Mark Kraver's Published Books

Dive into Mark Kraver's diverse literary world.

Historically Epic

By day, Abigail Spragg is a respectable businesswoman living along Manhattan's Hudson River. By night, she guards one of the colony’s most dangerous secrets—the Pirate Bank, a hidden vault beneath her home where the plunder of the world’s most feared pirates lies buried in silence.

For years, the bloodstained wealth has haunted her investments. Now, it calls her to action.

A letter arrives from the vanished pirate king himself—“Long Ben.” Better known as Henry Avery, this is a man who dared to defy empires by seizing the Mughal of India's opulent ship laden with treasure, then disappearing at sea. His letter’s command is as startling as his legend: use his treasure to build a school for young women in New Haven.

The request audacious.

The opportunity irresistible.

Caught between the profitable shadows of piracy and a radical vision of power through education, Abigail steps into a dangerous game—one that tests her wits against ministers, magistrates, and community beliefs and interests. Her headstrong daughters, Hannah and Sarah, push her toward a future she neither fully understands nor welcomes.

Every move Abigail makes reshapes the colony. Pirate gold flows quietly into the community, stirring ambition in Connecticut’s Collegiate School—soon to uproot itself and rise again under a new name in New Haven: Yale College.

But secrecy breeds enemies. In a world ruled by men, a woman wielding power may be the greatest threat of all.

And they aren’t wrong. Abigail Spragg has one goal: to forge a future where women shape the world as fiercely as any captain who ever sailed the sea—and to honor her client’s daring charge by turning pirate gold into a legacy far greater than plunder.

Silver Screen Mystery

By day, Humphrey Bogart reads lines for "Casablanca" with Ingrid Bergman; by night, he's drinking bourbon on the Sunset Strip with friends like Peter Lorre and Leslie Howard. Behind closed doors, life is not so glamorous. High-profile fights with his wife Mayo and a rigid studio contract enforcing a series of mediocre films make Bogart feel personally and professionally trapped… until a mysterious note arrives on set.
Heeding the strange invitation, Bogart finds himself in a series of long, secret conversations with his aunt and cousin about the swashbuckling tales of their ancestor, the pirate Jan Janszoon van Salee. These tales of the high seas ignite a fire within Bogart to carve out a path that is uniquely his own— even if it means shedding the roles and people who made him famous.
"Janszoon" is more than a Hollywood fantasy; it's a journey into the heart of a man wrestling with ambitions and desires, an actor who yearns to balance his on-screen personas with his off-screen reality. Covering his tumultuous marriage, infamous USO tour, and his affairs with Verita Patterson and Lauren Bacall, "Janszoon" imagines the enigmatic Humphrey Bogart seeking a legacy that transcends the ephemeral glow of stardom.