street like someone who had just been freed from captivity. As always, Louis pursued him. And as they did every day, he and Louis headed for the oak tree that stood just outside the gate to the king’s training grounds. They scrambled up the tree and perched on the branch that provided them with a view of the grounds and all those training within.
To Hakon’s intense disappointment, the grounds stood empty. “Where are they? Why don’t they practice?”
Louis shrugged his thin shoulders. “Maybe they are holding witan after the king’s return.” Despite being raised almost entirely in Engla-lond, he still had not shaken the Frankish intonation that permeated his every word. It was a pleasant sound, though often difficult for Hakon to understand.
“Nonsense. They practice every day. Why would today be different?”
Louis shrugged again, unable to come up with another explanation.
Disheartened but not defeated, Hakon considered his options. “Come on. Let’s stand guard with the fyrdmen on the town walls.”
Louis thought a moment. “Nah. I think I like it here better. More peaceful.”
Hakon eyed his friend, wondering how he and such a docile boy had become so close. Louis had been raised under the tutelage of monks in Winchester and had grown to love their books and their stories. His scrawniness stood as proof to the countless hours he spent indoors, poring over his damned books. Hakon supposed the commonality of their displacement kept them together, despite their disparities. “Suit yourself, Louis.”
Seeing that his friend had no intention of remaining in the tree, Louis sighed and climbed down after him. The two headed for Winchester’s Southgate, where they would pretend, as they had so many other times, that they were fyrdmen guarding Winchester from attack. But as they neared their destination, a group of boys appeared in the street ahead. Edmund’s large frame bobbed in their midst. Hakon hesitated and cursed his luck. He looked for a doorway to duck into, but it was too late; the boys had already spotted them.
“Look. It’s the heathen boy and his little friend.”
Hakon’s heart began to pound behind his ribs. His fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. Refusing to be intimidated, he lifted his chin.
“Hakon, don’t,” begged Louis.
Hakon ignored him and marched forward. He could hear the patter of Louis’ feet as his friend struggled to keep up.
Another boy in the group called out, “Were you raised by kine? Answer when the king’s brother speaks to you.” He waggled his finger like Father Otker.
“Hey, Louis! How is it that you are with a heathen? Was your own father not beset by them?”
Children of the White Star by Linda Thackeray
"Jon, you are not going to believe this!"
Jonen gaped at his normally efficient and composed assistant after she burst into his office out of breath and excited. Always perfectly coiffed and never prone to making unnecessary displays of emotion, Mira was a monument to restraint. Except when she was standing at his desk, staring at him like a wide-eyed teenager.
"Mira, please, pull yourself together." He couldn't resist teasing her.
He never had the opportunity to turn the tables on her. It was always Mira telling him to calm down when some matter made him raise his fists to the universe in protest. Small as this victory might be, he relished the chance at vindication. Mira had managed his practice since its first day and over the years they had enjoyed a comfortable relationship that allowed for playful ribbing.
Eyes narrowing, Mira Giving straightened up immediately and adopted her cool demeanour once more.
"Garryn is here," she stated, her voice devoid of its earlier enthusiasm.
Jonen did not immediately understand the significance.
"Garryn?" He stared back at her bewildered.
Mira rolled her eyes in sarcasm. "Garryn, the one who is going to be crowned Prime in a matter of weeks, that Garryn."
Watching the shock descend across his face, Mira took some pleasure in his reaction and held back any further information until his impatience grew intolerable.
"And?"
A smug smile stole across her face at making the winning move in their bout of verbal chess.
"He is in the waiting room outside."
"The heir apparent needs a mentalist?" Jonen blinked, still grappling with his surprise.
There you go: the six best adventure novels from Next Chapter authors in 02/2023. If you enjoy one of the books on this page, please take a moment to leave a comment below, or a review in Goodreads or your favorite store. We’d love to hear from you :)
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