Discover the funny side of Florida with #1 New York Times bestselling author Carl Hiaasen in this collection of four books: Hoot, Flush, Scat and Chomp. "It's classic Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud Satire in a Florida setting." —Life
Readers who eagerly anticipate each new Carl Hiaasen novel will relish this selection of his Miami Herald columns, written with the same dark humor and satirical edge as Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, and the rest of Hiaasen’s brilliant and nationally acclaimed fiction. Known for evoking the disastrously flawed paradise of modern South Florida, Hiaasen proves in these columns that facts can indeed be stranger than the fiction they inspire. Beginning with "Welcome to South Florida," a chapter introducing such everyday events as animal sacrifice, riots at the beach, and a shootout over limes at the supermarket, this collection organizes over 200 columns into 18 chapters, chronicling the events and defining the issues that have kept the South Florida melting pot bubbling throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. An introductory essay provides an overview of Hiaasen’s career and outlines his principal concerns as a journalist. Since its inception in 1985, Hiaasen’s twice-weekly "baseball-bat-to-the-forehead" column has become enormously popular for its passionate conviction and willingness to confront powerful interests in pursuit of the public good. Amid the corruption and chaos of a city on the edge, Hiaasen’s pointblank honesty and clear articulation of what’s right have secured him wide respect across the community’s many racial and ethnic divides as well as the admiration of his peers, who compare him to A. J. Leibling, I. F. Stone, and H. L. Mencken. In addition to South Florida color and world-class journalism, readers of Kick Ass will find one of Florida’s staunchest defenders in action, and they’ll take great pleasure in watching him work.
This collection features five of Carl Hiaasen's hilarious, award-winning classics! Take a trip to Carl Hiaasen's Florida--where the animals are wild and the people are wilder--with this collection that includes Hoot, Flush, Scat, Chomp, and Squirm. Hoot: Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter? Flush: The Coral Queen casino boat is treating the ocean like a toilet bowl, so Noah's dad decides to sink the darn thing. Problem is, there's no evidence of illegal dumping. Now Dad's in the clink, the boat's back in business, and only Noah can flush the truth out into the open. Scat: The most terrifying teacher in school is missing in the Everglades, and it's up to Nick and Marta to find her. But first they'll have to reckon with a junior arsonist, a wannabe Texas oilman, and a ticked-off Florida panther. It's all about to hit the fan, and when it does, these kids better scat. Chomp: When Wahoo Cray's dad--a professional animal wrangler--takes a job with a reality-TV survival show, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complicated--and it isn't just the animals who are ready to chomp. Squirm: This summer, Billy will fly across the country, hike a mountain, float a river, dodge a grizzly bear, shoot down a spy drone, save a neighbor's cat, save an endangered panther, and then try to save his own father.
In this hysterical #1 New York Times bestseller, one kid has to wrangle gators, snakes, bats that bite, and a reality show host gone rogue! This is Carl Hiaasen's Florida—where the creatures are wild and the people are wilder! When Wahoo Cray’s dad—a professional animal wrangler—takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing Derek Badger, the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complicated: Derek Badger insists on using wild animals for his stunts; and Wahoo's acquired a shadow named Tuna—a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her father and needs a place to hide out. They've only been on location in the Everglades for a day before Derek gets bitten by a bat and goes missing in a storm. Search parties head out and promptly get lost themselves. And then Tuna's dad shows up with a gun . . . It's anyone's guess who will actually survive Expedition Survival. . . “Only in Florida—and in the fiction of its native son Carl Hiaasen—does a dead iguana fall from a palm tree and kill somebody.” —New York Post “Chomp is a delightful laugh-out-loud sendup of the surreality of TV that will be enjoyed by readers of all ages.” —Los Angeles Times
