Anonymous

CHATHAM -- There are places where Bernard Cornwell is a household name. His adopted home here on Cape Cod isn't one of them.

The British-born Cornwell has sold 12 million copies of his famous Napoleonic-era Richard Sharpe adventure novels alone. In addition, he has written three other series, five thrillers, and five other novels that defy easy categorization, such as 1999's ''Stonehenge," billed as a ''story of love, rivalry, treachery, and a great, mysterious temple."

Cornwell is a celebrity in his native England and almost as famous in Brazil and Japan. His books have been translated into 17 languages. But -- unlike, say, Stephen King -- he could walk the streets of Boston in complete anonymity. ''I am the least-known best-selling author in Massachusetts," he says. ''It's nice to come back here, where no one knows who you are."

Cornwell's low profile in his adopted home is partly by design. From outward appearances, he lives modestly, in a weather-worn, gray-shingled Cape Cod house partially visible from the road. Upon entering, a visitor realizes that Cornwell in fact owns two homes on lots that are joined by a 49-foot-long covered lap pool. The second dwelling, hidden from the road by a long fence, has guest rooms and his oak-beamed, cathedral-ceilinged, 4,000-volume library and work space.

His under-the-radar silhouette in the United States is not entirely intentional. In 1993, he launched a series of historical novels featuring Yale College dropout Nathaniel Starbuck, set during the Civil War. Asked if that was an attempt to duplicate the success of the Sharpe novels on American soil, Cornwell demurs a moment, and says, ''I suppose it was."

He stopped writing the ''Starbuck Chronicles" series in the mid-1990s and turned his attention back to the Sharpe novels, which were starting to be filmed for British television. That series ran on PBS's ''Masterpiece Theatre" in 1993 and 1995 but did not trigger a surge of US book sales. His first and only New York Times bestseller was ''Sharpe's Havoc," published last year.

Privately, his fans in the publishing world believe that he has been ill-served by his US publisher, HarperCollins, until recently. While the late Patrick O'Brian was the toast of Publishers Row with his lightly plotted, delicately crafted tales of Captain Jack Aubrey and his cello-playing sidekick Stephen Maturin, Cornwell's better plotted and similarly researched books have fared less well. ''I think there is still a huge audience out there that Cornwell hasn't found yet," comments fan Michael Powell, the founder of Powell's Books, based in Portland, Ore. ''The O'Brian series sucked up a lot of oxygen, and the naval thing got the high ground."

Cornwell once met O'Brian, whose work he greatly admires. ''He criticized me," Cornwell recalls. ''He once wrote, 'Cornwell and [Horatio Hornblower creator C.S.] Forester -- too much plot, not enough lifestyle.' He was fascinated by lifestyle and he was very good at it." Cornwell put Sharpe onboard a Royal Navy vessel in his 2000 novel ''Sharpe's Trafalgar" and matched O'Brian's penchant for detail topgallant sail for topgallant sail, with a stem-winding plot thrown in.

HarperCollins has long been aware of the discrepancy between Cornwell's phenomenal popularity in Great Britain and his more modest profile in the United States. ''His career languished here while he was a bestseller in Britain," says the firm's executive editor Dan Conaway. The publishing house is taking measures to build Cornwell into a ''global" author, for instance, by packaging the Sharpe series almost identically to W.W. Norton's successful O'Brian novels.

HarperCollins likewise plans a big sales push, including one of Cornwell's rare US author tours, for a new series he is launching in February. The first volume will be ''The Last Kingdom," a historical adventure thriller set in ninth-century England that is already a huge bestseller in Great Britain. ''I think he's about to become a brand-name author," says Conaway. ''This is breakout time."

Maybe. There is no doubt that Cornwell has the chops. Globe critic Katherine Powers has called him ''perhaps the greatest writer of historical novels today." Praising the Sharpe series, she wrote: ''If you love the mechanics and tactics of war, the filth and gore of the battlefield; treachery, beastliness, and villainy; courage, manliness, and honor; romance without ludicrous sexual description -- then look no farther."

Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley, also a Cornwell fan, likens the rough-edged Sharpe to George MacDonald Fraser's fictional hero Harry Flashman, a more comical bounder who avoids the heat of battle as avidly as Sharpe seeks it. The comparison would doubtless please Cornwell, who keeps a framed letter of appreciation from the now elderly Fraser next to his desk.

In a backhanded way, success has complicated Cornwell's chances for superstardom in the United States. At age 60, he is in a position most writers envy: He can do whatever he wants. He makes more than $2 million a year in royalties from his novels in print, and his work pace has not slowed since he published his first book, ''Sharpe's Eagle," 23 years ago.

Cornwell writes a book about every five months, working eight hours a day at least five days a week. So far, he has written 43 novels on themes varying from the King Arthur legends (his personal favorites) to modern sailing thrillers -- such as 1988's ''Wildtrack," in which ''a crippled veteran of the Falkland's War sails into the north Atlantic to discover whether a famous television [personality] is a murderer," according to his website, www.bernardcornwell.net. He documents each day's progress in an accounting ledger he keeps open next to his desk.

Just as Stephen King had to adopt the pseudonym Richard Bachman because he was writing books faster than his publisher wanted to sell them, so, too, has Cornwell had to launch new series and write stand-alone thrillers to avoid flooding the market with Sharpe novels.

''My publisher said they didn't want two historical novels in the same year, so I said, 'What if I wrote thrillers?' " Cornwell explains. ''It was crazy! If I could get two books from Dennis Lehane each year, I'd eat them up."

Cornwell's productivity -- and unpredictability -- are simultaneously astonishing and intimidating. Conaway shares editing duties with Susan Watt, Cornwell's editor in England. ''In the two to three weeks that it takes us to read what he's submitted and get back to him, he's written 10,000 to 20,000 words of the next one," Conaway explains. Just this week Cornwell finished writing the second novel in ''The Last Kingdom" series, and he plans to start his next novel when he returns from a brief Christmas vacation.

What is surprising is that neither Conaway nor Cornwell now knows what the subject of his next book will be. Although Cornwell plans to write several more books in ''The Last Kingdom" series, he is definitely giving the Danish King Alfred and pre-medieval England a rest. He is bursting his buttons to write a historical novel about the 1779 Battle of Castine in Maine, a humiliating American defeat. The novel would feature a debunking of Paul Revere, ''who handed the British an unexpected victory" there, Cornwell says.

''He was accused of cowardice and incompetence," says Cornwell, who adds that he feels a most un-Sharpe-like reluctance to storm ''the high ground of American myth. I can't get one bloody thing wrong; that's the trouble with writing about an American icon."

Earlier this year, Cornwell and his wife visited the Portuguese town of Barossa, one of the few places where Lord Wellington and Richard Sharpe have not yet battled the ''garlic-eating slime" -- that would be the French -- on the Iberian peninsula. ''I can get Sharpe there," Cornwell muses. ''And I have his whole repertory company in place. I guess that's the easy option -- maybe I'll do it."

Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com.