First Edition copy of Squeeze Me. Read once.  #fiction #hardcover #CarlHiaasen 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Minnesota

A Novel

From the best-selling author of Skinny Dip and Razor Girl, a hilarious new novel of social and political intrigue, set against the glittering backdrop of Florida's gold coast. It's the height of the Palm Beach charity ball season: for every disease or cause, there's a reason for the local luminaries to eat (minimally), drink (maximally), and be seen. But when a prominent high-society dowager suddenly vanishes during a swank gala, and is later found dead in a concrete grave, panic and chaos erupt. Kiki Pew was notable not just for her wealth and her jewels--she was an ardent fan of the Winter White House resident just down the road, and a founding member of the POTUSSIES, a group of women dedicated to supporting their President. Never one to miss an opportunity to play to his base, the President immediately declares that Kiki was the victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, it turns out, is far from the truth. The truth might just lie in the middle of the highway, where a bizarre discovery brings the First Lady's motorcade to a grinding halt (followed by some grinding between the First Lady and a love-struck Secret Service agent). Enter Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, who arrives at her own conclusions after she is summoned to the posh island to deal with a mysterious and impolite influx of huge, hungry pythons . . . Carl Hiaasen can brighten even the darkest of days and Squeeze Me is pure, unadulterated Hiaasen. Irreverent, ingenious, and highly entertaining, Squeeze Me perfectly captures the absurdity of our times.

Squeeze Me

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Edna Buchanan

Miami, Florida - one of America's most exotic and dangerous cities - is journalist Edna Buchanan's beat. In the widely acclaimed The Corpse Had a Familiar Face and Never Let Them See You Cry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald reporter took her readers through the dark underbelly of the Sunshine State, where murder, drugs, and corruption are as common as sand on the beaches.
Now, Buchanan brings her years of hard-won experience, her unflinching eye, and her warm and witty prose style to bear in her powerful new novel. In Contents Under Pressure, she combines the best ingredients of suspense writing - seat-of-the-pants action, an intelligent and beautiful protagonist, and a complicated murder - and heats them up under a Miami sun for a thrillingly combustible outcome. Britt Montero is a crime reporter for a major Miami newspaper, and an oddity in a man's domain - a blonde, green-eyed Cuban-American woman tough enough to investigate even the most terrifying of homicides, but with a tender spot for the city's underdogs. The latest report to come in seems fairly cut and dried: several cops on the midnight shift chase a black motorist, and the fleeing man, a former football hero, winds up dead.
However, as Britt begins her story on the accident, she discovers a number of disturbing facts about that night. Despite warnings to stay away, she starts to investigate what really happened - taking the reader from the high-intensity atmosphere of the newsroom to riding on the midnight beat with the cops, to the outraged black community that threatens to erupt into violence. Along the way she consorts with her own network of contacts, both solid citizens and nefarious nightbirds - and takes on a forbidden lover, a man she may not be able to trust. As the city explodes in a riot, Britt is caught up in events that bring the novel to a heart-shuddering climax. Contents Under Pressure is an immensely satisfying read, one that will leave its audience craving more.

Maryland

Britt Montero #1

"Miami, Florida - one of America's most exotic and dangerous cities - is journalist Edna Buchanan's beat. In the widely acclaimed The Corpse Had a Familiar Face and Never Let Them See You Cry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald reporter took her readers through the dark underbelly of the Sunshine State, where murder, drugs, and corruption are as common as sand on the beaches." "Now, Buchanan brings her years of hard-won experience, her unflinching eye, and her warm and witty prose style to bear in her powerful new novel. In Contents Under Pressure, she combines the best ingredients of suspense writing - seat-of-the-pants action, an intelligent and beautiful protagonist, and a complicated murder - and heats them up under a Miami sun for a thrillingly combustible outcome. Britt Montero is a crime reporter for a major Miami newspaper, and an oddity in a man's domain - a blonde, green-eyed Cuban-American woman tough enough to investigate even the most terrifying of homicides, but with a tender spot for the city's underdogs. The latest report to come in seems fairly cut and dried: several cops on the midnight shift chase a black motorist, and the fleeing man, a former football hero, winds up dead." "However, as Britt begins her story on the accident, she discovers a number of disturbing facts about that night. Despite warnings to stay away, she starts to investigate what really happened - taking the reader from the high-intensity atmosphere of the newsroom to riding on the midnight beat with the cops, to the outraged black community that threatens to erupt into violence. Along the way she consorts with her own network of contacts, both solid citizens and nefarious nightbirds - and takes on a forbidden lover, a man she may not be able to trust. As the city explodes in a riot, Britt is caught up in events that bring the novel to a heart-shuddering climax. Contents Under Pressure is an immensely satisfying read, one that will leave its audience craving more."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Contents Under Pressure

