Pyrate

Young Garret Connachan is expelled from a private academy for knifing a classmate. Bribed to take the youngster on as an underage midshipman, highly regarded captain Francis Drake is soon tested to blend Garret into his band of marauding, sixteenth-century pirates. But a deep secret complicates young Connachan's struggle to earn the respect and confidence of hardened brigands’ intent on plundering the seas. A series of events, accented by two catastrophes, alters Garret's future in a completely unexpected way.

It was a cordial visit with Queen Elizabeth I, but it set in motion events that threatened execution in the dreaded Tower of London. Young Captain Garret Connachan struggles with an assassination mission involving a Spanish Viceroy, sensing he offers so much more to Queen, country...and even beyond. Forced to hide on pirate-infested Isla Tortuga, Connachan's only ticket to freedom risks being lost to bitter rivals-Harker and De Graaf. The two most feared brigands in the Caribbean seas have their own ideas about the Viceroy. They see a path to riches that demands Garret's elimination. At stake is all-out war between England and Spain.

Privateering Captain Garret Connachan, female protagonist, has navigated the most challenging of men's worlds since joining Drake as a young midshipman (Pyrate Rising). Queen Elizabeth befriended her but their relationship turned sour when she failed to execute her assassination mission (Pyrate Assassin). Taking refuge on pirate-infested Isla Tortuga, Garret now finds herself mired in a complex scheme by her archenemy—De Graaf, the most feared pirate captain in the South Seas. De Graaf has teamed up with a shadowy Cartagenian financier in a ransom scheme designed to defraud King Philip II of Spain, generating tens of thousands of gold doubloons. With the help of a stealthy outsider, Connachan learns she is to be fingered by De Graaf and his accomplice as the perpetrator of the crime. As word of a possible scheme leaks out, the thirst for gold treasure brings many players to the table—political, piratical, financial, military leaders and freedom-seekers. The plot is replete with intrigue and deception. A series of events leave Garret and her potential love interest, William Tovery, facing a pressing need to cross over from privateering to pure piracy, setting her up as a high priority target of both the Spanish and the English.