A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets. But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.
Take a romp in the swamp with this hilarious, high-stakes adventure set in the Florida Keys by Newbery Honoree Carl Hiaasen!
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 in the local lock-up.
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.
The most disastrous family reunion in the history of fiction. The Drummond family, reunited for the first time in years, gathers near Cape Canaveral to watch the launch into space of their beloved daughter and sister, Sarah.
Against the Technicolor unreality of Florida's finest tourist attractions, the Drummonds stumble into every illicit activity under the tropical sun—kidnapping, blackmail, gunplay, and black market negotiations, to name a few. But even as their lives spin out of control, Coupland reminds us of their humanity at every turn.
He crafts a hilarious masterpiece with the keen eye of a cultural critic and the heart and soul of a gifted storyteller. Coupland tells not only the characters' stories but also the story of our times—thalidomide, AIDS, born-again Christianity, drugs, divorce, the Internet—all bound together with the familiar glue of family love and madness.