Five Great books about Bonny and Read – Women Pirates of the CARIBBEAN

18th June 2025

Five Great Books about Bonny and Read – women pirates of the Caribbean. While male pirates dominate popular imagination, the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy (roughly 1650-1730) saw a handful of audacious women embrace the pirate life. Most famously Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Often disguised as men, these women were known for their ferocity in battle, reportedly fighting with pistols and cutlasses as fiercely as any male crew member.

They defied societal norms, seeking freedom, wealth, and adventure in a male-dominated world. Their extraordinary stories – both fact and fiction – highlight the circumstances that led some women to choose a life of piracy, proving that courage and cunning knew no gender on the high seas.

Here are five great books about Bonny and Read and their adventures in the Caribbean:

Bonny and Read by Julie Walker

Rebels. Pirates. Women.

Caribbean, 1720. Two extraordinary women are on the run – from their pasts, from the British Navy and the threat of execution, and from the destiny that fate has written for them.

Plantation owner’s daughter, runaway wife, pirate – Anne Bonny has forged her own story in a man’s world. But when she is involved in the capture of a British merchant ship, she is amazed to find another woman amongst the crew, with a history as unconventional as her own. Dressed as a boy from childhood, Mary Read has been a soldier, a sailor, a widow – but never a woman in charge of her own destiny.

As their exhilarating, tumultuous exploits find fame, the ballad of Bonny and Read is sung from shore to shore – but when you swim against the tide of history, freedom is a dangerous thing…

An exuberant reimagining of the extraordinary story of Bonny & Read – trailblazing, boundary-defying, swashbuckling heroines whose story deserves to be known. Perfect for fans of Ariadne, The Mercies and The Familiars.

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Saltblood by Francesca De Tores

In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money.

Mary’s dual existence as Mark will lead to a role as a footman in a grand house, serving a French mistress; to the navy, learning who to trust and how to navigate by the stars; and to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, finding love among the bloodshed and the mud. But none of this will stop Mary yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman.

She will become a pirate.

Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history’s most remarkable figures.

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Seaborne by Nuala O’Connor

1703, Kinsale, County Cork. Anne Coleman is the illegitimate child of a local lawyer and his maid; disguised as ‘Anthony’ to protect reputations, the mask suits Anne just fine. But, fixated on boats and the sea, she struggles to fit in, and her devoted mother fears for her fiercely independent and impulsive daughter.

When their secrets are exposed, the family emigrates to the new colony of Carolina, but this fresh start will bring devastating loss and stifling responsibilities. Lonely and transgressive, Anne finds comfort only with Bedelia, servant and intimate friend. But her craving for the sea-wandering life and a misjudged marriage to young Gabriel Bonny will compel Anne to take to the sea again, this time around the islands of the Caribbean, famous for plunder and piracy.

Adventure, passion and freedom await, but so do violence and disappointment. And, as she tries to stay true to herself, her hopes and her few precious friendships, Anne Bonny must also face her own privilege and the sacrifices required for enduring love.

Seaborne is the thrilling and sensuous portrait of a young woman out of step with her time and place, but never her heart.

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Pirate Queens by Rebecca Alexandra Simon

The first full biography of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, 18th-century partners in crime who terrorized the Caribbean: “Excellent . . . informative and interesting.” —Model Shipwrights

Between August and October 1720, two female pirates named Anne Bonny and Mary Read terrorized the Caribbean in and around Jamaica. Despite their short career, they became two of the most notorious pirates during the height of the eighteenth-century Golden Age of Piracy.

In a world dominated by men, they became infamous for their bravery, cruelty, and unwavering determination to escape the social constraints placed on women during that time. But despite their notoriety, mystery shrouds their lives before they became pirates. Their biographies were recorded in Captain Charles Johnson’s 1724 book, A General History of the Pyrates, depicting the two as illegitimate women raised by men who, against insurmountable odds, crossed paths in Nassau and became pirates together. But how much is fact versus fiction?

This first full-length biography about Anne Bonny and Mary Read explores their intriguing backgrounds while examining the social context of women in their lifetime and their legacy in popular culture, which exists to the present day. Using A General History of the Pyrates, early modern legal documents relating to women, their recorded public trial in The Tryal of Jack Rackham and Other Pyrates, newspapers, and new research, this book unravels the mysteries and legends surrounding their lives.

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Lady Pirate of the Caribbean by Kensuke Ozaki

“Look, Anne! Lately, I saw you going to Charleston disguising yourself as a man. I don’t understand the reason you do it. Why do you dress in male clothing?”
Twenty-five-year-old Anne resisted her father, her pastel sylphlike fingers entangled in one another as she sat still on the edge of the lounger. Hair of a mess, she tried to remove a few loose strands off her boney face, the temples of it shining with the ray of sun striking through the nearby splintered window. With a tone that indicated her preference to dress like a man, she said,
“I have told you so many times, Pa. Young small-time pirates would speak to me and relay interesting stories about their life. You know how Charleston is a pirates’ den and, since females are not allowed to become pirates, I have no choice but to pretend to be male and do what I got to do,”
The insistence in Anne’s voice was crystal clear…

“Lady Pirate Of The Caribbean” is a whodunit masterpiece penned by Kensuke Ozaki, whose close friend found an American girl named Ann Bonny, a mysterious pirate lady, could not hold himself back from writing what happened to her… and her dreams to become a lady pirate…
From mind-bending twists across numerous islands to romance and battles at sea, the much-sought fiction number is meant to keep the readers on their toes and the thriller devotees wanting more…

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Enjoy our.selection of books about Bonny and Read – women pirates of the Caribbean.

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