Written in 1934, Shay based his work of the life of famed pirate Mary Read on the available histories. In this delightful novel she is depicted as a fetching pirate wench who roams the Romantic Carribees, despoiling shipping and taking lovers. Read lived disguised as a boy by her mother, from an early age, as an adult she proved herself in the military, and aboard ships. When a West Indies bound ship that she was on was taken by pirates, she was forced her to join them. In 1720 she joined pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham and his companion, the female pirate Anne Bonny. The rest as they say,...

"TO HELL WITH THE LAW" LYNCHING has many legal definitions. It means one thing in Kentucky and North Carolina and another in Virginia or Minnesota. For the purpose of this work it is defined as the execution without process of the law, by a mob, of any individual suspected or convicted of a crime or accused of an offense against the prevailing social customs. The state of Minnesota clearly defines it as the killing of a human being by the act or procurement of a mob. In Kentucky and North Carolina the lynch-victim must have been in the hands of the law or there was no lynching. Virginia...