After years dedicated to the hard facts of a newspaper reporter’s life, including a sting covering the police beat, Carmen Radtke has changed her focus to fiction. She’s been fascinated by both history and mystery as long as she can remember and stays dedicated to the truth behind the lie, and the joys of in-depth research. As a repeated emigrant, she is enthralled by voyages into the unknown and the courage (or madness) that takes.
Fast-paced, exciting, with enough twists to keep me reading without a single break – this is one of my all-time favourites by prolific author Alistair MacLean. I found myself chuckling and, in the next instant, holding my breath as the First Officer has to outwit terrorists who have taken over the tramp carrier cum cruise ship “Campari.” But what I enjoy most is the mix of humour and lightheartedness that balance the high octane thrills which are grounded in meticulous research.
A timeless classic of modern-day piracy from the acclaimed master of action and suspense.
Aboard the SS Campari, all is not well.
For Johnny Carter, the Chief Officer, the voyage has already begun badly; but it's only when the Campari sails that evening, after a succession of delays that he realises something is seriously wrong.
A member of the crew is suddenly missing and the stern-to-stern search only serves to increase tension. Then violence erupts and suddenly the whole ship is in danger. Is the Campari a victim of modern day piracy? And what of the strange cargo hidden below…
I have loved pirates since my first viewing of Mary Martin’s Peter Pan at age 5. My passion for learning about these outlaws led me to discover the hidden stories of women pirates—who have always sailed alongside their male counterparts yet never get the same glory. When I learned about Cheng I Sao, the greatest pirate who ever lived (who was a woman), I was so angry that her story wasn’t more well-known that I wrote a book about it! It has been a joy and an honor to share the stories of pirate women with the world and I have fully embraced my title of “crazy pirate lady.”
This is a picture book, but it’s absolutely lovely. Jane Yolen lends her considerable storytelling talent to this slim volume, which features both gorgeous illustrations of pirate women and bite-sized adaptations of their stories. This is a book I gift to most of the children in my life as a perfect introduction to the world of pirate women.
In 1963 Jane Yolen released a book called PIRATES IN PETTICOATS, because the idea of women as pirates fascinated her--but there wasn't much information about these women who made their livelihoods plundering on the high seas. Scholars have dug up a bounty of new information since then, and Jane, still fascinated, revisits the ladies who loot.
Discover such great pirates as Artemisia, the Admiral Queen of Persia who sailed the seas from 500 to 480 BC. At one point there was a 10,000 drachma prize for anyone who could capture her. There was Rachel Wall, who ran away from her…
My fascination with pirates began as a student in Bristol (UK) – the legendary hometown of Edward Teach a.k.a. Blackbeard. Later, I visited the Pirates of Nassau Museum in the Bahamas and was amazed to learn there had been women buccaneers too. I wanted to discover more about these daring females and find out what might have enticed them to brave a tenuous life on the account. As fate would have it, I now live in North Carolina near the Outer Banks where Blackbeard met his fate. These experiences inspired me to write a different kind of adventure story about the real pirates of the Caribbean featuring a strong, resilient, swashbuckling female.
Although I captain my own lake boat, I knew very little about ancient nautical sailing and warfare when I began writing Fire on Dark Water. Benerson Little’s book, The Sea Rover’s Practice, taught me about different types of crafts, weapons, battle tactics, sea villains, ship routines, sailor superstitions, methods of stealth attack, treatment of prisoners, and even the types of food eaten on board ship throughout 1630 – 1730. It was a very valuable resource.
To read of sea roving's various incarnations - piracy, privateering, buccaneering, la flibuste, la course - is to bring forth romantic, and often violent, imagery. Indeed, much of this imagery has become a literary and cinematic cliche?. And what an image it is!
But its truth is by halves, and paradoxically it is the picaresque imagery of Pyle, Wyeth, Sabatini, and Hollywood that is often closer to the reality, while the historical details of arms, tactics, and language are often inaccurate or entirely anachronistic.
Successful sea rovers were careful practitioners of a complex profession that sought wealth by stratagem and…
As a humorist and lover of all things comedy, I know how quickly a good joke can feel dated. (Heck, lots of great bits from last year don’t even work anymore.) Drama almost always holds up better than comedy. For example, you can still get swept up in dramatic narratives as ancient as The Odyssey. But do Aristophanes’ or Shakespeare’s “comedies” elicit even the slightest guffaws? Not from me. So, I hear you cry, are there any written works from more than 100 years ago that remain lol funny today? Well, don’t cry. Because yes, there are quite a few literary treasures that are still hysterically funny. The good news is that I’ve done some of that research for you.
