JOHN FLINT’S BASTARD

Welcome to the world of Joshua Smoot—the bastard son of Treasure Island’s John Flint. From the first page of John Flint’s Bastard to the last, you will experience the full spectrum of love versus hate, loyalty versus betrayal, freedom versus slavery, and the extremes of mankind’s goodness and evil toward one another.

The old pirate Captain John Flint—the evil benefactor of Savannah—finally spawns a man-child by one of his concubines. To fulfill the last wish of the lad’s mother, Flint promises to raise Joshua as a gentleman rather than make him a pirate, and to accomplish this task, he delivers the eight-year-old lad to the Wakehurst Place Estate in southern England where Joshua’s stubborn spirit forces him into an ultimatum that tests his will and eventually earns him two King’s warrants for his head.

During his run from the King, Joshua meets and falls in love with Rebecca Keyes—a young girl with a stronger will than his own. Their rocky relationship culminates with Rebecca being forced to make a life-and-death decision.

If you like fast-paced, white-knuckled, edge-of-seat pirate adventure novels, then take your seat at the literary dining table, pick up your knife and fork, and open to chapter one of this delicious banquet called John Flint’s Bastard. And when you finish, you’ll want to return to that same bookseller and buy the second in the Of Chains and Slavery trilogy, Slavery and Revenge.

SLAVERY AND REVENGE

Now that you’ve finished John Flint’s Bastard, the first in the Of Chains and Slavery trilogy, it’s time to reef your sails and batten down your hatches as you drive into this new literary storm—Slavery and Revenge—that will take you from the sugar plantations of Baracoa, Cuba, to the pirate stronghold of Tortuga, and thereafter to Charles Town, Savannah, and beyond where Joshua Smoot and his ragtag crew hunt down and exact revenge their enemies.

Like John Flint’s Bastard before it, Slavery and Revenge will drive you relentlessly onward page-by-page like a brigantine-driven wing-and-wing before a northeaster. You’ll meet Robert Ormerod—who buried The Treasure of Dead Man’s Chest—and witness the cunning and manipulative Long John Silver as he attempts to acquire the L1,500,000 from that island before he dies.

So, now that dinner is over and you have settled into your favorite chair, set sail for another sea adventure that is guaranteed to place Joshua Smoot as high in your rigging as Blackbeard, Captain Kid, Henry Every, Jack Rackham, and the legendary Long John Silver. And when you close the last page, go once again to that bookseller and buy Treasure and Redemption, the third in the Of Chains and Slavery trilogy.

TREASURE AND REDEMPTION

If you are like me, you read Robert Luis Stevenson’s Treasure Island several times as a child, and have wondered what happened to Long John Silver, Benn Gunn, and The Treasure of Dead Man’s Chest. You now hold in your hands the third novel in the Of Chains and Slavery trilogy, which answers those nagging questions. True to his nature, Long John Silver was able to lead, coerce, and manipulate many of the men who fought the American Revolution to unknowingly do his bidding.

You will watch Pirate Captain Joshua Smoot’s life transition as successes and failures twist and reshape him into the man that destiny had always intended. You will also discover what happened to Long John Silver, what happened to the treasure, and what happened to Rebecca Keyes—Joshua’s betrothed who was forced to banish him into slavery.