Carl Hiaasen Books in Order

Miami architect Chris Meadows sees an ex-girlfriend killed in a drug-related hit-and-run and becomes the one witness both cocaine traffickers and crooked cops want silenced, dragging him deep into the city’s brutal cocaine war.

Key West charter captain Breeze Albury barely scrapes by until Cuban and Colombian smugglers cut his trap lines and destroy his livelihood. Forced into one risky smuggling run, he ends up hunted by drug lords and corrupt lawmen and pushed toward vigilante justice.

Art historian Tom Stratton is touring China when his old mentor suddenly dies after visiting an ancient tomb. Suspecting more than bad food, Stratton chases a trail of smuggled artifacts, secret police and political intrigue from Beijing to Hong Kong and beyond.

A rogue newspaper columnist forms a tiny terror cell to scare tourists away from Florida, leaving bodies and bizarre manifestos scattered across Miami. Private investigator Brian Keyes hunts the killers through booster clubs, civic hype and a very hungry crocodile.

Down-on-his-luck PI R.J. Decker is hired to prove a celebrity bass fisherman cheats on the pro circuit. When a body turns up and Decker is framed, he teams with one-eyed hermit Skink to expose a toxic mix of fishing fraud, televangelism and shady development.

Retired investigator Mick Stranahan is enjoying life on his Biscayne Bay stilt house when a hit man shows up at his door. The failed hit drags him into a deadly feud with a phony plastic surgeon, a missing patient, and a tabloid TV show hungry for scandal.

Ex-reporter Joe Winder writes cheerful copy for a bargain theme park in the Keys until its rare “mango voles” are stolen. His search pits him against a fugitive racketeer running the park, a massive resort scheme, animal-rights pranksters and the feral ex-governor known as Skink.

Single mom Erin Grant dances at a Fort Lauderdale strip club to fund a brutal custody battle. When a dim, kinky congressman fixates on her, she’s pulled into a lethal stew of blackmail, sugar-money politics and improvised revenge in the cane fields.

In the wreckage left by a catastrophic hurricane, honeymooners, scam artists, insurance adjusters and mob muscle all descend on South Florida. Skink prowls the ruins as quick-buck schemes, shoddy construction and escaped zoo animals turn disaster recovery into full-tilt chaos.

When JoLayne Lucks wins the Florida lottery, two broke white supremacists beat her and steal the ticket to fund their tiny militia. Reporter Tom Krome joins JoLayne to steal it back, exposing paranoid conspiracies and small-town grifters along the way.

This comic serial novel, written by a team of Miami writers, follows an elderly environmentalist, her granddaughter, and a manatee named Booger after a mysterious package snags on the animal’s back, pulling them into a tangle of smugglers and political hucksters.

Thirteen South Florida writers take turns writing chapters in this comic mystery, originally serialized in the Miami Herald’s Tropic magazine. A bizarre plot involving a manatee, criminals, and a purported Castro head sends its large Miami cast into escalating trouble.

A short, sharp set of essays about the Disney empire, Team Rodent dissects how its theme parks and retail dreams reshape Florida’s landscape, politics and culture, blending reporting with Hiaasen’s trademark deadpan outrage.

In this polemical nonfiction critique, Carl Hiaasen scrutinizes Disney’s rise as a dominant private force in Florida. He challenges the company’s carefully maintained public image and examines its influence over development, local power, and the natural environment.

Kick Ass collects some of Hiaasen’s toughest Miami Herald columns on growth, government and environmental destruction in Florida, showcasing the same black humor and moral fury that run through his novels, but aimed directly at real officials and developers.

Edited by Diane Stevenson, this collection arranges more than 200 of Carl Hiaasen’s Miami Herald columns into 18 chapters. The pieces chronicle South Florida’s social and political absurdities during the 1980s and 1990s, from corruption and development to environmental conditions.

Eco-vigilante Twilly Spree fixates on lobbyist Palmer Stoat after watching him litter from a luxury SUV, then discovers Stoat is pushing a bridge and condo project that will wipe out a wild island. Dog-napping, blackmail and swampy retribution soon follow.

Paradise Screwed gathers fifteen years of Hiaasen’s columns, a head-shaking tour through South Florida’s corruption, land grabs, sports follies and political melodramas, written with the same furious wit and eye for absurd detail that power his fiction.

A selection of Carl Hiaasen’s Miami Herald columns, edited by Diane Stevenson, turns a sharp eye on South Florida’s public life. The pieces tackle development, politics, environmental abuse, tourism, corporate influence, and the everyday absurdities that fed Hiaasen’s newspaper commentary.

Edited by John Darnton, this volume gathers essays from The New York Times’s “Writers on Writing” series. Established authors reflect on the creative and practical work of writing, reading, literary influences, and the relationship between art and lived experience.

Demoted to the obituary desk, ex-investigative reporter Jack Tagger spots something off about the supposed diving death of rock singer Jimmy Stoma. Chasing the story may revive his career, if a scheming widow, nervous executives and a gutless publisher don’t stop him first.

New kid Roy Eberhardt befriends a barefoot prankster and a tough soccer star in a Florida town. Together they try to stop a pancake house from paving over endangered burrowing owls, mixing humor, schoolyard trouble and a smart lesson in standing up for wildlife.

