Pirate Novels

JacobS.Tucker said:

Hey everyone,
I was just thinking about Pirates (watched the POTC movies) and I was wondering if there are any good Pirate novels? I know there's Treasure Island and I've read that one, but then the other ones I found were more aimed at younger audiences.

Is there a pirate novel or two out there that are more aimed at adults and more mature audiences? With a gritty storyline and the real essence of a dirty, scoundrel of a pirate?

Please and thank you for the recommendations!

Click to expand...

On Stranger Tides - Tim Powers

( and Disney even eventually decided to give him some credit for the whole zombies / pirates / caribbean thing )

It's an older YA title, but Pirate's Passage by William Gilkerson talks a great deal about pirates and piracy, without whitewashing. (It doesn't go too far into gory details, but it discusses how miserable the life often was, and how some of them were real monsters.)

Pyrates! by George MacDonald Fraser.

But probably not what you're looking for.

I don't usually recommend my own books, but the one in my sig has some vicious pirates who come up with a few inventive ways of dealing with their enemies. Also, lots of naval battles. That being said, it's a fantasy romance, though the romance doesn't involve the pirates at all.

As a teen i enjoyed reading the pirate novels from Emilio Salgari and Rafael Sabatini, but i think they are good for adults too.

Leo Savage said:

As a teen i enjoyed reading the pirate novels from Emilio Salgari and Rafael Sabatini, but i think they are good for adults too.

Click to expand...

How could I forget Sabatini? I'll have to search out Salgari.

The Island, by Peter Benchley (the author of Jaws), is a modern-day pirate story. I think it was published back in the early 1980s but I still haven't gotten around to reading it. So this post is only a tip, not a recommendation, matey!

Not to shill my own work too much--and not that I haven't already done it here--but my latest novel (see avi) does involve a bunch of futuristic alien pirates. There ain't a whole lot about the pirate life, but the story does feature a lot of action, some romance, and some comedy as well.

"Marauders" is an old-fashioned term, but I liked it better than "pirates".

As for books about pirates, The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard is a solid read. Under the Black Flag by Cordingly is also well written. Read them both a couple of years back and enjoyed them.

A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes. And there's always the classic: Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

caw

I like Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton. It isn't nearly as good as his other works, but I liked it.

It's more of a historical fiction biography, but Grania by Morgan Llewelyn is about Grace O'Malley, the Irish pirate queen.