Patricia Cornwell

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Maryland

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

Carl Hiassen

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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Evan Hunter

Told from multiple points of view makes this mystery a a real puzzle to solve read

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

After Matthew Hope slips into a coma--the result of a drive-by shooting--his friends, private eye Warren Chambers and police detective Morris Bloom--must follow in his investigative footsteps to discover why he was shot. All signs point to the local circus--an underworld of offbeat sex, drugs, blackmail, murder, and in the center of it all, there was a little girl.

There Was a Little Girl

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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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Missouri

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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Ohio

A Novel

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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Florida

Good Night Books

Good Night Florida Keys 

James Patterson

Andrew Gross

Virginia

Lifeguard

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

#hardcover #intrigue #america #florida 📚

Kentucky

A fictional portrait of the challenges, dreams, triumphs, and relationships of older adults and their families follows the residents of the Palms, a Florida retirement center, over the course of a single, unforgettable year. 150,000 first printing.

Recessional

6d96ccb7-82df-4971-8a51-39a97e6e3a3c-1

David Vizard

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Iowa

Murder, Key West Style

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Randy White

A debut entry in a new series by the author of the Doc Ford novels introduces Florida native and fishing guide Hannah Smith, who uses uncommon resourcefulness, a keen sense of justice and unorthodox methods to track down a missing girl, a case that puts Hannah on the wrong side of violent adversaries.

Gone

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Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

The museum security guard never noticed the rosary. It was old and almost grossly sensual, a relic of an austere Spanish faith that had sustained itself on transferring the excesses of the flesh to the spirit, the fervent consecration of the vital principle to sadistic appetites, to grave indulgence in sensuous cruelty, to obsessive physical degradation--an intemperate distortion of another consummation: el abuso Pentecostal.

Now the rosary lay against the smoothly sanded white wood of a parabolic hollow, open to the steady, dying radiance of the sun. The alternating beads of ruddy garnet and vibrant Sicilian-red coral glowed against the wood in the deep warm light of sundown. Their bloody color was endowed with a vitreous luster by the departing fires in the west, beyond the long windows; the chain glinted with dull gold insistence. And on the heavy crucifix itself, in grotesquely ornate detail, the golden tortured form of the Christ writhed in a deliberately savage, bared-teeth, and nearly obscene carnal excess. The warm metal collected the sanguine fire of both the beads and the sunset, crimson streaks of reflected light dripping down the arms and legs, a twisted concentration of the Passion. The tiny, delicate countenance of the figure was an intricate study in the solid geometry of agony, the planes of the cheeks buckled and wrenched with a miniature, anguished craftsmanship--and with a faith that had fed on the contemplation of pain.

Milady de Vargas sifted the ring of beads through her long white fingers and drew the red rosary from the concealed compartment at the foot of the staircase in the Ernest Hemingway Museum. In Hemingway''s day the compartment had been called the children''s cellar; a true cellar was a rarity in Key West, a city built on solid coral rock, and the word had come to mean "peculiar place."

As Millie lifted the coral sacramental above the newel''s grooved wooden depository, its brass cover in her left hand, the last sunlight of the day touched the crucifix in her right hand, and a bright burst of color shot from the small torment forged in a smithy of Spanish pietism, striking across the entrance foyer and brushing intense red-gold pinpricks--concentrated splinters of fire--on the slim glass window panels in the vast double door and on the passing shadow of the guard.

With quiet firmness she replaced the brass cover and screwed it onto the top of the painted wooden post, listening for the metallic click of the secret lock against the silence of the mansion. She had begun hiding the rosary in the post''s bowl-like hollow two months earlier, but the time had come to relinquish the red beads--the Madonna''s Crown of Roses--to their final owner.

Millie''s stewardship had been tense and clandestine and careful, exacting a devastating toll on her emotions. She faced the double door and elevated the chain of scarlet beads in the sunset''s bloody light and kissed the feet of the tortured golden Christ, not with pious humility and patient reverence but with an aching greed.

The rosary was priceless, a seventeenth-century Spanish religious artifact that had lain at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for almost four hundred years, caressed by the shifting gray sands--a red and gold masterpiece of piety and material wealth--while its stern original owner was incrementally and surely obliterated by the indifferent, hungry procession of time and carrion fish.

Salvage teams had labored sporadically over the centuries, and divers had dreamed of locating the sunken riches of the Nuestra Senora de Antorcha, and had been teased by occasional silver pieces and muskets scattered widely over the ocean floor, but the mother lode of the Spanish treasure galleon had kept her resting-place and her sacred opulence from the grasping scrutinies of those who would ravish her out of the sleeping centuries.

Until Millie had found it.

