It’s 1868 and Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., arch-cad, amorist, cold-headed soldier, and reluctant hero, is back!

Fleeing a chain of vengeful pursuers that includes Mexican bandits, the French Foreign Legion, and the relatives of an infatuated Austrian beauty, Flashy is desperate for somewhere to take cover. So desperate, in fact, that he embarks on a perilous secret intelligence-gathering mission to help free a group of Britons being held captive by a tyrannical Abyssinian king. That mission rapidly turns into one of the most famous expeditions in British military history, and along the way, of course, are nightmare castles, brigands, massacres, rebellions, orgies, and the loveliest and most lethal women in Africa–including a voluptuous African queen with a weakness for stalwart adventurers whom she nonetheless occasionally throws to her pet lions–who will test the limits of the great bounder’s talents for knavery, amorous intrigue, and survival.

Flashman on the March– the twelfth book in George MacDonald Fraser’s ever-beloved, always scandalous Flashman Papers series–is Flashman and Fraser at their best.