Captain Kidd

2025 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Gold Medal-winner 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award Finalist A breakneck adventure of war, romance, and politics in the golden age of piracy. Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious “pirate” outlaws ever, but his legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Having captivated imaginations for more than three hundred years and inspired many stories about pirates, troubling questions remain. Was he really a criminal or is the truth more inconvenient: that he was a buccaneer’s worst nightmare, a revered pirate hunter turned fall guy for scheming politicians? In Captain Kidd, his ninth-great-grandson, bestselling author Samuel Marquis, reveals the real story. Kidd was an English American privateer and leading New York husband and father. The King of England himself dubbed Kidd “trusty and well-beloved,” and some historians describe him as a “worthy, honest-hearted, steadfast, much -enduring sailor” who was the “victim of a deliberate