Florida Books

Keys Cuisine is one of the five best Florida/Gulf Coast cookbooks out there. Well, that's my opinion. I've been updating my Amazon "So You'd Like to Guides" and I have one on Key Lime Pie. Take a look at it if you want. Anyway, I've included fifty cookbooks (the maximum Amazon will allow) in all my guides, so I've had a chance to go through my collection. And quite a collection it is, I've got hundreds of cookbooks and I go through them all the time. That's my problem, how to organize them. While going through what I wanted to include in my guides, I started separating them into piles, the ones I couldn't live without and the ones, if I absolutely had to, I could give away as gifts, you know, like if we moved into a very small place.

Keys Cuisine is one I could never part with. I love the food and the atmosphere of Florida and the Gulf Coast, have spent a lot of time there, as I'm a sailing lady. I'm also somewhat of a gourmet chef. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, or galley, depending if I'm at home in the States or on our boat in the Caribbean. The recipes here will make your family, or even just yourself, if you live alone, drool. They are mouthwatering good and that's the truth.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

I used the recipe for " Manny's Key Lime Pie" p.189 All seemed to be going well - the key lime mixture tasted great. Problem was that the directions said to "beat the egg yolks and condensed milk until creamy". It did not say to cook it. I thought this was problematic. All those eggs yolks should have been cooked, not just beaten. I followed the book instructions and only cooked it when I had made the meringue and placed it on top. I cooked it for the required 5 minutes but it was still very liquidy. I have it in the freezer right now and am hoping that it works. Did you miss in the recipe ? Should it have been cooked instead of beaten ???

I found this to be the ultimate way to "eat" my way up and down the Florida Keys. Then to be able to take the flavors with me and prepare them at home is a real treat.

This is an awesome cookbook! If you are interested in adding fish to your diet in unique ways, this cookbook is a must-have! There are also tons of other recipes, including a whole chapter devoted to key limes, and the recipes are well written and easy to follow. I have eaten at Marker 88,home of one of the featured chefs in the book, and the recipe for Andre's Snapper Rangoon is to die for! I find the recipes very innovative and delicious!

I just finished this extraordinary book, and was totally engrossed in the story line and well developed characters from start to finish. I highly recommend this book, undoubtedly the best book I've read this year.

BRAVO, BRAVO, Darryl Wimberley for a job well done!

I pre-ordered The King of Colored Town by Darryl Wimberley back in January after a friend passed me a two-line, positive blurb about the book. By the time it arrived, I did not have any more insight about the author or the story, so I cracked the cover hoping not to be disappointed. This book turned out to be a true literary delight and one of my favorites so far for 2007!

The reader is transported to 1963 in the racially-charged Florida Panhandle region amid the Civil Rights movement. A teenaged dreamer, Joe Billy King, finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is implicated in a church bombing. He flees Tallahassee to the backwoods of Laureate, FL where he meets Cilla Handsom. Opposites attract and the charms of Joe Billy, an outspoken, city boy, attract Cilla, the shy, bashful country girl who is struggling with a mentally ill mother and living in overt poverty. Their love affair is strained by the inevitable limitations of deep-rooted racism and local "good ole boy" politics.
It is ultimately crushed in a brutal and savage act of cowardice and betrayal. A man is killed, a trial ensues, secrets are revealed, and their paths diverge forever. Cilla escapes and becomes a classically trained musician while Joe Billy languishes in a penitentiary for the rest of his life.

To reveal more would ruin the plot; but I will say there is much, much more to the story than what I summarized here! I found myself immersed from the beginning and it appealed to me on many levels. One being that it was centered in a region of Florida that I am intimately familiar; I actually have (distant) relatives in the same geographical area. Another is that the novel's historical fiction aspects were rooted in realism. The school integration scenes and voter registration issues so heavily prevalent in the rural, segregated South were written with depth, passion, and clarity. The author really captured and communicated the mindset (fears, pride, frustrations) and differing points of views among the African Americans on these two very (at the time) controversial topics. Last, I found Wimberley to be a wonderful storyteller -- he set the scenarios perfectly, the characters were rich and full-bodied, the plot was clever and well-paced, the lyrical prose and dialogue were authentic and on point. It is highly recommended for those who enjoy literary drama and Civil Rights era pieces with a bit of mystery/suspense.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub

An absolutely great page turner. Kept me glued to the pages and I was sorry to get to the end. Wimberley knows how to keep the reader interested in the characters that he develops and the story he weaves. Great reading.