And Millie, a modern daughter of the faith and the greed that had ravaged the Americas for Spain, had brought the rosary to this house as proof of the modern reality of this nearly incalculable sunken ecclesiastical wealth. The bulk of the treasure still lay on the gray, sandy floor of the Gulf, but she had brought this one coral-and-garnet rosary ashore, hiding it in the Hemingway Museum to have it nearby: a token to touch, to fondle; to absorb and to inhale the permanent spiritual value that must still cling to its beads--like a fragrance of sanctity--blessed and indulgenced so many centuries ago; and finally to offer to its rightful owner as a costly inducement to intercede for her trespasses.

But her time of secret enjoyment, her private communion with the intangible wisps of antique, austere virtue, a holiness from a more faithful age, must now end. She had been careful about wearing the rosary, touching it, holding it, but it must not become a liability, a threat to her, a temptation to others.

This evening Millie pulled the rosary over her head for the last time, her white linen business suit bathed in the dying glow of the departing day, her short, silky black hair taking on a vague red outline, her feet spread slightly apart in spike heels on the thinly carpeted floor, her breath exhaling slowly. The 17 and inches of gold chain allowed the antique cross to fall just between her breasts.

The mansion seemed to breathe around her. Soft murmuring breezes from the Gulf swept across the island city and through the screened windows of the narrow formal dining room to the right of the foyer. She could hear the whisper of the chalice vines swaying outside against the veranda that encircled the house, their heavy shadows falling through the dining room windows and over the six leather chairs chained to the long Spanish walnut table.

She smoothed the rosary against the collar of her white silk blouse, stepped to the tall, central double door with its half-oval transom, and twisted the small brass knobs. They were reassuringly unresponsive. She had remembered to lock the doors.

She turned left, into the dark and spacious living room, her heels echoing briefly on the luminous wooden floor that framed the scarlet oriental rugs. She glanced distastefully at a small white china figure of a naked woodland girl in a window nook--a gift to Hemingway from Marlene Dietrich--that seemed to absorb the fading colors of the sunset, and pulled the two sets of French doors together firmly and locked them. A blue-shirted security guard passed quietly by on the veranda, saluted her with a casual wave, and nodded when she returned his greeting with a perfunctory stiffening of her hand.

The security guard was not especially fond of Millie de Vargas; none of them were, she reflected. They thought her cold, and distant, but she knew her regular habits made their jobs simpler as they made their rounds, securing the estate after the tourists had gone for the night. This one, after a quick glance around the veranda, headed for the front gate, which he would close and lock.

Farewell, Conch Republic

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This is a gritty story about a world hidden away from the public eye. Great condition for its age, dust jacket has a weird fold to it. See all pics for blemishes. #hardcover #drama #horses #stablehands #florida #racing #fiction #relationships #hardlife #suspense

Winter in Florida 

Laurence Shames

Two bent pages, just the corners.
"In this business, nothing is as good as dead..." The business in question is the high-end art world, and everyone in this darkly comedic mystery wants a piece of it. When painter Augie Silver is lost at sea in a sailing accident, his many friends among Key West's artists, writers, and hangers-on mourn--until, that is, they realize that Augie's death has sent the prices for his pictures skyrocketing. What at first seemed a tragedy turns out to be a windfall--until, that is, Augie, rescued at sea, limps back to town alive. Not everyone is thrilled by the artist's resurrection. Someone, in fact, is upset enough to start trying to bump off Augie for real. Full of steamy Key West atmosphere and sometimes brutal insights into the wacky world of creative types, SCAVENGER REEF is both a taut whodunit and a wise meditation on loyalty real or faked, friendships sincere or toxic.

Texas

Scavenger Reef

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Investigating the disappearance of two sisters in Florida, Dr. Kay Scarpetta follows clues that twist and turn, leading her into the psychopathic depths of a jailed serial killer's mind.

Gail Goodwin

Indentation on the spine. Came this way from the bookstore. Never read.

Michigan

In 1959, as the first wave of Cuban exiles arrives in the United States, Emma Gant, finally free of her stifling family and bullying stepfather, embarks on a career as a reporter for The Miami Star and begins to thrive in the sultry world of Miami, confronting conflicting loyalties, shady dealings, and personal and professional setbacks as she pursues her goals. 50,000 first printing.

Queen of the Underworld *First Edition*

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Nelson DeMille’s #1 New York Times bestseller, “an action-packed, relentlessly paced thriller” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), featuring DeMille’s newest character—U.S. Army combat veteran Daniel “Mac” MacCormick, a charter boat captain setting sail on his most dangerous cruise yet. Daniel Graham MacCormick—Mac for short—seems to have a pretty good life. At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine. Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghanistan. He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan. Truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky. One day, Mac is sitting in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups. Carlos wants to hire Mac for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down. The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’ clients—a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez. Mac learns that there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution. With the “Cuban Thaw” underway between Havana and Washington, Carlos, Eduardo, and Sara know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash—by accident or on purpose. And Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich…or not at all. The Cuban Affair “is a timely stay-up-all-night, nail-biting page-turner featuring Nelson DeMille’s iconic tongue-in-cheek, articulate, rhythmic narrative. His affably irreverent protagonist, fantastic believable supporting characters, and tense, realistic Cuba-set scenes including some jaw-dropping revelations make this a must read” (Library Journal, starred review). “Genuinely gripping” (Newsday), told with “incredible wit” (Tampa Bay Times), “The Cuban Affair feels authentic and real, and it provides knuckle-white tension mixed in with levity” (Associated Press).

