The best pirates in fiction
Discover the best pirates in fiction with our curated list of top pirate books. From swashbuckling adventures to legendary rogues, explore the most captivating tales of the high seas.
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Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
While going through the possessions of a dead guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads to a pirate fortune as well as great danger.
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Priates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - Captain Jack's Tale
by Tennant Redbank
Stories are whispered of a mysterious ship with black sails and the ruthless pirate who captains it--Barbossa. Feared among pirates and sailors alike, Barbossa and his crew are said to be cursed. Elizabeth Swann isn't afraid of pirates, that is, until she is kidnapped and taken aboard the Black Pearl. Now Will Turner must turn to Captain Jack Sparrow to rescue the girl he loves from the evil clutches of Barbossa and the crew of the Black Pearl./DIV DIVThis early reader is ideal for young fans of the Pirates franchise, bringing the action of the first film to life through full-color movie stills and easy-to-read text.
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Peter Pan (100th Anniversary Edition)
by J. M. Barrie
The adventures of Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up.
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The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor
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Originally a part of The Arabian nights stories, Sinbad's adventures are set in the historic lands of the Middle East. The son of a rich merchant, Sinbad sets sail to seek his fortune, each voyage bringing new challenges and dangers including gigantic birds, monstrous serpents, one-eyed giants and an island of cannibals. Suggested level: primary, intermediate, junior secondary.
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The Princess Bride
by William Goldman
A writer's views on life and art are revealed in his effort to edit the children's classic that shaped his literary ambitions.
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Captain Blood
by Rafael Sabatini
Peter Blood is a physician and an English gentleman who becomes a pirate out of a rankling sense of injustice. Barely escaping the gallows after his arrest for treating wounded rebels who were fighting the oppressive King James, Blood flees England and becomes enslaved on a Barbados plantation of buccaneers. When he escapes, no ship sailing the Spanish Main is safe from Blood and his companions. Abounding with adventure, color, romance, and strong social commentary on the evils of slavery and the dangers of intolerance, this classic adventure is a story about how oppression drives men to desperate actions, how fate plays a hand in everyone's life, and how love is ultimately the greatest power of all. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Sea-hawk
by Rafael Sabatini
Oliver Tressilian, a Cornish gentleman who helped defeat the Spanish Armada, is betrayed by his half-brother, throwing him into circumstances where he becomes a Barbary pirate and a follower of Islam.
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Sandokan
by Emilio Salgari
The Tigers of Mompracem are a band of rebel pirates fighting against the colonial power of the Dutch and British Empires. They are led by Sandokan, the indomitable Tiger of Malaysia, and Yanez de Gomera, a Portuguese wanderer and adventurer. After twelve years of spilling blood and spreading terror throughout Malaysia, Sandokan has reached the height of his power, but when the pirate learns of the existence of the Pearl of Labuan, his fortunes begin to change...
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Sandokan
by Emilio Salgari
The Tiger Roars again! Sandokan and Yanez are back, righting injustices and fighting old foes. Tremal-Naik's misfortunes have continued. Wrongfully imprisoned, the great hunter has been banished from India and sentenced to life in a penal colony. Knowing his master is innocent, Kammamuri dashes off to the rescue, planning to free the good hunter at the first opportunity. When the ever-loyal servant is captured by the Tigers of Mompracem, he manages to enlist their services. But in order to succeed, Sandokan and Yanez must lead their men against the forces of James Brooke, 'The Exterminator', the dreaded White Rajah of Sarawak.
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Sandokan
by Emilio Salgari
The Tiger faces the Empire! Malaysia, 1868. A mysterious figure has armed the Dyaks and led them into battle against Tremal-Naik. Yanez races to the rescue but soon learns that Sandokan and his Tigers are also under threat. Despite eleven years of peace, the new Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke's nephew, has ordered the pirates to leave their island home or face all out war. Is this the end for the Tigers of Mompracem?
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The Pirate
by Sir Walter Scott
This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by Bernhard Tauchnitz in Leipzig, 1846.
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Corsair
by Tim Severin
The master storyteller of VIKING returns with an action-packed swashbuckling pirate adventure1677, on a late summer's evening two ships lurk off the coast of southwest Ireland. They are Barbary corsairs from North Africa, slave catchers. As soon as it is dark, their landing parties row ashore to raid a small fishing village - on the hunt for fresh prey . . . In the village, seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch wakes to the sound of a pistol shot. Moments later he and his sister Elizabeth are taken prisoner. From then on Hector's life plunges into a turbulent and lawless world that is full of surprises. Separated from Elizabeth, he is sold to the slave market of Algiers, where he survives with the help of his newfound friend Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean. The two men convert to Islam to escape the horrors of the slave pens, only to become victims of the deadly warfare of the Mediterranean. Serving aboard a Turkish corsair ship, their vessel is sunk at sea and they find themselves condemned to the oar as galley slaves for France. Driven by his quest to find his sister, Hector finally stumbles on the chilling truth of her fate when he and Dan are shipwrecked on the coast of Morocco . . .