Darryl Wimberley's newest book was a rarity--a chance for one to live a life completely out of one's own experience. The narrative, told in the voice of an African-American woman coming of age in the segregated South of the early 1960's, is completely believeable. The theme, of the risks and rewards of following one's dream, no matter what the sacrifice, hardly allows for such distractions to the reader as work, meals, or sleep until the entire story has been told and savored. If you have not yet discovered Darryl Wimberley's fiction, this is an excellent start. If you have read his other works, you will appreciate how his gift has deepened since his first published work.

Dear Authors,
thank you for the eye-opening dunk in the swampy little pool of real estate. Now I know why I have always had an uneasy , love-hate relationship with these people. They come into your life professing to be a friend and they leave with a giant symbolic shoe print on their rear ends! An entertaining and fast read, really gets to the nitty gritty of this strange profession. Bravi for being beacons of truth and honesty whilst you tried to make a go of it.

I LOVED this book for its un-sanitized natural narrative style. The prose flows smoothly, naturally, and imaginatively. The author's vocabulary is intelligent, fresh and funny. I think a traditional publisher's editor would probably have taken much of the punch out of it. I saw no misspellings or grammar errors except those which were quoted in actual dialogue and in emails which were repeated verbatum. I also learned the detailed "nuts and bolts" (emphasis on the NUTS!!!) of the real estate biz, and why a huge percentage of new agents leave the biz within their first year! VERY eye-opening and told with wit and humor.

This book was entertaining, enlightening, interesting and short enough to hold interest from start to finish.

Having said that, this is a self-published book and you can really tell there wasn't a professional editor involved. Misspellings, incorrect grammar, a too high word-to-exclamation-point ratio and an entire section of weird email exchanges complete with the To and From information taking up half the page are replete. At first, I thought, "What did I buy?" then I started to really enjoy how crazy the book is! You do get a good look at the ins and outs, backstabbing, unprofessional behavior and pitfalls of being a real estate agent.

I do recommend this book. Read it for its pure crazy train wreck quality and insight into the world of real estate sales. I didn't buy it because I want to be an agent, I just wanted to know what goes on in that world and now I know.

This book should be required reading for anyone contemplating a new career as a real estate agent. Somehow, the author manages to combine shocking, humorous revelations with cogent and sobering information. It is rare to find the combination of detailed and specific facts about a rather complex subject - (and being a real estate agent is a complex subject) - with anecdotal information that will keep you entertained while you absorb the detailed information. I have much more compassion for real estate agents after reading this book. No wonder they often become hard-nosed and thick-skinned!

This book is easy to read and hard to put down. It will appeal to anyone who likes aviation, space, WWII or mystery stories.

If you're an aviation, machinery or WWII buff, you'll like this book. Some chapters read like they came from a reincarnated Nevil Shute. Great read, highly recommended.

The Blue Goose was a B-24 bomber that disappeared during a routine flight from an airbase in Florida in 1942. No trace of the plane or its crew was ever found. In 1972, the remains of a crewmember were discovered on a remote beach near the equator. An autopsy revealed the crewmember died from a gunshot wound to the head.

Doggedly, the pilot's son and former commanding officer try to solve the puzzle to no avail. Five years after the remains were discovered, a Luftwaffe pilot dies in a crash and the mystery surrounding the Blue Goose is finally solved.

This is a great plot with lots of surprises and a great read for all WWII, history, and aviation buffs. As part of the story takes place in a machine shop, Neville Shute fans will like this book--highly recommended.

WWII story and mystery with a twist will prove a good read for history buffs and mystery fans alike. A lot of interesting detail on WWII vintage aircraft with a good plot. Anyone who enjoyed "Trustee from the Toolroom" by Neville Shute will also enjoy this book.

If you've read the Archy McNally books, you know he has a slightly daft friend who does bird calls, Binky Watrous. In this wonderful installment, McNally's Puzzle, Binky goes undercover at a bird store called Parrots Unlimited to find out who is threatening the store's owner, Hiram Gottschalk. Sancho Panza is a motivational consultant compared to Binky, and the complications are hilarious. You'll laugh until it hurts!

