Tumen wants to go home so Jack and his crew take him back where they are greeted by his family and friends. Throwing a celebration dinner and story telling cause Jack and his crew to dream of the City of Gold. Waking the next day there are persona non gratis because the amulet leading to the City of Gold is missing and Tumen's great-grandfather is ill. Knowing they did not steal the amulet leads Jack and crew to search the island where a small doll is found with the mark of Madame Minuit upon it. Now they must sail to New Orleans and find Madame and retrieve the amulet.

I enjoyed this story. It starts a little slow but once they hit New Orleans it gets exciting. We find out about Madame Minuit and more about the amulet. We also learn more about Arabella. The ending sets up their next adventure (I hope) and I am ready for it.

M/M historical romance.  The story was well put together.  It held my attention and made my heart race in all the right  places.

Nathaniel is sailing to a New World Colony with his sister when they are set upon by pirates.  As it turns out this is the very Privateer turned pirate at the betrayal of Nathaniel's father.  Once the Hawk knows who he has in his midst, he kidnaps Nathaniel as he is the only son and heir of his bitter enemy.  Hawk's plan in to ransom Nathaniel and finally visit revenge upon the man that took his legal life as a Privateer away.  What Hawk doesn't count on is falling for his captive.  Romance, mutiny and adventure ensues.

The plot was good, the characters were likeable, the romance was sweet and hot where it needed to be.  The narration was spot-on.  There was emotion and I felt as though I were truly "hearing" the characters.   Job well done.

This is pretty damn good. Good story, and hotness. I'm happy with this pick.

by Donald Grady Shomette

Subtitled War on the New Jersey Coast 1775-1783.

Non-fiction

From the introduction: "The story of Jersey and the many thousands of prison ship martyrs who expired within her dark, pestilential bowels, was once an iconic piece of American history: it is little remembered today. So, too, was the often swashbuckling trade that the majority of her unfortunate inmates had practiced, namely privateering - that is, governmentally sanctioned commerce raiding for profit by private ships of war - during the many long years of the American revolution."

This is a historical book about legalized piracy. It's a part of history that isn't usually taught in schools, how supply lines to the American coast were interfered with by government sanctioned privateering and the horrendous conditions of prison ships that held those privateers who were captured, most notably the Jersey.

The book tells the history of how the fledgling American government debated and eventually deployed privateers because their need for naval protection along the Atlantic coast was essential, but they did not have the finances to build sufficient warships. Concern over the possibility of privateering turning to piracy did arise in discussions, but in the end necessity demanded and the inevitable infractions led to a culture of piracy that has formed famous legends over the years.

This book reads like a history book in school with a lot of facts and relation of detailed events, so is recommended for the serious history buff rather than casual reading. A lot of research obviously went into it and I found it interesting to say the least. Anyone interested in American history will find a lot of revelations in this book.

by Samuel S. Marquis

The introduction to this got me excited because a lot of historical information was consulted by the author that shows Blackbeard very differently than pop culture has painted him and among the sources was David Cordingly, who wrote one of the best non-fiction books about pirates I've ever read.

Having established that the author did his research, this is presented as Historical Fiction so I was prepared to settle back and enjoy a good pirate story, but secure in the knowledge that it was based on facts as far as they are known. The one problem was that a lot of those facts were shoehorned in and made the flow of the story a little awkward.

Still, Blackbeard comes over as a mostly sympathetic character. The early chapters read more like a history book than historical fiction, but I did get caught up in the story a few chapters in. The events and chance meetings that led Edward Thache to turn from honest naval service to piracy are put into context in a way that demonstrates that he had little choice, as so many characters from history have found themselves on the wrong side of the law through circumstances of their times.

I enjoyed getting a look inside the sequence of events that actually happened and how Thache morphed into the pirate Blackbeard and obtained the Queen Anne's Revenge. With historical fiction about real people, you already know how it ends. It's reading about the sequence of events that lead up to what history tells us that makes it interesting and I came out of this feeling real sympathy for Blackbeard and his reasons for turning pirate, not least of all because he preferred taking his prizes without hurting anyone when he could.