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#hardcover #fiction #humor #mystery #florida #crime #comedy #adventure #contemporary #novel

Oregon

Honey Santana, the bipolar, self-proclaimed "queen of lost causes," has plans to give telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his mistress a lesson in civility, unware that she is being followed by her obsessed ex-employer Piejack, her one-time drug runner ex-husband Perry, and their twelve-year-old son, Fry, or that they will all intrude on the privacy of would-be recluse Sammy Tigertail. 600,000 first printing.

Nature Girl

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#hardcover #suspensethrillers #fiction #mystery #detective #jamespatterson #fbi #florida #booktok

Missouri

Lifeguard

279a2677-800e-424c-8baf-c0bc2bbcb665

Carl Hiaasen

 Minor dust jacket damage as pictured, book excellent 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Alaska

With the help of an eccentric ex-governor, a teenaged boy searches for his missing cousin in the Florida wilds.

Skink--No Surrender

4e394c84-a7c6-446c-8951-cef4ee1f6c8c

Louisiana

Ann Kidd Taylor

Michigan

"A quintessential summer read." --Marie Claire
 
A warm and wonderfully vivid novel about taking second chances--in life and in the sea
 
One summer day on the beach in Florida, two extraordinary things happen to Maeve Donnelly. First, she is kissed by Daniel, the boy of her dreams. Then, she is bitten by a blacktip shark.
 
Eighteen years later, Maeve has thrown herself into her work as a world-traveling marine biologist discovering more about the minds of misunderstood sharks. But when Maeve returns home to the legendarily charming and eccentric Hotel of the Muses where she was raised by her grandmother, she finds more than just the blood orange sunsets and key lime pies she's missed waiting for her.
 
While Maeve has always been fearless in the water, on land she is indecisive. A chance meeting on the beach with a plucky, irresistible little girl who is just as fascinated by the ocean as Maeve was growing up leaves her at a crossroads: Should she re-kindle her romance with Daniel, the first love she left behind when she dove into her work? Or indulge in a new romance with her colleague, Nicholas, who turns up in her hometown to investigate an illegal shark-finning operation?   
 
Set against the intoxicating backdrop of palm trees, calypso bands, and perfect ocean views, The Shark Club is a story of the mysterious passions of one woman's life: her first love and new love; the sea and sharks that inhabit it.

The Shark Club

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Former investigative reporter Jack Tagger gets his chance to escape the doldrums of obituary writing as he investigates the supicious "accidental" death of rock star Jimmy Stoma, the infamous leader of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, if he can escape his ambitious young editor, the star's widow, a brutish bodyguard, and the profit-hungry owner of his newpaper. 300,000 first printing.

Basket Case

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Bryan Mealer

Never read but my name was written inside the front cover (see pics).

Ohio

Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town

In a town deep in the Florida Everglades, where high school football is the only escape, a haunted quarterback, a returning hero, and a scholar struggle against terrible odds.

The loamy black "muck" that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation's vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. Belle Glade's high school team, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent an extraordinary number of players to the National Football League - 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round.

The industry that gave rise to the town and its team also spawned the chronic poverty, teeming migrant ghettos, and violence that cripples futures before they can ever begin. Muck City tells the story of quarterback Mario Rowley, whose dream is to win a championship for his deceased parents and quiet the ghosts that haunt him; head coach Jessie Hester, the town's first NFL star, who returns home to "win kids, not championships"; and Jonteria Willliams, who must build her dream of becoming a doctor in one of the poorest high schools in the nation. For boys like Mario, being a Raider is a one-shot window for escape and a college education. Without football, Jonteria and the rest must make it on brains and fortitude alone. For the coach, good intentions must battle a town's obsession to win above all else.

