Palm Meridian

Palm Meridian by Grace Flahive, 256 pages

It's 2067, Florida's partially underwater, and Hannah is ready to celebrate her upcoming death. She lives in the Palm Meridian Retirement Resort, an upbeat world of queer women who haven't let old age slow them down at all, and when she learns that she has terminal cancer, Hannah decides to celebrate and face death on her own terms. However, she can't have a party without some bittersweet memories, especially when her longtime business partner shows up to the party... but the long lost love of her life doesn't. Told in alternating chapters between the day of the party and flashbacks to Hannah's younger days, we get a good look at Hannah's complicated relationships with her friends and loved ones, and why she might want them around in her last day on Earth. It's funny, it's moving, it's bittersweet, it's a lovely book.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

Stop Me If You've Heard This One by Kristen Arnett, 272 pages

Professional clown Cherry Hendricks has yet to really make it in her chosen profession (currently she's barely making ends meet through kids' party appearances, a part-time job at an exotic pet store, and, regrettably, making a few bucks from clown fetishists). Doesn't help that her mom doesn't accept that her adult daughter is a clown, or that she still compares Cherry to her late brother. When Cherry has the chance to network with a big magician on the Orlando performers' circuit, she thinks she may finally get her big shot. If she doesn't screw it up first.

A book about a lesbian clown has the potential to be hilariously sarcastic and fun. Unfortunately, this one's mainly pretentious (well, once you get through the going-for-shock-value-only first chapter). Cherry isn't particularly likeable or relatable, and her actions in that first chapter REALLY undercut her later claims to professionalism. Feel free to skip this one.

Just Some Stupid Love Story

Just Some Stupid Love Story by Katelyn Doyle (2024) 325 pages

Molly Marks has had some success as a screenwriter for romantic comedies, but she has no trust in love‒it just sells well. Her friends drag her to their 15th high school class reunion, where she encounters Seth Rubenstein, her boyfriend all through high school, until she broke up with him pre-emptively, so that he couldn't break up with her. Seth, meanwhile, although a divorce attorney, still has a belief in true love and "happily ever after."

Molly and Seth place bets on five couples whom they see at the class reunion, wagering on whether the couples will still be together at the 20th reunion. If Seth wins the bet, Molly has to admit that true love is real. The kicker is that one of the couples‒added to the mix by Seth‒is themselves.

Over the next few years, they take turns interacting and avoiding each other. If this book is a rom-com, they'll have to find a way to be together, but it's just not looking good. Their feelings and their dialogue are realistic and nuanced. Interactions with their friends and family add well to the mix. Couldn't put the book down.

The Guests

The Guests by Margot Hunt, 303 pages

As a Category 5 hurricane makes its way ashore, wealth couple Marlowe and Lee are preparing to hunker down in their storm-ready mansion with their children, the kids' friends, and a couple of close employees. But just before the hurricane makes landfall, a trio of boaters ties up to their dock, seeking shelter from the storm. As Marlowe and Lee welcome their "guests," they soon discover that not everything is as it seems, and that it may be just as dangerous inside as it is outside.

This is a compelling, fast-paced novel filled with excellent twists and high stakes. Reading it in the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton, however, put a bit of a different spin on it. Worth an afternoon read...but maybe wait until after hurricane season.

The Vinyl Underground

The Vinyl Underground by Rob Rufus (2020) 328 pages

I listened to the audiobook on Hoopla narrated by Nick Mondelli. It is 1968 and Ronnie is still grieving the death of his brother over in Vietnam the year before. He's now a senior and questioning his future plans. Does he still want to pursue his brother's dream of being a radio DJ in California, or go to college to pursue his own path? Will either of those even be an option if he is drafted? Ronnie's brother had sent him a series of letters each with a recommended song on a 45rpm. He privately cherished these letters and his brother's stash of great albums. With his best friend Milo, their new neighbor Hana, who is half-Japanese, and a fellow star wrestler Louis, who has already failed his first senior-year to defer being called in the draft, Ronnie forms the Vinyl Underground. They form the record club to share righteous songs and chat about school and the war while drinking and smoking weed. They also plan how to dodge the draft. Ronnie finds it is better to work through his grief when he shares his brother's letters and recommended songs. Hana's family is new to town and faces a lot of racism. A bully at school constantly accuses her of being a spy for the Vietnamese. There is a scene of a sickening attack on Hana that is racially motivated. Milo wants to be a filmmaker and has recorded the attack, but the police doubt the identity of the assailant. This sets in motion the boys planning a super secret prank at the school prom. I loved the name-dropping of musicians from this decade. I could hear most of them in my head. I loved the exploration of courage in the face of pro-war forces and those who protest the war machine.
 

