Updated: September 28, 2026
Anne Bonny and Mary Read occupy a strange place in pirate history. Their capture and prosecution in Jamaica in 1720 are part of the historical record, but the stories told about their childhoods, relationships and ultimate fates leave plenty of room for invention. That gap has inspired novelists to imagine what freedom aboard a pirate ship might have cost them and what it offered.
This list starts with four novels centered on Bonny and Read, then travels to Ireland, China and other corners of the maritime world. Some heroines were real people; others are fictional, and one draws on a pirate legend whose historical existence is uncertain. Each entry tells you which kind of story you are getting. These are novels available as of September 2026, with one forthcoming title noted separately at the end.
The quickest place to start
| If you want… | Read… |
|---|---|
| A literary retelling of Mary Read | Saltblood |
| Both pirates’ lives and their aftermath | The Determined |
| A young adult romance about Mary and Anne | The Unbinding of Mary Reade |
| An Irish sea captain resisting Tudor power | The Pirate Queen |
| A pirate leader in the South China Sea | Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea |
| A fast young adult adventure with invented heroines | Pirates! |
Novels about Anne Bonny and Mary Read
1. Saltblood by Francesca de Tores
Historical connection: Mary Read and Anne Bonny are real historical figures.
If you want to begin inside Mary Read’s life rather than arrive at her famous encounter with Anne Bonny, choose Saltblood. The novel follows Mary’s changing roles as child, soldier, sailor and pirate, with the sea becoming a place where she can imagine a life beyond the narrow choices offered on land. Bloomsbury describes the novel as inspired by the lives of both women.
Its appeal is the tension between disguise and self-determination. The sword fights matter, but so does the exhausting work of being someone else to survive. Readers drawn to character-led historical fiction should put this first.
2. The Determined by Rachel Rueckert
Historical connection: A retelling of both Bonny and Read; published in February 2026.
Rueckert begins with Anne Bonny in a Jamaican prison, facing a death sentence while Mary Read is gravely ill. Anne bargains to tell her story in exchange for help for her friend, and the novel looks back across the experiences that eventually brought the two women together. Kensington’s description makes their friendship, as well as the choices available to women of their era, central to the plot.
Start here if you want the closest thing on this list to a two-person biography in novel form. The prison frame also gives the familiar pirate adventure a sharper question: what becomes of rebellion after the ship is captured?
3. Bonny & Read by Julie Walker
Historical connection: Both title characters are historical pirates.
Walker puts the women side by side: Anne, a plantation owner’s daughter and runaway wife, and Mary, who has lived as a boy, served as a soldier and gone to sea. Their paths converge in a world where even finding a measure of freedom carries danger. Hachette presents the novel as a feminist retelling of the two pirates’ lives.
This is a good next read after The Determined if you want to see how two authors build different inner lives from the same sparse and often sensationalized record. The shared subject is the attraction; the interest lies in the choices each novelist makes.
4. The Unbinding of Mary Reade by Miriam McNamara
Historical connection: A young adult reimagining of Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
McNamara’s Mary has learned to pass as a boy and eventually sails alongside Anne Bonny and Calico Jack. The story makes her feelings for Anne part of its central romance. The publisher calls it a romantic novel based on Mary’s story, which is useful context: its relationship is a fictional interpretation, rather than a settled historical fact.
Pick this one for a more intimate, young adult angle on identity, desire and the risk of being discovered. If your main interest is documented pirate history, approach it as imaginative fiction first.
Women pirates beyond Bonny and Read
5. The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon
Historical connection: Inspired by Grace O’Malley, the sixteenth-century Irish sea captain; published September 8, 2026.
Lawhon takes us away from the Caribbean to Ireland’s Atlantic coast. Her Grace O’Malley must defend her family and position as English power presses into Ireland. The publisher describes a sweeping historical adventure about clan alliances, danger at sea and a woman determined to lead.