Beyond the Friday night lights, this book is an engrossing portrait of a community mired in a shameful past and uncertain future, but with the fierce will to survive, win, and escape to a better life.

Muck City

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Patricia Cornwell

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, takes charge of a case that at first appears as unnerving as any she has ever faced.

Predator

dc255984-5132-4938-8f86-db1d024fa104-1

Texas

#hardcover #romance #florida #southcarolina #redemption #self-discovery

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Beach House series comes a heartwarming and evocative novel about the bonds and new beginnings that are born from natural disasters and how, even during the worst of circumstances--or perhaps because of them--we discover what is most important in life.

Late August is a beautiful time on the Southern coast--the peach trees are ripe, the ocean is warm, and the sweet tea is icy. A perfect time to enjoy the rocking chairs on the porch. But beneath the calm surface bubbles a threat: it's also peak hurricane season.

When a hurricane threatens the coasts of Florida and South Carolina, an eclectic group of evacuees flees for the farm of their friends Grace and Charles Phillips in North Carolina: the Phillips's daughter Moira and her rescue dogs, famed equestrian Javier Angel de la Cruz, makeup artist Hannah McLain, horse breeder Gerda Klug and her daughter Elise, and island resident Cara Rutledge. They bring with them only the few treasured possessions they can fit in their vehicles. Strangers to all but the Phillips, they must ride out the storm together.

During the course of one of the most challenging weeks of their lives, relationships are put to the test as the evacuees are forced to confront the unresolved issues they have with themselves and with each other. But as the storm passes, they realize that what really matters isn't what they brought with them to the mountains. Rather, it's what they'll take with them once they leave.

With Mary Alice Monroe's "usual resplendent storytelling" (Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author), The Summer Guests is a poignant and compelling story of self-discovery, love, and redemption.

The Summer Guests

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#davebarry #florida #humor #nyt #bestseller

A Florida Man Defends His Homeland

We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now, something will.
Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, "What the hell is wrong with Florida?" Somehow, the state's acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ. Sure, there was the 2000 election. And people seem to take their pants off for no good reason. And it has flying insects the size of LeBron James. But it is a great state, and Dave is going to tell you why. Join him as he celebrates Florida from Key West at the bottom to whatever it is that's at the top, from the Sunshine State's earliest history to the fun-fair of weirdness that it is today.

It's the most hilarious book yet from "the funniest damn writer in the whole country" (Carl Hiaasen, and he should know). By the end, you'll have to admit that whatever else you might think about Florida-you can never say it's boring.

Praise for Dave Barry

Best. State. Ever.

19907856-f3c6-4c68-9ffb-20fbe9acf846-1

#paperback #animals #vet #juvenilefiction #manatees #florida #NYTbestsellingauthor

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Vet Volunteers 

Manatee Blues 

Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians

One of the great secrets of American history, more than 150 Spanish mission churches once dotted the landscape between modern Miami and the Chesapeake Bay. Built between the 1560s and 1760s, the missions were concentrated in what is now northern Florida and southern Georgia, but until recently their existence - and their influence on the region's native groups - has remained virtually undetected. Their wood and thatch buildings burned or rotted away, and sweeping epidemics gradually wiped out the entire populations of the Timucua, Guale, and Apalachee Indians. Drawing upon archaeological and historical research conducted during the last twenty years, archaeologist Jerald T. Milanich contends that the southeastern mission system, conceived as a way to save souls while converting a potentially hostile population into an essential labor force, was central to the Spanish colonial enterprise.