Carl Hiaasen takes us deep in the Everglades with an eccentric eco-avenger, a ticked-off panther, and two kids on a mission to find their missing teacher. Florida—where the animals are wild and the people are wilder! Bunny Starch, the most feared biology teacher ever, is missing. She disappeared after a school field trip to Black Vine Swamp. And, to be honest, the kids in her class are relieved. But when the principal tries to tell the students that Mrs. Starch has been called away on a "family emergency," Nick and Marta just don't buy it. No, they figure the class delinquent, Smoke, has something to do with her disappearance. And he does! But not in the way they think. There's a lot more going on in Black Vine Swamp than any one player in this twisted tale can see. It’s all about to hit the fan, and when it does, the bad guys better scat. “Ingenious . . . Scat won’t disappoint Hiaasenphiles of any age.” —The New York Times “Woohoo! It’s time for another trip to Florida—screwy, gorgeous Florida, with its swamps and scammers and strange creatures (two- and four-legged). Our guide, of course, is Carl Hiaasen.” —DenverPost.com
A hilarious, high-stakes adventure involving crooked casino boats, floating fish, toxic beaches, and one kid determined to get justice. This is Carl Hiaasen's Florida—where the creatures are wild and the people are wilder! You know it's going to be a rough summer when you spend Father's Day visiting your dad in the local lockup. Noah's dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor–which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can't prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah's dad is stuck in the clink. Now Noah is determined to succeed where his dad failed. He will prove that the Coral Queen is dumping illegally . . . somehow. His allies may not add up to much–his sister Abbey, an unreformed childhood biter; Lice Peeking, a greedy sot with poor hygiene; Shelly, a bartender and a woman scorned; and a mysterious pirate–but Noah's got a plan to flush this crook out into the open. A plan that should sink the crooked little casino, once and for all.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A rollicking and hilarious novel from the bestselling author of Squeeze Me and “Florida’s most entertainingly indignant social critic” (New York Times Book Review). Jack Tagger’s years in exile at the obituaries desk of a South Florida daily haven’t dulled his investigative reporter’s nose for a good story. When Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dies in a fishy scuba accident, Jack sees his ticket back to page one—if only he can figure out what really happened. Standing in his way are, just for starters, his ambitious young editor, who hasn’t yet fired anyone but plans to “break her cherry” on Jack; the rock star’s pop-singer widow, who’s using the occasion of her husband’s death to relaunch her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated at a stockholders’ meeting. Following clues from the late rock singer’s own music, Jack tries to unravel the lies surrounding Jimmy Stoma’s strange fate.
A hilarious spin on life in the celebrity fast lane from “Florida’s most entertainingly indignant social critic” (The New York Times Book Review) and the national bestselling author of Squeeze Me. Meet twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye (née Cheryl Bunterman), a pop star since she was fourteen—and about to attempt a comeback from her latest drug-and-alcohol disaster. Now meet Cherry again: in the person of her “undercover stunt double,” Ann DeLusia. Ann portrays Cherry whenever the singer is too “indisposed”—meaning wasted—to go out in public. And it is Ann-mistaken-for-Cherry who is kidnapped from a South Beach hotel by obsessed paparazzo Bang Abbott. Now the challenge for Cherry’s handlers (über–stage mother; horndog record producer; nipped, tucked, and Botoxed twin publicists; weed whacker–wielding bodyguard) is to rescue Ann while keeping her existence a secret from Cherry’s public—and from Cherry herself. The situation is more complicated than they know. Ann has had a bewitching encounter with Skink—the unhinged former governor of Florida living wild in a mangrove swamp—and now he’s heading for Miami to find her . . . Will Bang Abbott achieve his fantasy of a lucrative private photo session with Cherry Pye? Will Cherry sober up in time to lip-synch her way through her concert tour? Will Skink track down Ann DeLusia before Cherry’s motley posse does? BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Carl Hiaasen's Bad Monkey.
Take a trip to exotic South Florida with this dark, funny book that established Carl Hiaasen as one of the top mystery writers in the game. The first sign of trouble is a Shriner's fez washed up on a Miami beach. The next is a suitcase containing the almost-legless body of the local chamber of commerce president found floating in a canal... The locals are desperate to keep the murders under wraps and the tourist money flowing. But it will take a reporter-turned–private eye to make sense of a caper that mixes football players, politicians, and one very hungry crocodile in this classic mystery that GQ called “one of the top ten destination reads of all time.”