Before long, bodies are piling up in all directions. Who did it?

Here's a clue. The book's cover has a parrot on it. If you pay attention to the parrot, you'll get some important leads on who the guilty parties are.

Archy McNally is at his usual prissy best, more concerned about his wardrobe than the mystery. The ladies find him irresistible, and he feels obliged to help out. This gets him into trouble, as usual, with his main squeeze, Connie.

The actual plot is full despicable double-dealing. You'll be glad when the bad guys get it.

Great fun!

What a pure delight it is to read three of Archy McNally's crime solving adventures in one book! I spent an entire weekend laughing, and thoroughly enjoying myself reading how the brilliant rogue Archy McNally bumbles into a case (and at times into the bed of an attractive female) and how he solves a case. Each of these stories is definite fun to read from the beginning to the last page. I really do miss Lawrence Sanders...Archy hasn't been the same without him.

The main character, Archy McNally, makes these books worth the read! The witty dialouge and inner thoughts of this sleuth keep me laughing. His constant references to literature and music as befits the situation provide me with several bursts of chuckling which always cause my husband to ask what I'm reading. I also like (and share) his penchant for food and drink, and delight in the descriptions of everything he consumes. I usually have guessed the plot correctly half-way through the book, but I can't help loving Archy!

If you've never read a McNally book before, try this set of three, because if you read one, you'll want to read more. Witty, charming, and as morally reprehensible as we'd all like to be, Archy McNally is the type of fascinating character you wish was real, just so you could take him out for drinks.

I read River of Grass last fall and then read Liquid Land last winter. It was great. Easy to read and follow. Very informative.
I'm reading it for the second time now. You can't read it without coming away with genuine concern or affirming everything you have thought or been told about the state of our Everglades and how vital they are to the well-being of our Earth.

From panthers to tree snails, author Levin has experienced Florida's Everglades as no other, and here is provided an artful survey of author Ted Levin's travels through the region. From issues surrounding its restoration efforts to history of wildlife and wildlife management efforts, Liquid Land is packed from cover to cover with eye-opening insights.

This book just won author Ted Levin the 2004 John Burroughs Award for natural history writing, putting him in the company of such wonderful writers as David Quammen (Song of the Dodo), Carl Safina (Eye of the Albatross), Rachel Carson (The Sea Around Us), John McPhee (Control of Nature), Bernd Heinrich (Mind of the Raven), and others.

For me, this book is the new Everglades natural history classic, and will go on my bookshelf next to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas' "The Everglades: River of Grass."

The Florida peninsula was at one time, depending on how you looked at it, a collection of pestilential swamps and frightening dark hardwood hammocks and pine woodlands, or a remarkable paradise of biodiverse and uniquely intertwined ecosystems. I tend to view the peninsula that was as the latter and I am saddened by, for example, the loss of tropical hardwood hammock to the ever growing asphalt and concrete jungle that is called greater Miami.

Indeed, of the many splendors of the "Sunshine State" the Everglades is one of the most remarkable. Made famous by Marjory Stoneman Douglas (who lived to reach 100 years of age), it has at least as much allure as the "Big Scrub" of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. I have seen both, but by the time I saw them they were both much diminished from what they were even fifty years before.

Ted Levin eloquently tells the story of the Everglades, its near destruction and attempted restoration in "Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades." It is not a pretty story as it involves many misguided ideas about the "grassy waters." These led to the building of miles of canals and dikes and one of the most messed up attempts to tame the untamable in the history of the United States. Whether the Army Corps of Engineers can restore the Glades to their original splendor is questionable, as they don't even really know what the Everglades were like prior to the end of the 19th Century. Nobody bothered to record it! After all it was worthless swamp and jungle to the developers like Napoleon Bonaparte Broward.

Levin records this sad history of an underappreciated wilderness reduced to, as Levin says, the artificialness of Disney World by the pumps that try to restore "normal" flows of water. Besieged by often totally inappropriate development, the Everglades still survive in a much reduced form. This world was also well described, as well as illustrated by beautiful and haunting photographs as it was in the early 1970s, by Archie Carr in "The Everglades" (Time-Life Books).