Before sitcoms, stand-up, SNL, and absolutely any great comedy movie you can name – there was Gilbert & Sullivan. Okay, yes they wrote operas (“light operas” technically; really more like our musicals today), but these works were created to be popular, scandalous, funny, and with hummable tunes for the masses. G&S operas were absurd, fantastic, politically incorrect, hysterical, “topsy turvy” extravaganzas that satirized (much like Wilde) the bourgeois mores of the day. Astonishingly, most of it holds up today, which is why you can still see Gilbert and Sullivan's productions being perpetually staged across the globe. If you can see one of their productions live – or on YouTube – go for it. But the libretto’s themselves are highly readable and funny. The Pirates of Penzance is a good gateway to their other works. It’s full of sex, crime, cops, pirates, bathing beauties, and non-stop earworms; and includes two of…
When a pirate's apprentice tries to leave the high seas and build a new life, his hopes are dashed when a secret comes to light. The man's plans are shattered as he's forced to return to his old stomping grounds. Frederic is a 21-year-old who has spent his life working as a pirate's apprentice. Now an adult, he's free from his commitment and able to venture out on his own. He eventually stumbles across a group of women including the beautiful Mabel. They immediately fall in love and plan to spend their lives together. Unfortunately, Frederic discovers that his birthday,…
I am an author of romantic historical fiction and a book reviewer of more than 1,000 books. I also have a blog: Historical Romance Review. I love deep historicals—both my own and those written by others--that bring history and realistic love stories to life. Adventure and love on the high seas is my favorite setting.
Set at the dawn of the Regency era, the story begins on a British naval vessel on its way to Australia, transporting a famous prisoner—American privateer, Justin Phillips—as well as civilian passengers, including shy, 17-year old Christina Marks, in mourning for her father’s death and going to live with her uncle.
Justin and Christina share a love for books and ideas but are terribly different personalities. Were it not for the unusual circumstances in which the shy, unselfish girl speaks through a small window to a prisoner she can’t see, they never would have formed the bond they did.
Horsman has brilliantly crafted this tale of a sheltered vicar’s daughter and a hardened man. Despite all against them, the two fall quickly and desperately in love.
Let's face it: pirates of the Golden Age are just cool. No one would actually want to encounter them, but they have been the stuff of escapist dreams since childhood. Adventure, fellowship, treasure–the “romantic” aspects of piracy are what make these otherwise nasty individuals anti-heroes par excellence. As an adult and academic and as an occasional crewman on square riggers, I adopted pirates as a favorite sub-set of maritime history. As with other aspects of the past, I view the history of pirates and piracy as really two narratives: what the records tell us happened and why and what our persistent fascination with them reveals about us.
I taught courses on Atlantic piracy in the early-modern era and always included this lively, authoritative survey of piracy (and anti-piracy). It is a go-to volume for the newcomer to pirate history as well as for the specialist, and my students consistently praised it.
Peter Earle brings his mastery of maritime history to each page and is never boring!
Investigating the fascination pirates hold over the popular imagination, Peter Earle takes the fable of ocean-going Robin Hoods sailing under the "banner of King Death" and contrasts it with the murderous reality of robbery, torture and death and the freedom of a short, violent life on the high seas. The book charts 250 years of piracy, from Cornwall to the Caribbean, from the 16th century to the hanging of the last pirate cptain in Boston in 1835. Along the way, we meet characters like Captain Thomas Cocklyn, chosen as commander of his ship "on account of his brutality and ignorance,"…
The book highlights the little known history of a female 16th century Irish chieftain who resisted English rule and fought her local enemies during a time when women were socially repressed. The colorful and turbulent history of Ireland during the Tudor expansion is examined within the context of O’Malley’s struggles and triumphs. Her audience with Queen Elizabeth I as an equal is a fascinating highlight of this excellent work of non-fiction.
