I don't really want romance, I'd rather have historical fiction

can you recommend any great pirate stories?

Yo-ho-ho (bottle of rum optional)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, of course, it's timeless

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 is Talk LIke a Pirate Day, maties. There's also a place on the web where you can get a Pirate Name.

I enjoyed Grania: She King of the Irish Seas by Morgan Llywelyn.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/book/details/9780765308382-Grania+SheKing+of+the+Irish+Seas

There is also The Life of the World To Come by Kage Baker.  It's the third in her Company series and it has a pirate character.  You might want to start wtih the first book In the Garden of Iden (no pirates there though).

Laura

thanks you guys. I appreciate the suggestions.

The Pirates: in an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe is the first in a line of silly, short pirate novels. It's basically a goofy pastiche of pirate caricatures who have a zany adventure with Charles Darwin. It's not great literature, but it's pretty fun. I haven't read any of the later books, but I think one is called Pirates: in an adventure with Communists.....

Robert E. Howard had a pirate character called Black Vulmea.  David C. Smith wrote a whole Black Vulmea novel, The Witch of the Indies.  I thoroughly enjoyed that book, and...

Fell Cargo by Dan Abnett.  This novel is set in the Warhammer fantasy world, meaning the pirates encounter the foul sorceries of the undead (as if their fellow cutthroats and the ocean itself weren't enough to contend with).  Lots of surprising characters and bloody action battles.