A sixty-one-year-old debut novelist who looks the part of a salty English sea captain, Richard James Bentley first conceived Greenbeard as a way to entertain his niece during a family Christmas gathering. Featuring a pirate whose wit is sharper than his cutlass, the tale dances around the debauched pirate's life, but leaves the naughty details up to readers' imaginations. Like all EAP books, it can be read with pleasure by anyone age 15 and up.

Destined to become a cult favorite-and the ideal summer beach read-this one-of-a-kind, laugh-out-loud pirates and aliens mash-up combines pitch-perfect prose and memorable characters with a rollicking adventure, complex philosophy, and fascinating scientific and colonial history.

From characters "Israel Feet" (a riff on Blackbeard's crewman Israel Hand in Treasure Island) and "Madame Zonga" (a reference to the exotic nightclub queen in the 1941 film about a boat trip gone awry) to the captain's barb-trading rivalry with infamous 17th-century pirate Henry Morgan, his electricity lesson from "Frank Benjamin," and his dealings with the clandestine "Tristero" company (a sly nod toward Thomas Pynchon's underground postal delivery service in The Crying of Lot 49), this brilliant novel is jam-packed with hilarious puns, masterful literary and historical allusions, and delightful inside jokes.