A monumental "tribute" to the short-sightedness and unbelievable hubris of the human species, the story of the Everglades is also one of hope, however slight. Archie Carr always tried to look on the bright side of the issue and I think we have to do so as much as we can (while not sugar- coating the destruction that has occurred in the past and is still going on today). While a mere shadow of what once was, there are still some areas like Corkscrew Swamp and (if you are very adventurous) the Fakahatchee Strand that are very much worth seeing- especially if you can appreciate swamps.

Read Ted Levin's book if you care about the special wild places of this planet!

Bill Belleville is a documentary filmmaker and author specializing in conservation: how work has appeared extensively in magazines, has been anthologized in collections, and he's written many books, but LOSING IT ALL TO SPRAWL: HOW PROGRESS ATE MY CRACKER LANDSCAPE hits closer to home than many of his other books. Bill Belleville writes of his historic Cracker farmhouse and old neighborhood of central Florida even as it's being wiped out: any who have visited the area in the last few years will readily acknowledge the truths and observations in LOSING IT ALL TO SPRAWL. In addition to documenting the underlying social, political and economic forces at work in promoting sprawl, Belleville offers Floridians and others hope for appreciating nature.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

As a native Floridian, I have bemoaned the loss of the state I remember. Shopping malls and amusement parks have replaced much of what I think of as Florida. This book speaks to these feelings and should be read by anyone concerned about the rampant growth of our society which seems bent on destroying any sense of the past. At least we can glimpse what was once there through this well written and heartfelt book.

Fifteen years the author lived in a 'cracker' house at the end of a dirt road and shared the solitude enjoyed by former occupants for more than seventy years. It was a perfect hide-away for a freelance environmental writer and film maker, where privacy was respected, where nature was sufficient unto itself and its creatures, and where the only compromises with modernity were indoor plumbing and electricity. Even the window unit air conditioner was redundant in a house designed in simpler times, well shaded and with natural cross ventilation.
One day the shrill back-up signal of earth-moving equipment shattered the tranquility, a nails-on-blackboard, unsettling sound that forewarned of loss of innocence to come. A new mega-mall is planned nearby, and already the landscape is denuded and sculpted to accommodate the thousands of cars, SUV's and service vehicles that would respond. "If you build it, they will come." (With apologies to W. P. Kinsella.)
Bill Belleville is an award-winning writer, the author of River of Lakes, A Journey on Florida's St. Johns River, Deep Cuba and Sunken Cities, Sacred Cenotes and Golden Sharks. His film making credits include an Emmy award for Wekiva: Legacy or Loss.
It was Belleville's cracker house and his story, and the story of those who lived there before. But in a larger sense it is my story and yours, all of us who have witnessed the sacrifice of the playgrounds of childhood and the sanctuaries of memory at the altar of 'progress.' But we don't have to write it. Bill Belleville has done it for us with the same beauty and poignancy that marked his earlier works, but this time with righteous anger born of loss.
A wonderful, compelling, intensely personal book that reminds the rest of us of what we, too, have lost, and leaves us asking "What price, progress?"

My grandma says "there won't be a blade of grass left." Belleville explains why. A personal story of man who finds the true Florida, a people who scratched out a living in the early days and survived many hurricanes, only to be swept away today by developers. Highly recommended reading for anyone who is fighting urban sprawl.

The book is still the most comprehensive resource on Managed Care. Covers all its elements and increased my understanding of why managed care worked in the past to its extent and the challenges it faces. Helpful for professionals and policy makers in this field.

This book, in its latest edition, continues to be the most complete resource for all who work in or who are associated with the managed health care industry. It can be used by the novice as an introduction to the vary complex nature of managed health care, or it can be used by the more experienced managed health care warrior as a reference book when one needs a refresher on a particular aspect of managed health care operations.

I am a consultant working with health plans, providers, employers and regulators, and The Managed Health Care Handbook never fails to provide me with the information I need to be successful.

This book is a definite must-have for the new and experienced Managed Care Professional. I found the chapters on compensation and reimbursement to most helpful. The author has successfully captured every element of managed care including, but not limited to, employer groups, networks, reimbursement, and quality.

Thoughtfully edited and written by the nation's leading managed care experts, the Managed Health Care Handbook is an excellent, highly practical reference on every key aspect of American managed health care. Highly recommended to practitioners, consultants, and students wishing a thorough, up-to-date, and objective understanding of managed care strategy and operations.

