Historical fiction from the dangerous edges of early nineteenth-century New Orleans.
Smugglers, pirates, sex workers, revolutionaries, officials, and outsiders collide in a city where respectability and criminality often depend on who is doing the judging. Set around New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico during the War of 1812 era, the series explores freedom, loyalty, love, power—and what people are willing to become when the law offers them little protection.
Smuggler Jean Laffite meets a stunning woman that may be the demise of his business.
She wants only waves beneath her, sails above her, a crew behind her and a treasure before her.
A world built on blurred lines
Freedom and its price
Characters want freedom from governments, owners, social expectations, poverty, shame, or their own pasts—but freedom rarely arrives cleanly.
Crime and respectability
Smugglers can behave like gentlemen. Officials can behave like criminals. The series is interested in the uncomfortable space between the two.
Women outside respectable society
Cosma and the women around her navigate a world that gives them few safe routes to independence.
New Orleans and the Gulf
Mud, heat, commerce, masquerades, contraband, war, disease, river traffic, and the sea are part of the machinery of the story.
Begin the series
The Adventuress
Book One · Novelette · New Orleans, 1813
Smuggler Jean Laffite has built a profitable life in the shadows. Then a mysterious woman begins meddling in both his business and the men trying to destroy it.
The Adventuress introduces Jean Laffite, Cosma, Inspector Gilbert, and the dangerous world behind One Virtue And A Thousand Crimes.
The Ocean’s Calling
Book Two · Novel · In progress
Many women of her time want protection or freedom. Cosma wants to be a pirate.
New Orleans, 1812. Cosma has survived by becoming whatever the city required of her. But beneath the noise of Gallatin Street, something else keeps pulling at her—the sea.
As war closes in and old loyalties become harder to escape, Cosma must decide whether the life she longs for will finally free her—or simply give danger a different name.
Among smugglers, pirates and respectable criminals
Cosma
A young woman whose longing for the sea collides with love, trauma, survival, and the question of whether she can actually lead the life she imagines.
Jean Laffite
Smuggler, businessman, social operator—and a man whose ideas about being a gentleman become increasingly difficult to reconcile with the world he inhabits.
Tourmaline
Love, belief, guilt, and self-denial pull her in conflicting directions as war approaches.
Enter New Orleans before you buy.
Want to try the world first? Mirà’s free Starter Library includes The Adventuress material, previews from her historical worlds, maps, character guides, and research extras.
Why One Virtue And A Thousand Crimes?
The series takes its name from the final line of Lord Byron’s The Corsair, first published in 1814:
“Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.”
The words suited the morally uncertain world of the Laffites too well to resist: people capable of loyalty, courage, generosity—and acts that put them firmly outside the law.
Byron’s poem was indeed published in 1814, and a later edition included a note on the pirates of Barataria.
FAQs
What is One Virtue And A Thousand Crimes about?
One Virtue And A Thousand Crimes is historical fiction set around early nineteenth-century New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The series follows smugglers, pirates, women outside respectable society, revolutionaries, and officials whose ideas of freedom and morality frequently collide.
Where should I start?
Begin with The Adventuress, a short introduction to Jean Laffite, Cosma, and the world of the series. The Ocean’s Callingcontinues the story.
Is Jean Laffite a real historical character?
Yes. Jean and Pierre Laffite were historical figures. The novels combine real people and events with fictional characters, relationships, and incidents.
Is Cosma a real historical pirate?
No. Cosma is fictional. Her story allows the series to explore people and experiences that survive much less neatly in the historical record.
Is the series a romance?
Relationships and forbidden love matter deeply to several characters, but the series is primarily historical fiction and adventure rather than genre romance.
Is the series suitable for younger readers?
The series is written for adults and includes violence, sexual material, exploitation, trauma, discrimination, and other difficult subjects arising from the characters’ lives and historical setting.
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