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A hilarious and scathing novel from the author of Squeeze Me about a crazed and determined man who has devoted his strange existence to saving southern Florida from con artists and carpetbaggers after a hurricane hits. "Hysterically funny…. Hiaasen at his satirical best." —USA Today When a ferocious hurricane rips through southern Florida, insurance fraudsters, amateur occultists, and ex-cons waste no time in swarming over the disaster area. And caught in the middle are Max and Bonnie Lamb, honeymooners who abandon their Disney World plans to witness the terrible devastation. But when Max vanishes, Bonnie, aided by a mysterious young man with a tranquilizer gun and a roomful of human skulls, has to follow her only clue: a runaway monkey.
Richard's cousin is missing, and his best hope of finding her rests with the wily, one-eyed, ex-governor of Florida. Carl Hiaasen introduces his iconic character Skink to a younger audience in this nail-biting adventure! A National Book Award Longlist Selection Classic Malley: her parents are about to ship her off to boarding school, so she takes off with some guy she met online... Poor Richard: he's less of a rebel than Malley, and a lot less trusting. He knows his cousin is in trouble before she does. Wild Skink: he's a ragged, one-eyed, ex-governor of Florida, and enough of a renegade to think he can track Malley down. With Richard riding shotgun, this unlikely pair scour the state, undaunted by blinding storms, crazed pigs, flying bullets, and giant gators. In Carl Hiaasen's outrageous, hilarious, and wildly dangerous state of Florida, there are a million places an outlaw might stash a teenage girl. A million unpleasant ways to die. And two who will risk everything to rescue a friend . . . and to, hopefully, exact a bit of swamp justice.
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A hilarious novel of social and political intrigue, set against the glittering backdrop of Florida’s gold coast, from the author of Skinny Dip and Razor Girl “If you could use some wild escapism right now, Hiaasen is your guy.” —The New York Times WITH A NEW EPILOGUE At the height of Palm Beach’s charity ball season, Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, a prominent member of geriatric high society, suddenly vanishes during a swank gala. Kiki Pew was a founding member of the Potussies, a group of women dedicated to supporting the President, who spends half the year at the “Winter White House” just down the road. Meanwhile, Angie Armstrong, wildlife wrangler extraordinaire, is called to the island to deal with a monster-sized Burmese python that has taken residency in a tree. But the President is focused on the disappearance of Kiki Pew. Never one to miss an opportunity to play to his base, he immediately declares her a victim of rampaging immigrant hordes. This, it turns out, is far from the truth, which now lies in the middle of the road, where a bizarre discovery brings the First Lady’s motorcade to a grinding halt. Irreverent, ingenious, and uproariously entertaining, Squeeze Me perfectly captures the absurdity of our times.
Coming as an Apple Original series from Ted Lasso Executive Producer Bill Lawrence and starring Vince Vaughn • A wickedly funny novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance. “[A] comedic marvel … [Hiaasen] hasn’t written a novel this funny since Skinny Dip.”—The New York Times Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first—this being Hiaasen country—Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy’s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen’s greatest characters.
Honey Santana -self-proclaimed queen of lost causes - has a Plan. She's working on a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference and dinner-time telemarketers. She's also taking part-time telephonist Boyd Shreve and his less-than-enthusiastic mistress to Dismal Key - one of the Everglades' Ten ThousandIslands - for a gentle lesson in civility. What Honey doesn't know is that lurking in the island's undergrowth is Sammy Tigertail, half-blood Seminole Indian and wholly failed alligator wrestler, with death on his mind; and Honey's deranged co-worker, Louis Piejack, now with most of his fingers surgically mis-attached to the wrong knuckles, and intent on revenge. A holiday to die for? In Hiaasen's extraordinary universe, anything can happen ...
This Newbery Honor winner and #1 New York Times bestseller is a beloved modern classic. Hoot features a new kid and his new bully, alligators, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes. Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter? Welcome to Carl Hiaasen's Florida—where the creatures are wild and the people are wilder!
