Pirates + zombies + voodoo + Blackbeard + the Fountain of Youth + a damsel in distress + general strangeness = a fine summer read.

Tim Powers loves to mix real history with secret history, and he always does it with style. Most of his books revolve around a poorly-understood historical anomaly (in this case, the improbably easy cornering and defeat of Blackbeard) and fill in the historical gaps with occult strangeness and high adventure. On Stranger Tides isn’t Powers’ best novel (to see him at his most brilliant, read Declare or The Anubis Gates), but it is the only book he’s written that features zombie pirates. And that’s compelling enough for me.