I've been thinking of an adventure more along the lines of pearl-smuggling in the South Seas or discovering a lost continent. We're being sponsored, you see, so it's got to be full of glamorous locations and scantily clad women. He's conquered the seven seas, hunted Moby Dick and rescued Charles Darwin; now the Pirate Captain and his crew are off on another adventure. Their mission this time: to sail to London, buy a new suit for the Pirate Captain and maybe have some sort of adventure in a barnyard. But nothing is ever straightforward for the hapless pirates. In no time at all, the Pirate Captain is incarcerated at Scotland Yard in a case of mistaken identity. Discovering that his doppelganger is none other than Karl Marx, the Captain and his crew are unwittingly caught up in a sinister plot involving communists, enormous beards and a quest to discover whether ham might really be the opium of the people.

After adventures with Charles Darwin, Captain Ahab, and Karl Marx, The Pirate Captain faces off against his toughest—though not his biggest—challenge yet: Napoleon Bonaparte. Bruised from a crushing disappointment at the Pirate of the Year Awards, the Pirate Captain decides that it’s time for a career change. Before long, his loyal crew, much to their dismay, find themselves en route to St. Helena, a bleak speck of an island a thousand miles from anywhere. But the Captain’s plan for a quiet life rearing bees is interrupted by the arrival of another visitor to the island—the recently deposed Napoleon Bonaparte. Is the island’s twenty-eight mile circumference big enough to contain two of history’s greatest egos? Has the Pirate Captain finally met his match? And who has the best hat? Once again, Gideon Defoe has given us an exciting, swashbuckling tale of lavish tea parties, planning regulations, and raw political ambition.

It's come to my attention that the old girl's a little bit past her best. And I can hardly maintain my reputation as a terror of the high seas with bits falling off the boat all the time, can I? The Pirate Captain is in trouble. Eager to appease his crew with a boat that has a functioning mast, fewer holes and cannons that actually fire, he splashes out on the fancy new Lovely Emma, spending six thousand doubloons he doesn't have. Finding themselves in debt to the beautiful but deadly Cutlass Liz - or the butcher of Barbados, as she's otherwise known - the pirates need to raise some money fast. In a desperate race against time our heroes embark on an adventure that will take them from the shores of Nantucket to the bright lights of Las Vegas, to the ends of the earth in search of a mythical white whale, and even, perhaps, into the dark depths of madness. But hopefully they'll be home in time for tea.

I've been thinking of an adventure more along the lines of pearl-smuggling in the South Seas or discovering a lost continent. We're being sponsored, you see, so it's got to be full of glamorous locations and scantily clad women. He's conquered the seven seas, hunted Moby Dick and rescued Charles Darwin; now the Pirate Captain and his crew are off on another adventure. Their mission this time: to sail to London, buy a new suit for the Pirate Captain and maybe have some sort of adventure in a barnyard. But nothing is ever straightforward for the hapless pirates. In no time at all, the Pirate Captain is incarcerated at Scotland Yard in a case of mistaken identity. Discovering that his doppelganger is none other than Karl Marx, the Captain and his crew are unwittingly caught up in a sinister plot involving communists, enormous beards and a quest to discover whether ham might really be the opium of the people.

Carson Napier is headed to Mars, but a navagation problem lands him on Venus instead! Where he discovers that this supposidly uninhabited world is filled with people and danger!

It starts with a confession from a priest. His past has reached further back than what many would consider possible. Before he was a priest, he was the pirate Captain Cristofo, and before he was a pirate, he was just Chris, a boy living in a monastery in Cuba the day after tomorrow. One day Chris realizes that he is not meant for the monastery he has grown up in, and leaves. On the streets of Havana everything looks strange and out-of-date, but Chris is too busy trying to find his next meal and a safe place to sleep to contemplate the city's odd lack of modern conveniences. He finds that this world is a much harder one than the one he remembers; it's a place where people steal, lie, and cheat. Where slaves are sold at auction, and the Spanish, French, and English are all battling for supremacy. When Chris is offered the opportunity to work on a ship in exchange for food and a small bit of money, he takes it, and thus begins his life as a pirate. People die, treasures are found, women are taken captive, and crews rebel. Gene Wolfe is a masterful storyteller, and in Pirate Freedom, he uses his customary vision to invite us into the captivating world of pirates, their lives, and their adventures.

Original introduction by Warren Ellis, author of Transmetropolitan and Gun Machine Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution? The Futurists! Utopian pirate-warriors of the tiny Regency of Carnaro, unlikely scourge of the Adriatic Sea. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are not entirely unsympathetic). The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are led by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Lorenzo Secondari, World War I veteran, engineering genius, and leader of Croatian raiders. Frau Piffer, Syndicalist manufacturer of torpedos at a factory run by and for women. The Ace of Hearts, a dashing Milanese aristocrat, spymaster, and tactical savant. And the Prophet, a seductive warrior-poet who leads via free love and military ruthlessness. Fresh off of a worldwide demonstration of their might, can the Futurists engage the aid of sinister American traitors and establish world domination?

A captivating and original prequel to "Treasure Island" that will delight fans of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic as well as fans of those "other" pirates of the Caribbean.

WINNER OF THE SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON AWARD FOR NAVAL LITERATURE “I devoured Act of War the way I did Flyboys, Flags of Our Fathers and Lost in Shangri-la.”—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author In 1968, the small, dilapidated American spy ship USS Pueblo set out to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Though packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, its crew, led by ex–submarine officer Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested young sailors. On a frigid January morning, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more boats, shelled and machine-gunned, forced to surrender, and taken prisoner. Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo’s capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea’s president. The two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint. Based on extensive interviews and numerous government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, Act of War tells the riveting saga of Bucher and his men as they struggled to survive merciless torture and horrendous living conditions set against the backdrop of an international powder keg.

Drawing on newly declassified government files, this is the dramatic story of how a forbidden book in the Soviet Union became a secret CIA weapon in the ideological battle between East and West. In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to a village just outside Moscow to visit Russia’s greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the original manuscript of Pasternak’s first and only novel, entrusted to him with these words: “This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world.” Pasternak believed his novel was unlikely ever to be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an irredeemable assault on the 1917 Revolution. But he thought it stood a chance in the West and, indeed, beginning in Italy, Doctor Zhivago was widely published in translation throughout the world. From there the life of this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA, which recognized that the Cold War was above all an ideological battle, published a Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. Copies were devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend. Pasternak’s funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands of admirers who defied their government to bid him farewell. The example he set launched the great tradition of the writer-dissident in the Soviet Union. In The Zhivago Affair, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée bring us intimately close to this charming, passionate, and complex artist. First to obtain CIA files providing concrete proof of the agency’s involvement, the authors give us a literary thriller that takes us back to a fascinating period of the Cold War—to a time when literature had the power to stir the world. (With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)