Having just escaped the King’s justice, notorious pirate Peter Easton arrives in St. John’s harbour with ten well-armed ships. Knowing he is too powerful to be refused, Easton confidently invites the King’s loyal fishing admiral, Richard Whitbourne, and his second-in-command, Captain Dawson, aboard his flagship The Happy Adventure. Insisting Whitbourne and Dawson are guests and not prisoners, Easton takes them by surprise, pulling anchor and setting sail with half his flotilla for the Caribbean.
Easton takes place in Newfoundland, the Caribbean, and England. The story reflects a time when Newfoundland was crucial to trade and power, and when there was a very thin line between loyalty and piracy—a line that could be crossed in either direction in the blink of an eye.

Paul Butler is the author of several critically acclaimed novels including Titanic Ashes, Cupids, Hero, 1892, NaGeira, Easton’s Gold, Easton, and Stoker’s Shadow. His work has appeared on the judges’ lists for Canada Reads, the Relit Longlist for three consecutive years, and he was a winner in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards four times between 2003 and 2008 at which time he retired from the competition to be literary representative, and then chair, of the Arts and Letters Committee. A graduate of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, Butler has written for the Globe and Mail, the Beaver, Books in Canada, Atlantic Books Today, and Canadian Geographic, and has also contributed to CBC Radio, local and national. He presently lives in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, where he works as an editor, runs online writing workshops, and holds an annual writing contest.

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