Edith Wharton's spellbinding final novel tells a story of love in the gilded age that crosses the boundaries of society—soon to be an original series on AppleTV+! “Brave, lively, engaging...a fairy-tale novel, miraculouly returned to life.”—The New York Times Book Review Set in the 1870s, the same period as Wharton's The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers is about five wealthy American girls denied entry into New York Society because their parents' money is too new. At the suggestion of their clever governess, the girls sail to London, where they marry lords, earls, and dukes who find their beauty charming—and their wealth extremely useful. After Wharton's death in 1937, The Christian Science Monitor said, "If it could have been completed, The Buccaneers would doubtless stand among the richest and most sophisticated of Wharton's novels." Now, with wit and imagination, Marion Mainwaring has finished the story, taking her cue from Wharton's own synopsis. It is a novel any Wharton fan will celebrate and any romantic reader will love. This is the richly engaging story of Nan St. George and Guy Thwarte, an American heiress and an English aristocrat, whose love breaks the rules of both their societies.
This set includes all three books of the Buccaneers Series: Port Royal, The Pirate and His Lady, and Jamaican Sunset. In Port Royal, the Caribbean Sea teems with piracy and privateering as Captain Baret "Foxworth" Buckington searches for his father. Though declared legally dead, Baret is certain his father is alive, perhaps being held prisoner. Willing to jeopardize his title, his inheritance, and his life in order to find his father, he sets sail and swears vengeance upon Spain. Amidst the slavery, brutality, and cruel gossip on a Jamican Sugar estate, Miss Emerald Harwick seeks an escape. Rejected by her father's wealthy family, Emerald is constantly reminded of her deceased mother's notorious reputation and her father's escapades on the high seas. Only two things keep her going--working in the Christian Singing School and her plans to secretly marry an indentured servant. In desperation, they plan to leave Jamaica. But Emerald's father has other plans! As their paths intertwine, Emerald and Baret set out on a journey filled with danger, intrigue, and romance. In The Pirate and His Lady, Jamaica is a hotbed of piracy, violence, and spiritual conflict. Emerald Harwick is caught amidst each. Her fiance, Captain Baret "Foxworth" Buckington, defies the laws of the Jamaican Council and sails with notorious arch pirate Henry Morgan, hoping to find his imprisoned father among the Spanish dons. Her marriage delayed, Jamaican law forces Emerald to also put her heart's desire on hold: teaching Christianity to the African slaves. She fights disappointment and seeks an end to the spiritual conflict with her culture. Emerald is caught in a web of disillusionment, anger, and fear. As Spanish sympathizers gain the ear of the king, she must face a most frightening possibility: If caught, Baret will be arrested and hanged at Execution Dock. In Jamaican Sunset, Emerald Harwick, publicly betrothed to Baret Buckington, can scarcely contain her joy. She will manage her plantation's Great House on Jamaica until his return from sailing with buccaneer Henry Morgan, and then they will marry. Meanwhile, she will begin a singing school and translate the African slave chants God's songs of redemption. But then problems out of the past put in an unexpected appearance. Emerald is abducted and finds herself on an unscheduled sea voyage. That long-ago stolen treasure from the Prince Philip comes into play once more. Baret hopes to free his imprisoned father and unearth the treasure. But Baret's enemy--pirate Rafael Levasseur--emerges as a final threat to Emerald's cherished hopes. Can the God in whom she trusts indeed cause all things to work together for good?
Harold Kline is an albino—an outcast. Folks stare and taunt, calling him Ghost Boy. It’s been that way for all of his 14 years. So when the circus comes to town, Harold runs off to join it. Full of colorful performers, the circus seems like the answer to Harold’s loneliness. He’s eager to meet the Cannibal King, a sideshow attraction who’s an albino, too. He’s touched that Princess Minikin and the Fossil Man, two other sideshow curiosities, embrace him like a son. He’s in love with Flip, the pretty and beguiling horse trainer, and awed by the all-knowing Gypsy Magda. Most of all, Harold is proud of training the elephants, and of earning respect and a sense of normalcy. Even at the circus, though, two groups exist—the freaks, and everyone else. Harold straddles both groups. But fitting in comes at a price, and Harold must recognize the truth beneath what seems apparent before he can find a place to call home.
