Captain Blood

He was a physician who heal a wounded man, and that single act of mercy cost him everything. Peter Blood, an Irish doctor living quietly in 1680s England, finds himself transported to a Jamaican slave plantation after the bloodthirsty Judge Jeffreys sentences him for the crime of treating a rebel. But Blood is no ordinary convict. When a Spanish raiding party attacks Port Royal, he seizes his moment, steals their ship, and escapes into the Caribbean to become the most feared pirate captain on the Spanish Main. Yet for all his plunder, for all his daring raids against Spain's treasure fleets, one prize remains forever beyond his grasp: the woman he loves cannot love a thief. Captain Blood is swashbuckling adventure at its finest, a novel that races across the Caribbean with sword fights, ship battles, and a wit as sharp as a blade. Sabatini writes with tremendous verve, making you believe, for a glorious few hundred pages, that piracy was the most noble profession a man could choose. It is the ancestor of every pirate story told since.