Cadillac Beach

 Cadillac Beach by Tim Dorsey  339 pp.

I enjoy Carl Hiaasen's novels about Florida mayhem, especially the ones that include the former governor known as "Skink". I was expecting something in a similar vein in this book featuring Dorsey's main character Serge Storms. Yes, there are similarities but Serge Storms is "over the top" in his actions/reactions. Serge is off his meds and joins with his substance abusing friend, Lenny in the search for the truth about his grandfather Sergio's death and the missing jewels that were stolen in the early 1960s. They set up a phony tour company and kidnap some sports fans/customers for a wild romp through Miami. Flashbacks to the time period of the theft and Sergio's disappearance flesh out the story. The involvement of the Mob, the CIA, FBI, and the militant Cubans makes the story very convoluted. The body count is excessive. In spite of it all the ending is somewhat happy. 

Milk Blood Heat

 Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz (2021) 202 pages

In this selection of short stories, the protagonists are often girls or young women of color. In "Feast," a woman cannot get past her miscarriage. In "Necessary Bodies," a young married woman is not sure if she will bring her pregnancy to term. In "Thicker Than Water," an estranged sister and brother drive their father's ashes to Santa Fe at the behest of their mother. In "Snow," one of my favorites, Trinity is a bartender who wonders if she will stay with her husband. At work one night, Trinity finds herself drawn to one of her customers, a woman named Snow. Snow has been dreaming of her Vietnamese father who had recently died, talking about how his death affected her, even though they were not close. In a few other stories, girls deal with serious issues at far too young an age. 

These stories are haunting, woven with deep meaning. I usually prefer a full novel to a short story, but it feels right to have experienced what these stories have to offer.

Dying to Call You

Dying to Call You by Elaine Viets (2004) 270 pages

I've heard that St. Louis native Elaine Viets took on a series of menial jobs to provide research for her Dead-End Job mystery series. In Dying to Call You, the third in the series, she so realistically portrays the work life of boiler-room telemarketers that reading the book before bed made me too depressed to sleep one night. But after a hiatus, I got back into the story: Although telemarketers deal with rejection and verbal abuse, Helen Hawthorne sells enough septic tank cleaners that she is sometimes invited to work in the more palatable part of the business, doing surveys. In the midst of doing one survey, she is certain that she has heard a woman being murdered. Even after calling the police, who report back that no one has been killed at the address corresponding to the phone number, she doggedly stays on the trail, even finding the name of a woman who has disappeared, and is presumably the murder victim.

The story has a most interesting cast of characters, including Helen's landlord Margery, a couple of fellow tenants named Fred and Ethel Mertz, and Savannah, the sister of the missing woman, who brings household products along as weapons when potential witnesses need to be encouraged to talk. The story moves quickly, keeping me wondering just what would come next.

Tourist Season

Tourist Season by Carl Hiasaen  378 pp.

This is an early novel by Hiaasen and he hadn't developed the voice of his later works. Even so, it is another send up of the "Florida Culture" he writes of so well. A series of seemingly random deaths have been occurring in the Miami area. A visiting Shriner, a woman from a senior living community, the Chamber of Commerce president, are all victims of a crew of oddball terrorists intent on driving the visitors and invading transplants that are ruining the state of Florida. The protagonist, Brian Keyes is a private detective and former newsman. The perpetrators are a motley crew calling themselves The Nights of December (Las Noches de Diciembre) which includes a newspaper reporter, a former pro football star, and a failed "Cuban" bomb maker, and the Seminole mastermind of the Native American casinos in the state. There are more deaths in this book than in Hiaasen's later novels but each occurs in a different and somewhat interesting way. The later books, especially the ones that feature the character Skink, are better efforts.

