Skink Books
Now reissued--one of the most beloved novels by the "New York Times" bestselling author in which dedicated, if somewhat demented, environmentalists battle sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys.
A hilarious new novel of greed and corruption from the bestselling author of Strip Tease. The story focuses on southern Florida at the height of the tourist season, when a ferocious hurricane hits--luring con artists, carpetbaggers, and would-be saviours like hyenas to the lion's kill. "Hiaasen (hilself is a one-man force of nature".--Variety. Major advertising, including key city radio and print ads in The New York Times Book Review and Miami Herald.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Take a hilarious ride through the warped politics and mayhem of the human environment, and the human heart, in this "screwball delight so full of bright, deft, beautifully honed humor.... You'd follow [Hiaasen] anywhere." — The New York Times Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn’t know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He might also be the only one who went into biology just to make a killing, and now he’s found a way–doctoring water samples so that a ruthless agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the endangered Everglades. When Chaz suspects that his wife, Joey, has figured out his scam, he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner into the night-dark Atlantic. Unfortunately for Chaz, his wife doesn’t die in the fall. Clinging blindly to a bale of Jamaican pot, Joey Perrone is plucked from the ocean by former cop and current loner Mick Stranahan. Instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband’s crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick’s help) screw with Chaz until he screws himself. As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband, as Chaz’s cold-blooded cohorts in pollution grow uneasy about his ineptitude and increasingly erratic behavior, as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages and years of island solitude haven’t killed the reckless romantic in him, we’re taken on a full-throttle, pure Hiaasen ride.
From "the funniest important writer in America" comes a tale that is gleefully zany and incisively sharp ( Miami Herald ). Meet 22-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? All will be revealed in this hilarious spin on life in the celebrity fast lane.
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.