A Key West fishing captain takes on Florida’s drug lords in this “splendidly written” crime story coauthored by the #1 New York Times–bestselling novelist (The New York Times Book Review). Though he is one of Key West’s most skilled fishing captains, Breeze Albury barely ekes out a living on the meager earnings of his trade. Meanwhile, Cuban and Colombian drug smugglers thrive all around—and they have their sights set on Albury and his fishing boat. After the smugglers cut his three hundred trap lines and crush his livelihood, Albury is forced to run drugs to survive. But when he gets busted by the crooked chief of police and becomes a target of the drug machine’s brutal hit men, Albury becomes a vigilante on the seas of Florida, unleashing a fiery and relentless vengeance on the most dangerous criminals south of Miami. Along with Powder Burn and A Death in China, this is one of the early suspense thrillers written by Carl Hiaasen and Bill Montalbano, a writing team praised for their “fine flair for characters and settings” (Library Journal). Perfect for fans of the Doc Ford novels by Randy Wayne White, Trap Line is an action-packed preview of Hiaasen’s stellar Florida-set crime novels including Sick Puppy, Tourist Season, and Razor Girl.
Brilliantly twisted entertainment wrapped around a powerful ecological plea—from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me. When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Range Rover is about to be carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Idealistic, independently wealthy and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors unambiguous political statements—such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks—that leave his human targets shaken but re-educated. After watching Stoat blithely dump a trail of fast-food litter out the window, Twilly decides to teach him a lesson. Thus, Stoat's prized Range Rover becomes home to a horde of hungry dung beetles. Which could have been the end to it had Twilly not discovered that Stoat is one of Florida's cockiest and most powerful political fixers, whose latest project is the "malling" of a pristine Gulf Coast island. Now the real Hiaasen-variety fun begins… Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts—these are only some of the denizens of Carl Hiaasen's outrageously funny new novel.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me, a novel starring three lottery winners, two heavily armed psychopaths, and a big-city investigative journalist set deep in Florida Bay. Grange, Florida, is, famous for its miracles-the weeping fiberglass Madonna, the Road-Stain Jesus, the stigmata man. And now it has JoLayne Lucks, unlikely winner of the state lottery. Unfortunately, JoLayne's winning ticket isn't the only one. The other belongs to Bodean Gazzer and his raunchy sidekick, Chub, who want the whole $28 million jackpot to start their own underground militia. The pursuit takes them to a buzzard-infested island deep in Florida Bay, where they finally catch up with the fledgling militia-and their baffled hostage, a Hooters waitress. The climax explodes with the hilarious mayhem that is Carl Hiaasen's hallmark. Lucky You is his funniest, most deliriously gripping novel yet.
Follow the adventures of a news-photographer-turned-private-eye as he seeks truth, justice, and an affair with his ex-wife" (The New York Times) in this hilarious caper from bestselling author Carl Hiaasen. R. J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye, is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman's scam that's anything but sportsmanlike, there's a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida--and a lot that's rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, large-mouth bass tournaments. Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for road kill; dare to kiss his ex-wife while she's in bed with her new husband; and face deadly TV evangelists, dangerously seductive women, and a pistol-toting redneck with a pit bull on his arm. And here his own life becomes part of the stakes. For while the "double whammy" is the lure, first prize is for the most ingenious murder.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From “Florida’s most entertainingly indignant social critic” (New York Times Book Review)—an inventive tale yet of savage appetites and sweet justice. Only in America could an innocent, if drunken, guest of honor at a strip joint bachelor party become a mortal threat against Big Money and Big Government. Only in south Florida, land of roadside honky-tonks and sinister pleasure boats—not to mention blackmail and murder—would a virtuous topless dancer join forces with a cool but clueless cop. And only in the fiction of Carl Hiaasen do readers experience riveting suspense and razor-sharp characters along with the most wicked humor imaginable.
Filled with harrowing divots, deadly doglegs, and excruciating sandtraps, The Downhill Lie is a hilarious chronicle of mis-adventure that will have you rolling with laughter. Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen wisely quit golfing in 1973. But some ambitions refuse to die, and as the years passed and the memories of slices and hooks faded, it dawned on Carl that there might be one thing in life he could do better in middle age than he could as a youth. So gradually he ventured back to the rolling, frustrating green hills of the golf course, where he ultimately—and foolishly—agreed to compete in a country-club tournament against players who can actually hit the ball.