Getting Old Can Kill You

Getting Old Can Kill You by Rita Lakin (2011)  273 pages 

This new-to-me mystery series, set in a retirement community in Florida, is the seventh in the Gladdy Gold series. The main character, 75-year-old Gladdy, and her 73-year-old sister Evvie, are just finishing their double honeymoon, and find that their their three cohorts in mystery-solving have decided to create their own detective agency, fearful that the newlyweds will have their husbands join the original agency, Gladdy Gold and Associates. To prepare for opening their own agency, the three others sign up for detective school in a sketchy part of town, taking 3 buses to get there, until they find Rico, an engaging young Latino who's willing to be their driver. In the meantime, Arlene, who lives in their retirement community, has found that her former best friend, Joyce, who'd stolen her husband 55 years ago, seems to be stalking her. When Joyce is found dead, Arlene is the obvious suspect. The two sets of sleuths team up to solve the murder.

One reviewer indicates that Gladdy is a Yiddish Miss Marple, to which I'd say I'd been hoping for even more Yiddish-isms. This book is not excellent literature, but it is a fast, fun read; just what I was looking for.

Ring of Truth

Ring of Truth, by Nancy Pickard (2001) 264 pages

Last year, I practically binge-read seven Nancy Pickard books from her Jenny Cain series. Ring of Truth is the second of three books from her Marie Lightfoot series, the first I've read from this trio.

Marie is a writer of true crime books; the trial has ended for the latest murder she researched and she's just finished her book. However, she has a nagging feeling that something's not right. Marie begins to review her data, and interspersed with chapters which deal in the present, are chapters from her book, a nice book-within-a-book device, which serves to fill us in on the crime and her research about it. A minister, Bob Wing, a foe of capital punishment, had been found guilty of murdering his wife, a brutal bludgeoning that broke nearly every bone in her body. A possible accomplice, a woman friend that some people in the congregation thought he was having an affair with, had been found not guilty by the same jury. It seemed a bit ironic that the minister was now in the same death row area as Steve Orbach, a young man that the minister had been trying to help prior to his own arrest.

The very day that Marie has shipped off the book to her editor, she is visited by a Jenny, a young girl who'd found the body of the murdered woman while exploring an abandoned old house near Florida's Intracoastal Waterway with a friend. The little girls had kept souvenirs from the murder scene, and Jenny's mother wanted to get rid of the items, but couldn't find anyone in authority who would take them now that the trial was over, so Marie takes custody. Meanwhile, we learn more about the murder that Steve Orbach was convicted of; the details of his crime turn out to provide more than mere background for the minister's own plight.

Pickard develops her characters and builds her plot so very intricately, allowing me to think I'm honing in on some important details, but later I see that she was in charge all along. Oh the twists! I loved this book!

Florida

Florida by Lauren Groff, 288 pages.
Groff's brand new book of short stories is excellent in every way. Her characters are delicately drawn portraits of people in unusual circumstances. "The Midnight Zone" tells of a woman who insists her spouse leave her and their two young children at a remote cabin, with no car, despite a panther sighting in the area, and despite her self-described lack of competence. Her descriptions of injury and treatment are wickedly funny.
The account of the hurricane in "Eyewall" is intense and otherworldly, and the young woman struggling to find out who she is and where she belongs, in the story "Above and Below," is maybe the best of them. All of the stories in this collection shine.

Razor Girl

Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen, 333 pages.
Former police detective, and current health inspector, Andrew Yancy returns in this second novel set among the more ethically challenged citizens of the Florida Keys. While tagging along with his former partner, and hoping to get back in the sheriff's good graces and return to the police force, Yancy meets Merry Mansfield, a specialist in faked car accidents. Merry's specialty gives rise to the title. There's a lot going on in this book, with reality TV stars, mobsters, and, as with Yancy's debut, Bad Monkey, neighbors who want to block the main character's view.
A fun read for fans of Hiassen.

Bad Monkey

Bad Monkey / Carl Hiaasen 317 pgs.

Hiaasen introduces a new character here, Andrew Yancey.  A former police detective who was busted for assaulting his then lover's husband, and is reassigned to be a health inspector.  Yancey wants nothing more than to get off "roach" duty and is losing weight after losing desire to eat at the restaurants he inspects. He gives a helping hand to the sheriff by transporting a disembodied human arm to Miami for an autopsy.  This leads to a new relationship with a hot medical examiner, Rosa.  Yancey wants to solve the murder and get his old job back.  The trail leads to the Bahamas where he meets the titular bad monkey.  Like other books by Hiaasen, you are laughing and wondering...the story is not as simple as it at first seems and there is a lot going on.  Yancey seems like a great new character and it is easy to say that Hiaasen has detailed the absurdity of life once again.