Read it when you want a larger political canvas. Grace’s story is as concerned with land, kinship and resistance as it is with ships. Its fresh publication also makes it a timely follow-up for readers newly interested in women at sea.
6. Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas by Morgan Llywelyn
Historical connection: Another fictional portrait of Grace O’Malley.
For a different literary interpretation of the same Irish leader, try Llywelyn’s Grania. Here Grace grows into a clan leader while confronting the forces of Elizabethan England. Macmillan’s edition emphasizes the struggle between Grania and Elizabeth I as one of the novel’s defining relationships.
Pair it with Lawhon’s book if you enjoy comparing what historical novelists do with the same life. One fascinating question is whether the label “pirate queen” fully describes a woman whose authority also depended on family, territory and politics.
7. Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig
Historical connection: A novel about Shek Yeung, associated with the pirate leader also called Zheng Yi Sao or Ching Shih.
In the early nineteenth-century South China Sea, Shek Yeung struggles to hold a pirate fleet together after her husband’s death. Leadership means navigating rivals, imperial pressure and the needs of her family, often at the same time. Bloomsbury’s description places those difficult decisions at the center of Chang-Eppig’s novel.
This is the choice for readers more interested in the cost of command than in a simple tale of escape. It also widens a reading list that might otherwise mistake Caribbean piracy for the whole story.
8. Fire Sword and Sea by Vanessa Riley
Historical connection: Inspired by Jacquotte Delahaye, a figure of Caribbean pirate legend; published in 2026.
Riley’s Jacquotte is a mixed-race woman on Tortuga whose ambitions lead her toward piracy and a fight against enslavement. The author’s book description frames it as a sweeping novel about survival, resistance and life at sea.
There is a crucial historical distinction here: Royal Museums Greenwich notes that no evidence establishes Delahaye’s birth, and many stories about her appear to have much later origins. Read Riley’s novel as a powerful use of a legend, while keeping the historical uncertainty in view.
9. A True Account by Katherine Howe
Historical connection: An invented woman pirate in a setting drawn from the early eighteenth century.
Hannah Masury’s supposed account of a life among pirates is rediscovered by a scholar centuries later. The alternating time periods ask who gets to record a woman’s life and how readily a compelling document becomes accepted as truth. Macmillan’s description presents the book as a mystery stretching between Hannah’s world and that of the woman investigating her story.
This is a particularly good pick for readers who like archival mysteries alongside their sea adventures. Despite the title’s playful claim, Hannah’s account belongs to a novel.
10. Pirates! by Celia Rees
Historical connection: Fictional women pirates in an eighteenth-century Jamaican setting.
Nancy Kington, a wealthy merchant’s daughter, and Minerva Sharpe, an enslaved young woman, flee the constraints imposed on them and join a pirate crew. Bloomsbury’s description presents their voyage as a bid for freedom in a society that treats both as property, though their circumstances are profoundly unequal.
Rees writes young adult historical adventure with a quick pulse. It works well for someone who wants fictional protagonists, a strong bond between women and plenty of shipboard action. The exclamation mark is part of the title.
Which Anne Bonny and Mary Read novel should you read first?
Try Saltblood for Mary’s perspective, The Determined for both women’s lives and their capture, Bonny & Read for another paired retelling, or The Unbinding of Mary Reade for a young adult romance. If you want to leave their specific story behind, The Pirate Queen and Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea take the question of women’s power at sea to different centuries and coasts.
Historical fiction can illuminate the gaps in the record, but it cannot fill them with certainty. The U.S. National Park Service notes that Anne Bonny’s fate after her temporary reprieve remains unknown; even familiar details of pirate lives often come to us through later, embellished accounts. That uncertainty is a reason to read multiple interpretations, and to enjoy each novel for the story it chooses to tell.
On the horizon: Carole DeSanti’s Plunder also features Bonny and Read, alongside a modern storyline about a rediscovered manuscript. It is currently listed for June 1, 2027, so it is a future reading suggestion rather than one of the ten available novels above.
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