You can never have enough Hiaasen! This box set includes SIX sharp-witted novels from the Newbery Honor winner and #1 New York Times bestseller. In Carl Hiaasen's wild adventure stories, kids fight to protect animals and wild spaces from crooked developers, poachers, and dirty dealers of every stripe. And you know with kids on the case, the bad guys will get what's coming to them in deliciously inventive ways. This collectible boxed set includes six Hiaasen bestsellers: Hoot: Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can two kids flip the script and save the owls? Flush: The Coral Queen casino boat is treating the ocean like a toilet bowl, so Noah's dad decides to sink it. Now Dad's in the clink, the boat's back in business, and only Noah can flush the truth out into the open. Scat: The most terrifying teacher in school is missing in the Everglades, and it's up to Nick and Marta to find her. But first they'll have to reckon with a junior arsonist, a wannabe Texas oilman, and a ticked-off Florida panther. Chomp: When Wahoo Cray's dad--a professional animal wrangler--takes a job with a reality-TV survival show, Wahoo knows he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing the show's inept and egotistical star. Squirm: This summer, Billy will fly across the country, hike a mountain, float on a river, dodge a grizzly bear, shoot down a spy drone, save a neighbor's cat, save an endangered panther, and then try to save his own father. Wrecker: In this Key West caper, a boy who calls himself Wrecker gets tangled up with some shifty smugglers. Can one clever kid outwit a gang of crooks? Oh yes!
From the New York Times bestselling author comes a novel in which dedicated, if somewhat demented, environmentalists battle sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys. When the precious blue-tongued mango voles at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills on North Key Largo are stolen by heartless, ruthless thugs, Joe Winder wants to uncover why, and find the voles. Joe is lately a PR man for the Amazing Kingdom theme park, but now that the voles are gone, Winder is dragged along in their wake through a series of weird and lethal events that begin with the sleazy real-estate agent/villain Francis X. Kingsbury and can end only one way.... 'Rips, zips, hurtles, keeping us turning the pages at breakfinger pace' - New York Times Book Review
Architect Chris Meadows has the bad luck to see an old girlfriend get hit by a car full of drugland hitmen. He has the worse luck to see the face of her murderers. Because in a town as violent as Miami, a witness doesn't stand a chance--especially when the cops who ought to be protecting him are more interested in dangling him as live bait.
Wrecker needs to deal with smugglers, grave robbers, and pooping iguanas—just as soon as he finishes Zoom school. Another wild adventure in Carl Hiaasen's Florida, now in paperback! Valdez Jones VIII calls himself Wrecker because his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather salvaged shipwrecks for a living. So is it destiny, irony, or just bad luck when Wrecker comes across a speedboat that has run hard aground on a sand flat? The men in the boat don't want Wrecker to call for help—in fact, they'll pay him to forget he ever saw them. Wrecker would be happy to forget, but he keeps seeing these men all over Key West—at the marina, in the cemetery, even right outside his own door. And now they want more than his silence—they want a lookout. He'll have to dive deep into their shady dealings to figure out a way to escape this tangled net. . . .
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A lovable con woman and a disgraced detective team up to find a redneck reality TV star in this raucous new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me. “Carl Hiaasen’s irresistible Razor Girl meets his usual sky-high standards for elegance, craziness and mike-drop humor.” —The New York Times Merry Mansfield, the eponymous Razor Girl, specializes in kidnapping for the mob. Her preferred method is rear-ending her targets and asking them for a ride. Her latest mark is Martin Trebeaux, owner of a private beach renourishment company who has delivered substandard sand to a mob hotel. But there's just one problem: Razor Girl hits the wrong guy. Instead, she ends up with Lane Coolman, talent manager for Buck Nance, the star of a reality TV show about a family of Cajun rooster farmers. Buck Nance, left to perform standup at a Key West bar without his handler, makes enough off-color jokes to incite a brawl, then flees for his life and vanishes.