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Pirate Latitudes
by Michael Crichton
Jamaica in 1665 is a rough outpost of the English crown, a minor colony holding out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, Jamaica′s capital, a cut-throat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses, is devoid of London′s luxuries; life here can end swiftly with dysentery or a dagger in your back. But for Captain Edward Hunter it is a life that can also lead to riches, if he abides by the island′s code. In the name of His Majesty King Charles II of England, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking. And law in the New World is made by those who take it into their hands. Word in port is that the Spanish treasure galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is stalled in nearby Matanceros harbor awaiting repairs. Heavily fortified, the impregnable Spanish outpost is guarded by the blood-swiller Cazalla, a favorite commander of King Philip IV himself. With the governor′s backing, Hunter assembles a roughneck crew to infiltrate the enemy island and commandeer the galleon, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloody legends of Matanceros suggest, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he finds himself on the island′s shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry are all that stand between him and the treasure. With the help of his cunning crew, Hunter hijacks El Trinidad and escapes the deadly clutches of Cazalla, leaving plenty of carnage in his wake. But his troubles have just begun. . . .
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On Stranger Tides
by Tim Powers
In 1718, John Chandagnac, a bookkeeper and puppeteer, unwittingly sails into the company of Blackbeard the pirate, encounters zombie-crewed wrecks, and is caught up in a search for the Fountain of Youth.
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Flashman's Lady
by George MacDonald Fraser
When his beautiful and brainless wife Elizabeth is abducted from Singapore by a half-breed ex-Etonian millionaire, Harry Flashman sets out on an odyssey of reluctant pursuit.
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Cup of Gold
by John Steinbeck
"Devoured by lust and greed, Morgan still had two ambitions; first to possess the mysterious woman known as La Santa Roja, and second, to conquer Panama." *** "Henry Morgan, a son of the Welsh glens, sails for the Indies at 15 where he is enslaved in Barbados before coming the lieutenant governor of Jamaica." *** "Henry Morgan ruled the Spanish Main in the 1670s, ravaging the coasts of Cuba and America and striking terror wherever he went. His lust and his greed knew no bounds, and he was utterly consumed by two passions: to possess the mysterious woman known as La Santa Roja, the Red Saint, and to conquer Panama and wrest the 'cup of gold' from Spanish hands."
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Bloody Jack
by Louis A. Meyer
"While disguised as a boy, Jacky Faber experiences adventure and romance on the high seas"--
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Mississippi Jack
by Louis A. Meyer
In 1806, the exploits of Jacky Faber continue as she heads west to avoid capture by the British and discovers adventure aboard a keelboat on the mighty Mississippi River. 20,000 first printing.
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Tales of Pirates and Blue Water
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (1859-1930) was a Scottish author. He is most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Other works include The Firm of Girdlestone (1890), The Captain of the Polestar (1890), The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), Beyond the City (1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896), The Great Boer War (1900), The Green Flag (1900), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Lost World (1912).
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James Fenimore Cooper: Sea Tales (LOA #54)
by James Fenimore Cooper
In The Pilot (1824) and The Red Rover (1828), James Fenimore Cooper invented a new literary genre: the sea novel. Collected here in a single Library of America volume, they are among his finest works. Bold, vigorous, original, each is a tale of high adventure that vividly captures the majesty and power of the seafaring life. Cooper drew on his direct knowledge of ships and sailors to present a truer picture of life on the sea than had ever before achieved in literature. As a boy of seventeen he had sailed before the mast on a merchantman bound from New York to London and then to Spain. On board he experienced the life of a common seaman, learned the craft of sailing, encountered terrifying storms, was chased by pirates, and watched the impressment of crew members by a British man-of-war. He later served as an officer in the United States Navy. The Pilot is loosely based upon stories of John Paul Jones’s daring hit-and-run tactics during the Revolutionary War. The shadowy hero, modeled on Jones, leads a squadron of the infant American navy in a series of raids on the English coast, braving fierce storms and the guns of hostile warships, yet never revealing his identity. In this novel Cooper introduced the character of the “old salt,” the seasoned deckhand happy only aboard ship. Long Tom Coffin, with his briny conversation and shrewd nautical advice, is the first of Cooper’s memorable portraits of common seaman. A ghostly ship, an uncanny hero, a heroine kidnapped by pirates, revelations of mistaken identity, and the reunion of long-lost relatives—scenes of romance and adventure fill the pages of The Red Rover, Cooper’s most theatrical novel. Set in the mid-eighteenth century, the tale recounts the exploits of a noble outcast and visionary who foresees America’s destiny as a sovereign nation. Forced into a life of piracy, the Rover conducts his private war of independence in a story that equates the free and daring life with the American dream of self-reliance and liberty from British rule. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.