It’s Friday! And tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day, so bust out your pirate lingo! You know. Avast. Arr! Shiver me timbers. Et cetera. (If you need to brush up on your parlance, try this website.)

In honor of the…holiday, we’re giving away a copy of Swashbuckling Scoundrels: Pirates in Fact and Fiction by Arie Kaplan. 

You might be a fan of Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. But did you know that real-life pirates were even more daring and charismatic? For example, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, reportedly kept a lit fuse under his hat, creating a frightening haze of smoke around his head.

Swashbuckling Scoundrels introduces readers to real-life pirates—medieval Viking raiders, Caribbean buccaneers, black pirates, female pirates, and modern-day pirates—as well as famous fictional characters such as Long John Silver and Mary “Jacky” Faber of the Bloody Jack series of novels. See why we thrill to tales of daring outlaw pirates.