Florida Fables Books in Order

Florida Fables is Tony Dunbar's historical crime series set in and around Sarasota, Florida. The books use real crimes and documented local events as their starting point, then build a fictional narrative around the people trying to survive, profit from, or bring order to a fast-changing place.

The central figure is Gawain MacFarlane, a lawman whose career stretches across different chapters of Florida history. In The Story of the Sarasota Assassination Society, he is a young man facing a dangerous conspiracy in the 1890s. Sarasota is still a rough frontier town, home to cattlemen, fishermen, newcomers with money, and plenty of people who see the law as something that applies to somebody else.

A murder makes the town's uneasy balance impossible to ignore.

MacFarlane's work takes him beyond a single crime scene and into the rivalries underneath it. Greed, politics, land, old resentments, and the arrival of outside money all matter. The mystery is not just who committed a killing, but why a secret group could take root in the first place, and who benefits when fear keeps everyone quiet.

The setting does a lot of the heavy lifting. Dunbar's Florida is not the polished vacation image many readers may expect. It is scrub prairie, coastal water, primitive roads, isolated settlements, and a town still deciding what it wants to become. That makes a badge useful, but it does not make its owner safe. MacFarlane has to work through rumor, divided loyalties, and people who have reasons to hide what they know.

The series moves forward with MacFarlane as both the man and the region change. He grows from a young lawman into a more experienced investigator, while Sarasota moves into boom years and later faces the pressures of the Depression. Across the books, the cases bring him into contact with bootlegging, political corruption, exploitative labor systems, organized crime, and the forces trying to control Florida's future.

These are historical mysteries with a strong sense of place, but they are not dry history lessons. The tone is grounded and suspenseful, with room for colorful local characters and the odd details that make a true crime story hard to forget. Readers can expect a continuing portrait of a lawman trying to stay honest while the definition of progress keeps changing around him.

Start with The Story of the Sarasota Assassination Society. It introduces MacFarlane, the early Sarasota setting, and the mix of fact-based crime, local history, and personal stakes that carries through Florida Fables.