For half my life I’ve lived on an island near Hong Kong, walking distance from former pirate havens. I made my career as a cartoonist and published numerous satirical books about Hong Kong and China. Recently, I've spent years deeply researching the pirates of the South China coast, which culminated in writing an utterly serious book about the most powerful pirate of all, a woman about whom the misinformation vastly outnumbers the facts. I made it my mission to discover the truth about her. The books on this list hooked me on Chinese pirates in the first place and are essential starting points for anyone prepared to have their imaginations hijacked by Chinese “froth floating on the sea”.
Lilius, a Finnish-Russian journalist and adventurer, describes his first-hand account of sailing around the Pearl River Delta in the 1920s with the female pirate chieftain Lai Choi-san. It’s a swashbuckling page-turner, featuring cutthroats, cannons, and opium dens. It’s a wonder he survived unscathed. Yet even though he includes photos, there is reason to believe that he made up the whole thing, since there are no other records of Lai Choi-san. Worth reading anyway, for the details about ships, boat people culture, and coastal life in the late 1920s, were properly researched and all ring true. First published in 1930, it was reissued in 2009.
An enthusiastic history of rampant Cantonese piracy in the 1930s, this first-hand account follows globetrotting journalist Aleko E. Lilius as he sets out to infiltrate mysterious pirate gangs. Describing every detail of the reporter’s life as he eats, sleeps, and sails with murderous gangs, this recollection chronicles the rapport between Lilius and South China’s notorious pirate queen, Lai Choi San. Including the harrowing misdeeds witnessed on Lilius’s journey, this record is a sensational, adventurous tale.
In my day job I’m a professor in a hard science and, unsurprisingly, a lesbian. I love sapphic fiction, especially speculative sapphic fiction, but it can be hard to find as the books are seldom labeled as such. Because I write in this genre I’ve been able to ferret out a lot of them, and have made it a mini mission to read as many as possible. I’m particularly drawn to those that get science right (bad science to a science professor is like nails on a chalk board), and those that have at least a little bit of kissing.
Straddling the line between space opera and military sci-fi, Barbary Station scratches the itch for those who like their space lesbians already in a relationship, and just focusing on the adventure. Recent college graduates Adda and Iridian have a ton of student debt and real jobs just aren’t going to pay the bills. Hence they turn to piracy (of course), and things get sticky, fast, when the space station they are on starts to crumble apart, and killer AIs come after them.
There aren’t a lot of sapphic space books where the main pair are already together. Watching a married couple navigate a more mature relationship while still battling aliens and technology is a refreshing take, and one that will definitely appeal to older sci-fi fans.
Two engineers hijack a spaceship to join some space pirates-only to discover the pirates are hiding from a malevolent AI. Now they have to outwit the AI if they want to join the pirate crew-and survive long enough to enjoy it.
Adda and Iridian are newly minted engineers, but aren't able to find any work in a solar system ruined by economic collapse after an interplanetary war. Desperate for employment, they hijack a colony ship and plan to join a famed pirate crew living in luxury at Barbary Station, an abandoned shipbreaking station in deep space.
I'm a hybrid author from Bulgaria, and my work mostly focuses on historical fiction and fantasy. History has always been mainly centered around the male point of view. But many female heroes would also like to tell us their stories. My fascination started with the women Haiduks of Bulgaria, which gave birth to my first book Sirma. And the more I researched, the more I realized countless historical female figures worldwide deserve just as much attention. I hope this list is enriching to all readers and helps them see their captivating point of view.
The Flower Boat Girl is a historical novel about the life of Zheng Yi Sao, the most successful pirate in history (and, yes, a woman). Sold as a child to a floating brothel, at 26 she buys her freedom, but then is kidnapped and forced to marry a pirate. From there, she uses her strength and cunning mind to carve her destiny and practically make history. I loved this book, because it gives us an honest portrayal of a pirate's life and how a woman has no place in it, yet one woman makes it against all odds.
Her father traded away her youth. Sea bandits stole her freedom. She has one way to get them back: Become the most powerful pirate in the world.
South China coast, 1801. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, 26-year-old Yang has finally bought her freedom, only to be kidnapped by a brutal pirate gang and forced to marry their leader.
Dragged through stormy seas and lawless bandit havens, Yang must stay scrappy to survive. She embeds herself in the dark business of piracy, carving out her role against the resistance of powerful pirate leaders and Cheung Po Tsai, her…