Laboring in the Fields of the Lord

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James Patterson

Andrew Gross

Virginia

#paperback #fiction #stuartwoods #suspense #thriller #detective #florida 

A Stone Barrington Novel

Stone Barrington’s newest client brings mayhem in his wake in this “edge-of-your-seat adventure”* in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. After giving some legal advice to a walk-in client, Stone Barrington thinks he’s done with the man. But several people are keenly interested in John Fratelli’s activities and how they relate to a long-ago crime...and some of them will stop at nothing to find the information they desire. On a hunt that leads from Florida’s tropical beaches to the posh vacation homes of the Northeast, Stone finds himself walking a tightrope between ambitious authorities and seedy lowlifes who all have the same prize in their sights. In this cutthroat contest of wills, it’s winner-takes-all—and Stone will need every bit of his cunning and resourcefulness to be the last man standing.

Standup Guy

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When a local teen from a trailer park being targeted by powerful developers witnesses their hired gun committing a murder, her only hope for survival falls in the hands of Doc Ford and Tomlinson, who undertake a search through the underground in the hopes of finding her first. By the author of Deep Shadow.

Night Vision

ca781e12-3da3-45d8-9484-b64265bd414c-1

New York

South Carolina

For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing, this "marvelous debut" (Alice McDermott, National Book Award-winning author of The Ninth Hour) follows a Washington, DC, artist as she faces her past and the secrets held in the waters of Florida's lush swamps and wetlands.

Loni Murrow is an accomplished bird artist at the Smithsonian who loves her job. But when she receives a call from her younger brother summoning her back home to help their obstinate mother recover after an accident, Loni's neat, contained life in Washington, DC, is thrown into chaos, and she finds herself exactly where she does not want to be.

Going through her mother's things, Loni uncovers scraps and snippets of a time in her life she would prefer to forget--a childhood marked by her father Boyd's death by drowning and her mother Ruth's persistent bad mood. When Loni comes across a single, cryptic note from a stranger--"There are some things I have to tell you about Boyd's death"-- she begins a dangerous quest to discover the truth, all the while struggling to reconnect with her mother and reconcile with her brother and his wife, who seem to thwart her at every turn. To make matters worse, she meets a man in Florida whose attractive simple charm threatens everything she's worked toward.

Pulled between worlds--her professional accomplishments in Washington, and the small town of her childhood--Loni must decide whether to delve beneath the surface into murky half-truths and either avenge the past or bury it, once and for all.

The Marsh Queen explores what it means to be a daughter and how we protect the ones we love. Suzanne Feldman, author of Sisters of the Great War, writes that "fans of Delia Owens and Lauren Groff will find this a wonderful and absorbing read."

The Marsh Queen

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Colorado

After rescuing the son of Florida crime lord Gordon Burns from an assassin, private detective Ric Alvarado and his new assistant, Annie Dugan, get the chance to infiltrate Burns's inner sanctum to investigate rumors that he has been smuggling terrorists into the United States. By the author of Into the Storm. 150,000 first printing.

Force of Nature

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Book has only been read once. #paperback #stuartwoods #detective #mystery #justice #cia #florida

A Holly Barker Novel

Home gets hot for special agent Holly Barker. Going home can be hard. But for Special Agent Holly Barker, it could be her one chance for justice against an old enemy...

Save this search

Carl Hiaasen

Squeeze Me

Edna Buchanan

Contents Under Pressure

Carl Hiassen

Nature Girl

James Patterson; Andrew Gross

Lifeguard

Carl Hiaasen

Skink--No Surrender

James Patterson; Andrew Gross

Lifeguard

Ann Kidd Taylor

The Shark Club

Carl Hiassen

Basket Case

Bryan Mealer

Muck City

Patricia Cornwell

Predator

Ann Kidd Taylor

The Shark Club

Mary Alice Monroe; Katherine Kaneb Bellissimo (Foreword by)

The Summer Guests

Dave Barry

Best. State. Ever.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Manatee Blues

Jerald T. Milanich

Laboring in the Fields of the Lord

James Patterson; Andrew Gross

Lifeguard

Stuart Woods

Standup Guy

Randy White

Night Vision

Carl Hiaasen

Squeeze Me

James Patterson; Andrew Gross

Lifeguard

Virginia Hartman

The Marsh Queen

Carl Hiaasen

Squeeze Me

Suzanne Brockmann

Force of Nature

Stuart Woods

Hothouse Orchid