While sailing Dragon across the ocean, John finds a man in a lifeboat and lets him come aboard despite his father's warnings, thus causing a series of events that leaves him stranded on an island with ruthless buccaneers.
Fascinating chronicle of the bands of plundering sea rovers who roamed the Caribbean and coastlines of Central America in the 17th century. Includes exploits of the infamous Henry Morgan and his burning of Panama City.
Friday Night Lights meets The Bad News Bears in “a brisk, warmhearted reminder of how professional sports can occasionally reach stunning unprofessional depths” (Publishers Weekly): the first two seasons with the worst team in NFL history, the hapless, hilarious, and hopelessly winless 1976–1977 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Long before their first Super Bowl victory in 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did something no NFL team had ever done before and that none will ever likely do again: They lost twenty-six games in a row. This was no ordinary streak. Along with their ridiculous mascot and uniforms, which were known as “the Creamsicles,” the Yucks were a national punch line and personnel purgatory. Owned by the miserly and bulbous-nosed Hugh Culverhouse, the team was the end of the line for Heisman Trophy winner and University of Florida hero Steve Spurrier, and a banishment for former Cowboy defensive end Pat Toomay after he wrote a tell-all book about his time on “America’s Team.” Many players on the Bucs had been out of football for years, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to have to introduce themselves in the huddle. They were coached by the ever-quotable college great John McKay. “We can’t win at home and we can’t win on the road,” he said. “What we need is a neutral site.” But the Bucs were a part of something bigger, too. They were a gambit by promoters, journalists, and civic boosters to create a shared identity for a region that didn’t exist—Tampa Bay. Before the Yucks, “the Bay” was a body of water, and even the worst team in memory transformed Florida’s Gulf communities into a single region with a common cause. The Yucks is “a funny, endearing look at how the Bucs lost their way to success, cementing a region through creamsicle unis and John McKay one-liners” (Sports Illustrated).
During the seventeenth century, sea raiders known as buccaneers controlled the Caribbean. Buccaneers were not pirates but privateers, licensed to attack the Spanish by the governments of England, France, and Holland. Jon Latimer charts the exploits of these men who followed few rules as they forged new empires. Lacking effective naval power, the English, French, and Dutch developed privateering as the means of protecting their young New World colonies. They developed a form of semi-legal private warfare, often carried out regardless of political developments on the other side of the Atlantic, but usually with tacit approval from London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Drawing on letters, diaries, and memoirs of such figures as William Dampier, Sieur Raveneau de Lussan, Alexander Oliver Exquemelin, and Basil Ringrose, Jon Latimer portrays a world of madcap adventurers, daredevil seafarers, and dangerous rogues. Piet Hein of the Dutch West India Company captured, off the coast of Cuba, the Spanish treasure fleet, laden with American silver, and funded the Dutch for eight months in their fight against Spain. The switch from tobacco to sugar transformed the Caribbean, and everyone scrambled for a quick profit in the slave trade. Oliver Cromwell’s ludicrous Western Design—a grand scheme to conquer Central America—fizzled spectacularly, while the surprising prosperity of Jamaica set England solidly on the road to empire. The infamous Henry Morgan conducted a dramatic raid through the tropical jungle of Panama that ended in the burning of Panama City. From the crash of gunfire to the billowing sail on the horizon, Latimer brilliantly evokes the dramatic age of the buccaneers.
"The illustrations are fresh and comical and send a clear message about the importance of reading." —School Library Journal Step aboard, buccaneers and book lovers! On the Salty Carrot sails a wild, rowdy band of Buccaneer Bunnies, led by Barnacle Black Ear, the baddest bunny brute of all time. His son, Henry, would rather read books than shout "Shiver me timbers!" or make prisoners walk the plank, even if it means swabbing the decks as punishment. But when a crashing, thrashing, bashing wildcat of a storm threatens them all, will Henry and his landlubbin’ library save the day?