Disney is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal, and therefore is an agent of pure wickedness. . . . Disney isn't in the business of exploiting Nature so much as striving to improve upon it, constantly fine-tuning God's work." --from TEAM RODENT TEAM RODENT How Disney Devours America "Revulsion is good. Revulsion is healthy. Each of us has limits, unarticulated boundaries of taste and tolerance, and sometimes we forget where they are. Peep Land is here to remind us; a fixed compass point by which we can govern our private behavior. Because being grossed out is essential to the human experience; without a perceived depravity, we'd have nothing against which to gauge the advance or decline of culture; our art, our music, our cinema, our books. Without sleaze, the yardstick shrinks at both ends. Team Rodent doesn't believe in sleaze, however, nor in old-fashioned revulsion. Square in the middle is where it wants us all to be, dependable consumers with predictable attitudes. The message, never stated but avuncularly implied, is that America's values ought to reflect those of the Walt Disney Company, and not the other way around." BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Carl Hiaasen's Bad Monkey.
Tired, middle-aged boat captain Breeze Albury is forced to accept a run for Key West's drug cartel, a run that leads to betrayal, blackmail, death, and--for Breeze--a cunning retribution
This is the ultimate hilarious, cynical, but absolutely realistic view of a college graduate's future. And what he or she can or can't do about it. "This commencement address will never be given, because graduation speakers are supposed to offer encouragement and inspiration. That's not what you need. You need a warning." So begins Carl Hiaasen's attempt to prepare young men and women for their future. And who better to warn them about their precarious paths forward than Carl Hiaasen? The answer, after reading Assume the Worst, is: nobody. Illustrated by bestselling author/illustrator and National Book Award winner Roz Chast, this book is bound to be a classic, sold year after year come graduation time. Although it's also a good gift for anyone starting a job, getting married, or recently released from prison. Because it is not just funny. It is, in its own Hiaasen way, extremely wise and even hopeful. Well, it might not be full of hope, but there are certainly enough slivers of the stuff in there to more than keep us all going.
Take a trip to exotic South Florida with this dark, funny book that established Carl Hiaasen as one of the top mystery writers in the game. The first sign of trouble is a Shriner's fez washed up on a Miami beach. The next is a suitcase containing the almost-legless body of the local chamber of commerce president found floating in a canal... The locals are desperate to keep the murders under wraps and the tourist money flowing. But it will take a reporter-turned–private eye to make sense of a caper that mixes football players, politicians, and one very hungry crocodile in this classic mystery that GQ called “one of the top ten destination reads of all time.”
In the summer of 2005, Carl Hiaasen picked up a golf club again for the first time in 32 years. He was not the best of players in 1973, and had certainly not got any younger in the intervening period. Over the course of the next 18 months, Carl's game got better, then worse, then slightly better, then much worse again. On the way to finally summoning up the courage to compete in an actual tournament himself, Carl details the hilarious consequences of his misguided belief that he could actually play the game. But through all the misery and frustration (save the odd glorious shot), golf took up residence in Carl's heart again. Fairway to Hell is the ultimate tale of the trials and tribulations of the amateur golfer, but also the heart-warming story of how the game brought together the generations of the Hiaasen family.
This collection features five of Carl Hiaasen's hilarious, award-winning classics! Take a trip to Carl Hiaasen's Florida--where the animals are wild and the people are wilder--with this collection that includes Hoot, Flush, Scat, Chomp, and Squirm. Hoot: Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter? Flush: The Coral Queen casino boat is treating the ocean like a toilet bowl, so Noah's dad decides to sink the darn thing. Problem is, there's no evidence of illegal dumping. Now Dad's in the clink, the boat's back in business, and only Noah can flush the truth out into the open. Scat: The most terrifying teacher in school is missing in the Everglades, and it's up to Nick and Marta to find her. But first they'll have to reckon with a junior arsonist, a wannabe Texas oilman, and a ticked-off Florida panther. It's all about to hit the fan, and when it does, these kids better scat. Chomp: When Wahoo Cray's dad--a professional animal wrangler--takes a job with a reality-TV survival show, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complicated--and it isn't just the animals who are ready to chomp. Squirm: This summer, Billy will fly across the country, hike a mountain, float a river, dodge a grizzly bear, shoot down a spy drone, save a neighbor's cat, save an endangered panther, and then try to save his own father.
Discover the funny side of Florida with #1 New York Times bestselling author Carl Hiaasen in this collection of four books: Hoot, Flush, Scat and Chomp. "It's classic Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud Satire in a Florida setting." —Life
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