If You Loved Black Sails, Read These 7 Pirate Books

When Black Sails ended, it left a very particular ache: the craving for pirates who scheme as much as they fight, for Nassau's mud and politics, for characters whose loyalties you can never quite trust. The show wove real history — Charles Vane, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Blackbeard — around the bones of Treasure Island. If you want to keep living in that world, here's where to sail next.

1. Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

Black Sails is a prequel to this novel, so it's the natural place to dock first. Meeting a young Long John Silver and the survivors of Flint's crew hits completely differently once you've watched the show. The story the whole series was sailing toward.

2. The Republic of Pirates — Colin Woodard (2007)

If you loved how grounded Black Sails felt, this is why. Woodard's history of Nassau's pirate republic is the real account of Blackbeard, Vane, Bonny, and the brief, doomed experiment in lawless self-rule that the show dramatizes. Half the cast were real people — meet them here.

3. Under the Black Flag — David Cordingly (1995)

The definitive myth-versus-reality survey of pirate life, written by a former curator at England's National Maritime Museum. It's the book that separates the Hollywood parrot from the historical truth — perfect for the viewer who kept asking, 'Did it really happen like that?'

4. The Pirate Hunter — Richard Zacks (2002)

The true, morally tangled story of Captain Kidd — a man who may have been more privateer than pirate, destroyed by the politics of the men who hired him. If Black Sails taught you that the real villains wore powdered wigs in London, this book is your next obsession.

5. Empire of Blue Water — Stephan Talty (2007)

Henry Morgan, Port Royal, and the buccaneer era that set the stage for everything after. Talty writes history with a novelist's pace — sieges, storms, and a sunken city. Bloody, vivid, and impossible to put down.

6. Captain Blood — Rafael Sabatini (1922)

For the swashbuckling, rebellious heart of the show. A wronged man turns outlaw and builds his own code on the water. Older than Black Sails by a century, but it shares the same DNA: honor forged outside the law.

7. The Guardship — James L. Nelson (2000)

Gritty turn-of-the-century pirate fiction set in 1701, following a reformed pirate dragged back into his old life. The grounded tone and morally gray cast scratch the exact itch Black Sails leaves behind.

Where Crimson Cross: Azure Waves fits

Crimson Cross was written for exactly this reader — someone who wants Nassau's grit and moral complexity in a fresh story. Set in the real Caribbean of 1700–1718, it follows sixteen-year-old Samuel Drayton, cast out of a burning Charleston into waters where the line between pirate and patriot is razor-thin. If Black Sails left a hole, this is a new crew to sail with.

Ready for your next voyage? Get the first chapter of Crimson Cross: Azure Waves free — or preorder the book.