The works by the following authors are highly recommended by various intellectuals of the world as the truest to life examples of grand adventure and highest style! (some of this page was "harvested" from a dead 7^th Sea website)

Gene Hackman & Daniel Lenihan: The Wake of the Perdido Star is a historical adventure saga set on the sea in the early 1800s. It follows the dark coming of age of a youth who sets out to avenge his parents murder and becomes a man at sea.

Alexandre Dumas: The finest hand at the swashbuckling genre. His Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and Ten Years Later go without saying, as well as The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo. But his lesser known novels are as inspiring: The Black Rose is a milder novel, but as appropriate.

Robert Louis Stevenson: The author of Treasure Island,Kidnapped! and Black Arrow. Not as stylish as Dumas, but certainly all the adventure!

Stephen Brust: Has come highly recommended. His The Phoenix Guards and Dragons, I'm told, are particularly pertinent.

William Goldman: Princess Bride. Enough said.

Vonda N. McIntyre: The Moon and the Sun is a sea monster tale set in the courts of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Very, very good material for dealing with the Montaigne courts, complete with Religious disdain and especially the Sun King himself. A bloody good book to boot.

Deborah Turner Harris: Caledon of the Mists,The Queen of Ashes and The City of Exile. A series set in an alternate Earth like Scotland and England, Caledon and Beringar respectively. The first is about a young Queen and her search for an ancient artifact called the Anchor Stone. The second has Queen Mhairi on the throne and assisted by a witch named Lady Barruist and the Faerie Court, and the third is a demonic plot against the Queen fostered by Beringar and the Fae. Very, very period and more flavorful than many source materials you can find.

Jennifer Roberson: Highwaymen: Robbers and Rogues An anthology of stories about highwaymen and rogues, some of the stories varying in quality, but with several good examples of the land based pirates 7th Sea has yet to deal with.

R. Garcia y Robertson: The Spiral Dance This one is older and original supposed to be a part of a series, but it stands very well on its own. Set in the early Elizabethan era, it is about the uprising of North and a mysterious ancient Spiral Dance that comes to the attention of the Countess of Northumberland. It has magic and witchcraft, civil war, and werewolves, all in one book. A great story for GM inspiration for adventures set in Avalon.

Marine Research Society: THE PIRATES OWN BOOK- Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers. Published by the Dover Maritime Society- A reprint of a lurid and melodramatic "true-life" storybook, originally printed in Massachusetts in 1837. Good stuff.

David Cordingly: UNDER THE BLACK FLAG- -The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates. Published by Harvest Books. One of the best overview books in my collection.

Jan Rogozinski: PIRATES! An A-Z Encyclopedia: Brigands, Buccaneers, and Privateers in Fact, Fiction and Legend. Published by Da Capo Press. They don't get any better than this. This is going to be an indispensable idea generator for my campaign--it will sit at my right hand,
along side the 7th Sea GM's book. Highest recommendation.

Raphael Sabatini: For those who lean more towards fiction, I recommend anything (especially the CAPTAIN BLOOD series: Captain Blood, Captain Blood Returns, Fortunes of Captain Blood).

CS Forester: His HORNBLOWER books, while out of period by about 150 years, still give you valuable oversight to life on the sea.

Dudley Pope: wrote a series of novels in the early 80s featuring the adventures of a character named Ned Yorke in the Caribbean: These are entitled BUCCANEER, ADMIRAL, CORSAIR, GALLEON.