She-Pirates of the Mediterranean (Piratesse del Mediterraneo): A Guide to the Completed Italian Historical Fantasy Trilogy

Piratesse del Mediterraneo (literally, “Women Pirates of the Mediterranean”) is my completed adult historical-fantasy trilogy, set in 17th-century Spanish-occupied Sardinia and published in Italian by Acheron Books between 2020 and 2023. The French translation, by Hikaya, is currently in publication. English-language rights are available worldwide.

This guide covers what the trilogy is about, how it‘s structured, how it compares to similar books in English, and its publication history. If you arrived here as an editor, agent, or rights buyer, the full rights page has specs, word counts, and contact details.

⚓ What is Piratesse del Mediterraneo about?

The trilogy opens in 1630s Sardinia, under the rule of the Spanish Crown. Fiammetta is a Sardinian fisherwoman with a violent husband and a plan she has been nursing for years: steal enough money to buy a galleon from a Genoese merchant, recruit a crew of women with equally good reasons to leave, and vanish into the Mediterranean as the most feared pirate captain anyone has ever heard of.

The engine that finally sets the plan in motion is Stellina, a little girl possessed by a Zipa, a spirit drawn from Muisca folklore (Spanish colonial South America, carried to Sardinia through the Crown‘s New World trade routes), who promises to lead Fiammetta to the buried treasure of a legendary ancient Sardinian pirate. Treasure means a ship. A ship means freedom.

Trailing them is Ambrosio, the Grand Inquisitor of the Crown of Spain. He is hunting the girl for the Church. He is also, as the trilogy progresses, not quite the villain the first book sets him up to be, which is the point.

She wants the treasure. He wants the girl. In 1630s Sardinia, being a witch is a death sentence. So is not being one, and acting like one.

📚 The three books at a glance

The trilogy is complete. All three volumes are published in Italian by Acheron Books; the first two have been published in French by Hikaya, with the third forthcoming. Audio editions in Italian are available on Audible Italia for Books I and II.

Book I, A colpi di Cannonau (Italian) / À Coups de Canon (French) · 2020 · ~90,000 words
Fiammetta assembles her crew, steals her ship, and sets course for the treasure, narrated in relentless first-person with comic-bawdy energy.
Book II, Un bagno di Sangria (Italian) / Un Bain de Sangria (French) · 2022 · ~108,000 words
The dual point-of-view opens up: Ambrosio‘s chapters enter the narrative fully, and the register shifts. Fiammetta‘s irreverence is still there, but the cost of the Inquisition‘s machinery begins to land on real people.
Book III, O mirto o morte! (Italian) / French title forthcoming · 2023 · ~130,000 words
The longest and darkest volume. The trilogy‘s feminist undertones and its depictions of institutional violence against women sharpen into direct confrontation. The magical economy of Spanish gold is paid for, in full.

Total trilogy length: ~328,000 words.

🗺️ Setting: 17th-century Sardinia under Spanish rule

One of the most distinctive things about this trilogy is its setting. Sardinia in the 1630s was not the free island of corsair legend: it was a peripheral territory of the Crown of Spain, administered through a system of feudal lords, taxed into subsistence, and surveilled by the Spanish Inquisition. Sardinian culture and language were actively suppressed, surviving in oral culture, underground. The Zipa that animates Stellina comes from a different tradition entirely: Muisca folklore from Spanish colonial South America, carried into Sardinia along the Crown‘s New World trade routes.

This is a historical-fantasy setting with very little precedent in English-language publishing. Mediterranean fantasy fiction tends to cluster around the Italian peninsula, the Ottoman Empire, or the Maghreb coast. A fantasy rooted in 17th-century Sardinia, drawing on Muisca folklore brought through colonial trade, is rare.

📖 How does it read? Voice, structure, and tone

The trilogy does something structurally interesting across its three volumes: it changes register as the stakes rise. Book I is close to a first-person picaresque, fast, funny, propulsive, Fiammetta‘s voice carrying everything. By Book II, Ambrosio‘s alternating chapters introduce a darker, more interior mode. By Book III, the comic scaffolding has largely given way to something that earns its emotional weight.

The closest analogue in English is probably Joe Abercrombie‘s First Law trilogy, which begins as what looks like a genre romp and ends as something considerably more serious about power and complicity. The tonal trajectory is similar, though the gender politics are quite different, and the humor in my first book is more vividly Italian in character: theatrical, physical, built for performance.

Fiammetta‘s voice has been compared to a Sardinian commedia dell‘arte figure who wanders into a historical novel and refuses to behave. That is roughly accurate.

🔍 Comparable titles in English

Rights materials for the trilogy cite three main English-language comps, and they hold up on inspection:

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. The most direct parallel: a female Muslim pirate captain in the medieval Indian Ocean, comic and irreverent in its first-person voice, with Islamic mythology woven into the adventure plot. The main difference is that Chakraborty‘s book is funnier and lighter throughout; my trilogy darkens considerably by the end.
The Bone Ships by RJ Barker. A nautical fantasy with found-family dynamics, a morally complex antagonist who becomes a POV character, and a setting built on violence the narrative doesn‘t flinch from. The structural parallel is strongest here: both trilogies use the second book to force the reader to re-evaluate the villain they thought they understood.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. For the heist-and-found-family energy of the first book specifically: a charismatic protagonist whose impossible plan mostly works, a crew of carefully drawn secondary characters, and a city whose political machinery matters to the plot.

🏆 Awards and recognition

Book I, A colpi di Cannonau, was a finalist for the Trofeo Cittadella 2021. I separately won the Trofeo Cassiopea 2022 for a different book, Echoes of Sand and Shattered Claws.

The trilogy was acquired for French by Hikaya, a Paris-based publisher specializing in fantasy in translation, in 2024.

🌍 English rights: what‘s available

As of 2026, English-language rights for all three volumes of Piratesse del Mediterraneo are available worldwide. The rights are held by the author directly. Audio rights in all languages except Italian are also available, as are dramatic and film/TV rights.

The trilogy is translated-ready: a sample chapter in English exists and can be requested directly from me. The full rights guide (including word counts, a detailed series synopsis, and comp analysis) is available on request.

For inquiries: the rights page has contact details and a full asset list.

✍️ About me

I‘m an Italian science-fiction and fantasy author, traditionally published in Italy and France. I have nine completed novels across adult and YA, in fantasy, historical fantasy, and science fiction. My short fiction has appeared in English in the Canadian anthology Against All Odds (Mirror World Publishing, 2025).

I have appeared at Lucca Comics & Games (2022, on a panel about writing historical fantasy in Italy), the Salone Internazionale del Libro in Turin (2021), and Stranimondi in Milan (2021). Upcoming appearances in 2026 include Les Imaginales (Épinal) and Les Intergalactiques (Lyon), both major French-language SFF conventions.

I am actively seeking agent representation for English-language deals and am open to direct acquisition inquiries from editors at indie and mid-size SFF imprints.

This is my own guide to my trilogy, written for English-speaking readers, editors, and scouts. For the full foreign-rights package, visit the Rights & Submissions page.