James L. Nelson is an author of fiction and nonfiction. His novels include the five books of his Revolution at Sea saga and three in his Brethren of the Coast series. His novel Glory in the Name won the American Library Association's W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Best Military Fiction. Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads was his first work of nonfiction, and he has since authored three other histories of naval warfare during the American Revolution: Benedict Arnold's Navy, George Washington's Secret Navy, which earned the Samuel Eliot Morison Award from the Naval Order of the United States, and George Washington's Great Gamble. He lives in Harpswell, Maine, with his wife and four children.