Lani Massey Brown uses well-written fiction to make a point to those of us who are neither political wonks nor computer-types. This book is a real page-turner and a good read for anyone that likes high drama. Even if you don't care about how easy it is to steal an election, the perils that confront the characters in this book make it worth reading just for fun.

Lani Brown pulls off a topical and frightening scenario of 21st century electoral corruption in A Margin of Error: Ballots of Straw. Being the former tabulation manager for one Florida county's election committee, Brown has a unique insight into the machinations of our new voting systems, as well as a keen eye for a story. Her lead character, Cady Palmer, Deputy Elections Supervisor knows that Miami's election has been rigged by a high-tech stalker, but no one wants to hear it. People in power have spent a great deal of money to get the election results they wanted, and they don't care to undermine anything. Soon, Palmer's embroiled in a national conspiracy going to the highest reaches of government. This book reminded me of Don Bruns' Florida conspiracy/caper novel STUFF TO DIE FOR.

On break this summer, I holed up with some of my favorites, Grisham, Roberts, Koontz, Cornwell, Flynn and a Higgins Clark tossed in for good measure. Then with all the election brouhaha in the news, I switched to "A Margin of Error Ballots of Straw," expecting a high-tech rampage of murder, mayhem, and technical speak in overdrive...not. Susan Cady Palmer is a business woman challenged by all the under the table stuff most women in business don't talk about publicly. Her boss is a throwback, straight from Dilbert, but more perverse. Sexual harassment is his special kick-down Cady tool. She's put up with it for years. Until now, when the stakes soar to an all time high and she tells him to, "Put a sock on it." One of those snapshot moments. I wish I'd said that!

Then comes Cady's spy, Neal Charles. Glorious Isabella may not want to take Neal home, but I do. Move over, Cady.

"A Margin of Error: Ballots of Straw" is an unlikely love story. And oh, by the way, I'm a convert. Fiction, sure. But the facts jump off the page. Could a vast right, left, or center conspiracy hijack this or any election? Maybe it already has.

It's a realistic novel that will intrigue anyone interested in fair elections, especially for Florida voters.

Realistic scenarios in the voting process that should make you wonder if this could happen or if it has happened.

Makes you wonder if paperless voting machines should be banned.

A Messy Job I Never Did See A Girl Do, by Mary Jane Ryals, is a kaleidoscope of tumbling words that ultimately fit together into a highly perceptive, rough-edged picture of southern U.S. culture. The result is stories that make you laugh out loud, cuss and spit, and cry revival empathies for the banged-on unheard. Mary Jane captures the native intelligence of young people who, in their own awkward ways, expose the weaknesses, the bigotry and emotional insensitivity of the adults in their lives. At the same time, we feel all of the characters' fears behind the numbness or the anger, the anxiety and the outrage, or the wiry strength and simple stubbornness. Her characters make us believe that the scars on the new generation will not run so deep and not be as debilitating as on the old. We are left with the hope that the new generation will be better in some ways, kinder or more accepting, willing to look over walls, kick them, and knock them down.

This book of short stories is so descriptive you can close your eyes and feel the muggy heat and sandy dirt of the South, as well as smell the the acrid sweat of people around you. These beautifully written stories cover a myriad of subjects from young girls struggling with the knowledge that their voice doesn't have real meaning, to the pain of living in poverty in the rural South. The wonderful thing about these stories is the sense of hope that some of the characters continue to have, even against seemingly tough odds. "I don't know where I'd go from here, but somehow, my words would get me there." "When I leave someday, I'll fly in a car with red lights, whiz-roaring through the highway"

Mary Jane Ryals' words have certainly gotten her there, she has done a wonderful job capturing the essence of both pain and promise in the souls of these young girls.

Highly recommended reading!!

Like sweet dark chocolate or good red wine, Mary Jane Ryal's first collection of stories will satisfy a craving for North Florida settings and strong female protagonists.

IF YOU EVER GET THE CHANCE, GO HEAR RYALS READ FROM HER BOOK. LISTENEING TO HER BEAUTIFUL SOUTHERN VOICE BRINGS THE CHARACTERS ALIVE. THE BOOK IS GREAT, AND THE AUTHOR IS TOO!