Newly arrived in Florida, Roy joins an unconventional friend in trying to protect a colony of endangered burrowing owls. Their campaign against a pancake restaurant planned for the owls' habitat brings them up against bullies, snakes, alligators, and determined adults.

On a cruise celebrating their anniversary, Joey Perrone’s husband shoves her overboard to hide his Everglades pollution scam. Joey survives, secretly teams with loner Mick Stranahan, and orchestrates an inventive, slow-motion revenge that dismantles his career and his confidence.

Noah’s dad sinks a floating casino he swears is dumping raw sewage into the harbor and lands in jail without proof. Noah, his fearless sister Abbey and a few sketchy allies cook up a messy plan to expose the cheating owner and save their beach.

Noah's father is jailed after trying to stop a casino boat owner he believes is dumping sewage into the harbor. Determined to prove the pollution is real, Noah and his sister Abbey assemble unlikely allies for a risky plan to expose the culprit.

After a rude telemarketer ruins dinner, Honey Santana lures him to Florida with a fake eco-tour meant to teach him a lesson. Their trip into the Ten Thousand Islands spirals into a darkly funny tangle of exes, a Seminole guide, a stalker and one determined twelve-year-old.

Guest editor Carl Hiaasen selects twenty mystery, crime, and suspense stories from the preceding year for this annual anthology, with Otto Penzler as series editor. The varied lineup includes fiction by writers such as Laura Lippman, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Ridley Pearson.

Part midlife memoir and part scorecard of disasters, this book follows Hiaasen’s decision to return to golf after decades away, chronicling every shank, lost ball and tiny victory with rueful, self-mocking humor.

When feared biology teacher Mrs. Starch disappears after a suspicious fire on a field trip, classmates Nick and Marta start asking questions. Their search leads into the Everglades, where a shy boy, an energy company and endangered panthers are all hiding something.

When dreaded biology teacher Bunny Starch disappears after a field trip to Black Vine Swamp, Nick and Marta doubt the school's explanation. Their search draws them into a Florida wilderness mystery involving their class troublemaker, an eco-avenger, and threats hidden in the swamp.

Drug-wrecked pop star Cherry Pye relies on actress Ann DeLusia to impersonate her whenever she’s too wasted to perform. When Ann is kidnapped by an obsessed paparazzo, Cherry’s entourage scrambles to manage the scandal, while Skink quietly pursues his own rough brand of justice.

Wahoo Cray’s animal-wrangler father takes a job handling gators and snakes for a phony survival TV show. As its pompous star blunders through the Everglades and a runaway girl hides from her abusive dad, the shoot lurches from staged danger into the real thing.

Wahoo Cray joins his animal-wrangler father on the set of a survival reality show in the Everglades. When the reckless host vanishes during a storm, Wahoo must contend with dangerous animals, a girl hiding from her violent father, and an increasingly chaotic search.

Suspended detective Andrew Yancy is stuck inspecting restaurant kitchens in the Keys until a tourist reels in a severed arm. His refusal to drop the case pulls him into Medicare fraud, a crooked Bahamas resort, a not-quite-widow and one very ill-tempered monkey.

In this audio-original novella, Miami money man Cuervo bankrolls a Nicaraguan rebellion from his penthouse while his hulking bodyguard grows restless. An aging mobster, a planeload of supposed sacrificial chickens and clashing egos send the whole scheme explosively sideways.

Dance of the Reptiles collects some of Hiaasen’s wildest Miami Herald columns on topics like oil spills, invasive pythons, political scams and celebrity foolishness, proving yet again that real-life Florida can out-weird even his most outlandish novels.

When Richard’s cousin Malley secretly runs off with a man she met online, the only adult who really believes she’s in danger is Skink, a one-eyed, off-the-grid former governor. Their improvised search turns into a tense, funny rescue mission across wild Florida.

A con artist who stages rear-end collisions for kidnappings hits the wrong car, derailing a talent agent’s trip and a reality star’s tour. Health inspector Andrew Yancy is pulled into a Keys caper involving neo-Nazis, mobbed-up sand contractors and very bad publicity.

This slim, illustrated book poses as a graduation speech but offers bracingly honest advice instead of feel-good slogans, warning new adults about office politics, disappointment and everyday selfishness while nudging them to stay alert and at least a little decent.

Snake-obsessed Florida teenager Billy Dickens finally tracks his long-missing father to Montana and lands in the middle of a vigilante campaign against trophy hunters. Grizzlies, drones and an endangered panther turn the family reunion into a fast-paced environmental adventure.

After finding the Montana address of the father who left when he was four, Florida boy Billy Dickens heads west to meet him. His search brings a new stepsister, dangerous wildlife, and a threat involving an endangered panther and a surveillance drone.

When a wealthy Palm Beach socialite vanishes during a charity gala and a bloated python turns up nearby, panic grips the island’s elite. Wildlife trapper Angie Armstrong, a vilified immigrant and the ever-feral Skink slowly reveal who the real predators are.

During a pandemic summer in Key West, teen boater Valdez "Wrecker" Jones takes odd jobs in a cemetery and on the water. A grounded speedboat and a menacing new employer drag him into smuggling, graveyard mysteries and the island’s tangled past.

In a Palm Beach-season caper, dim ex-extremist Dale Figgo drifts into leading a fringe white-nationalist group camping on a protected beach. Newly broke Viva Morales and hotheaded eco-avenger Twilly Spree follow the money behind the hate and plot a very Hiaasen-style reckoning.