The Sweet Trade — Elizabeth Garrett

Anne Bonny, a pampered Southern belle, hungers for a life more exciting and dangerous than she knows keeping her father's household together. When she convinces a hapless sailor boy to marry her and take her to Nassau, that seething cauldron of piracy, prostitution and all things wicked, she alters the course of her life forever...

Calico Jack Rackham, a devious pirate, returns to Nassau with hopes of accepting the governor's pardon and leaving the sweet trade. When he first lays eyes on Anne Bonny, however, he realizes that she is the one woman who could convince him to put aside his fear of the noose and take up the trade again, no matter what the consequences.

And Mary Read, a sensible Englishwoman who has been living as a man and earning her livelihood as a merchant sailor, must make a decision when her ship is overtaken by Calico Jack and she is invited to join the band of thieves. When she tastes the freedom of a pirate's life, she realizes what she has been missing during all her years of toil. And when she joins forces with Anne, they form a union that will carry them to the ends of the earth, through births, deaths, and battles more exciting than Anne Bonny could have dreamed.