The Cuban Affair

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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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Barnaby Novel

Miami is still freakin' humid. The nights are even hotter. And there's a body on ice. And that's just the beginning of this adrenaline-rush of a hot-wired ride from phenomenal number one New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich. A woman with a taste for speed and a talent for breaking the rules, Barney also knows a little too much about cheating. First there was Hooker and that salesclerk. Now she's convinced one of the competitors is up to no good on the track. Snooping to find evidence, Hooker and Barney "borrow" a NASCAR hauler. Turns out, the hauler is carrying two race cars and a dead guy. It looks like Barney and Hooker are facing multiple counts of grand theft auto and homicide. So buckle up as Barney, Hooker, a 150-pound bundle of Saint Bernard love named Beans, and the Super Cigar Ladies Felicia and Rosa shift into gear on a wild race around South Florida and Concord, North Carolina. Everything you always wanted to know about righteous indignation, stealing an eighteen-wheeler, and sex in the fast lane.

Motor Mouth

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#paperback #romance #three-in-one #Florida #romancingamerica #lovestories #beachreads #threedollarsteal

New Jersey

Romance Blossoms in Three Novels Set in the Sunshine State

A collection of philosophical studies centered on problems of identity and extending to related topics in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy.

Florida Weddings

6ff20e20-766a-4417-894f-f0acec155a92-1

Wanda E. Brunstetter

Ex-library book in excellent condition with the exception of the library, sticker on the spine, residual sticker on the front cover, and the library stamp on the first page. ￼

Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club #3

Retired Amish newlyweds Emma and Lamar Miller start a new quilting class, in which they work with an unlikely group of students to achieve emotional healing and create beautiful traditional quilts.

The Healing Quilt

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Kevin Henkes

HV with dust jacket wrapped in mylar. Ex-library with noted markings. Tight binding. Pages in very good condition. 

California

Returning to the beach cottage—a cottage named Scallop—where she has always celebrated her birthday is a special occasion for Alice Rice. Who will see the first dolphin this time? The first pelican? What will have changed? Stayed the same? And will this be the year she finally finds a junonia shell? Alice's friends are all returning, too. And she's certain her parents have the best party planned for her. Alice can't wait. If Alice is lucky, everything will be absolutely perfect. Will Alice be lucky?

Junonia

246b2d1a-1ee3-46b6-a6aa-d1fc4a95b11f-1

Brian Panowich

Minnesota

Return to McFalls County and Bull Mountain in Hard Cash Valley, where Brian Panowich weaves another masterful tale of Southern Noir. Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life in one of the most chaotic and crime-ridden regions of the south. When he gets called in to consult on a brutal murder in a Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, he and his FBI counterpart, Special Agent Roselita Velasquez, begin an investigation that leads them back to the criminal circles of his own backyard. Arnie Blackwell’s murder in Jacksonville is only the beginning – and Dane and Roselita seem to be one step behind. For someone is hacking a bloody trail throughout the Southeast looking for Arnie’s younger brother, a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome who possesses an unusual skill with numbers that could make a lot of money and that has already gotten a lot of people killed—and has even more of the deadliest people alive willing to do anything it takes to exploit him. As Dane joins in the hunt to find the boy, it swiftly becomes a race against the clock that has Dane entangled in a web of secrets involving everyone from the Filipino Mafia to distrusting federal agents to some of hardest southern outlaws he’s ever known.

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Patricia Cornwell

Predator

Carl Hiassen

Basket Case

Evan Hunter

There Was a Little Girl

Jerald T. Milanich

Laboring in the Fields of the Lord

Suzanne Brockmann

Force of Nature

Virginia Hartman

The Marsh Queen

Adam Gamble, Mark Jasper

Good Night Florida Keys

James Patterson; Andrew Gross

Lifeguard

James A. Michener

Recessional

David Vizard

Murder, Key West Style

Randy White

Gone

Hialeah Jackson

Farewell, Conch Republic

Edward Falco

Winter in Florida

Laurence Shames

Scavenger Reef

Patricia Cornwell

Predator

Gail Goodwin

Queen of the Underworld *First Edition*

Nelson DeMille

The Cuban Affair

Carl Hiassen

Nature Girl

Janet Evanovich

Motor Mouth

Lynn A. Coleman; Kristy Dykes; Kathleen E. Kovach

Florida Weddings

Wanda E. Brunstetter

The Healing Quilt

Kevin Henkes

Junonia

Brian Panowich

Hard Cash Valley

Brian Panowich

Hard Cash Valley

Queen of the Underworld First Edition