Razor Girl

Razor Girl by Carl Hiassen  333 pp.

Andrew Yancy, disgraced police detective turned health inspector from the book Bad Monkey, is once again landed in a situation involving multiple criminal activities. There's the mistaken kidnapping of a Hollywood agent and the kidnapping of the correct victim, a reality television star and his fanatical and dangerous fan, Mafia gangsters, and the lawyer & fiancee who want to build on the lot next to Yancy's place, blocking his beautiful view on his island in the Florida Keys. Yancy's medical examiner girlfriend has left him for Norway and he ends up involved with Merry Mansfield, the razor girl of the title, who just happens to be involved in the kidnappings. The lawyer is suffering the horrible effects of an addiction to the ED product he advertises as fighting with a class action lawsuit. Buck Nance, the reality show star of "Bayou Brethren" (think "Duck Dynasty" but with roosters), wants to go back to living under his own name as an accordion player in home state of Wisconsin. And the fanatical fan is a racist, homophobic, violent, nutball with a penchant for guns. Add in an infestation of giant Gambian Pouched Rats, Cricetomys gambianus, and you have the usual Hiassen craziness that somehow works out in the end. The only think missing is Hiassen's returning character, Skink, who doesn't appear in this book. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, 219 pages.

Hurston's classic, moving novel was the capstone for our summer reading program. Hurston gives us the great character Janie Mae Crawford and explores her relationships with the natural world, with her Nanny, with her husbands, Logan Killicks, her second husband Jody, and then the love of her life, Tea Cake. Set in Zora Neale's native Florida, this book led to some great discussions. Check our summer reading blog here.

Jonah's Gourd Vine

Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston  316 pp.

I really enjoyed this book and the discussion about it I attended at the library. Christa's description of the story pretty much covers it. I had not read this work by Hurston although I had heard about it and planned to read it "one day". The dialect in the story is a bit challenging at first, until a kind of rhythm sets in. That the story is based on Hurston's family makes the characters come alive. This is one I recommend.

Jonah's Gourd Vine

Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston, 316 pages


Christa offered an excellent plot summary here, so I won't rehash it. What I will say is that I probably wouldn't have picked this one up if it wasn't part of the Big Book Challenge this summer, but I'm glad I read it and I look forward to reading more Zora Neale Hurston over the next couple of months. This was a fascinating look at African American life in the post-Civil War South, and the fact that it's loosely based on Hurston's parents is equally compelling. A word of warning, however: the dialect in this book is pretty difficult to wrap your head around at the start; sounding out the words in your head is a good way to figure it out though, and once you get used to it, the going gets MUCH easier. Too bad this doesn't exist as an audiobook.

Jonah's Gourd Vine / Zora Neale Hurston, 229 pp.

A simple story of one man's rise and fall, told very, very well.  I'm intrigued by the motif of crossing the water (here, the creek) which reappears in Moses, Man of the Mountain.

Cadillac Beach

Cadillac Beach by Tim Dorsey  339 pp.

I don't know who came up with the quirky, Florida crazy man character first, Tim Dorsey or Carl Hiaasen but at this point I think Hiaasen does a better job. Granted this is the first of Dorsey's "Serge Storm" books I've tried but I don't find the character to be one I'm sympathetic to whereas Hiaasen's "Skink" is someone I would happy to know. That being said, this book is an homage to excess. There is excess killing, at least one too many kidnappings, Serge's sidekick smokes way too much dope, Serge writes too many weird letters to politician's and public figures, the authorities (police, FBI, and CIA) are horribly inept, and even the mobsters are uninteresting. Granted, Serge is mentally ill, delusional, and has been repeatedly committed to an institution that he easily escapes. Unfortunately, the crux of the story, Serge searching for the truth of his grandfather's death, gets lost in all the mayhem. There are laugh-out-loud funny moments but they don't save this car wreck (there are too many of those also) of a novel. I almost wonder if Dorsey read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a few too many times.