The Barbed Crown — William Dietrich

Ethan Gage's alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte has gone sour, and now he wants to make Napoleon pay for kidnapping his son and nearly killing his wife.

Gage is determined to thwart Bonaparte's ambitions to take Europe. He devises a mad plan to sabotage Napoleon's coronation by replacing the power-hungry emperor's crown of golden laurel with a religious relic -- the Crown of Thorns purportedly worn by Christ at his crucifixion. But when the scheme goes awry, Gage is soon on the run...

In England, he joins a circle of brilliant renegades, including Robert Fulton. designer of the first submarine; rocket artillery pioneer Sir William Congreve; and smuggler Tom Johnstone. As two empires face off at sea, Gage is plunged into the decisive and lethal Battle of Trafalgar. trapped on board a French ship as Nelson's flatly bears down on him...and the fate of the modern world is at stake.