81 books like No Virgin Island

The Cayman Islands are my favorite place in the world, so a mystery featuring a female divemaster on Grand Cayman is right up my alley. AJ Bailey, the protagonist, is a realistic portrayal of a woman in a man’s world. Many books in the tropical islands have female protagonists, but they are often gun-toting, knife-wielding super-models, not realistic women like Harvey’s protagonist. 

The diving details are spot on; the dive site descriptions are accurate; and the thrilling story will keep you turning pages to the very end. A great start to a super series.

As a long-time diver, I was enthralled by the details of the undersea world. Set on the tropical island of Bonaire, a scuba diver’s paradise, this book introduces the reader to two great characters, divemasters Boone Fischer and Emily Durand. 

The author interweaves Boone and Emily’s budding romance with compelling descriptions of the diving and the sea life they encounter. The way the two divemasters get involved in the search for the drug submarine at the heart of the mystery is plausible. Twists and turns on every page keep the reader guessing about the fate of the sub, its crew, the cruise ship, and most critically, the two highly appealing divemasters who use every skill they have to avert disaster. I was instantly hooked on the series.

I love this entire series, but the first one is where Poppy meets Consuela (her Chihuahua with attitude). One of my favorite micro-genres, the funny-cozy-romantic-spy mystery, Poppy Fields is a poor little rich girl. But what redeems her for me, is her drive to do something important in the world. I found it impossible not to fall for her and her bossy Chihuahua. And the communication connection between Poppy and Consuela is one we all hope to have with our dogs. Consuela yaps and Poppy understands her. Not to mention, Poppy couldn’t ask for a better partner in solving crime. 

Grisham is one of the greats, and The Firm might just be his best. Money laundering, finance, postal laws, and the quirky world of 1990s Memphis all come to life with this Grisham great.

While more of a legal thriller than a financial one, I found that as far as finance-related fiction goes, it’s tough to beat The Firm. Not only a look inside at off-shore banking and shady deals, Grisham offers here a compelling narrative that excites and captures the reader.

An incredible motivating story of a man who refused to allow his poverty-stricken working-class life define him. Tony Williams, a school caretaker, had a dream to move to a desert island. His peers in his dead-end town ridiculed him, but he persisted with his ambition. Saving up money by pretending they smoked, and needed to buy cigarettes every day, Tony and his wife managed to travel to and live on uninhabited islands in the South Pacific twice, once with their kids. Anyone who believes their own personal circumstances prevent them from achieving their dreams needs to read this book, as well as anyone interested in the Cook Islands and the South Pacific lifestyle.

The vibe is:  wildly witty action-adventure!
The Flying Beaver Brothers series moves at lightning speed through compelling (and often dastardly) plots!  Packed with laugh-out-loud non-sequiturs, 4th wall breaks, and recurring characters, this book is densely rewarding to readers. Lucky for you, there are lots of books in this series, and you'll want them close at hand after you finish the first!

One of the things I like most about this series is that the jokes are multi-dimensional and not 'made easier' for kids...they're full-strength funny! My second favorite thing? The ridiculously inventive sound effects. (First in a series!)

This wonderful piece of writing isn’t obviously a travel narrative or a book about natural history as it is marketed as a children’s fiction but it is based on a real event and the sense of place the author achieves is astonishing. A group of men and boys from St Kilda are put ashore on a rocky stac in the North Atlantic. Their mission is to harvest birds and collect fulmar eggs and oil which will sustain their little rural community through the harsh Scottish winter. No one comes to bring them home though and the unfortunates spend months huddled against the storms.

The narrative vividly captures the risks such adventurers took dangling from homemade ropes over cliffs above unforgiving seas with shearwaters and other seabirds screaming at them. It is a masterful portrait of the harsh life on the Scottish islands.

Don Rich is one of those authors you immediately like, because his writing style is so flowing, but he never over-describes anything. He is a pulp writer (and that is the highest compliment!) This book kicks off his series, currently at 9 books. You’ll enjoy the characters and the settings in this start to a great series. 

Jesse McDermitt is the star of over twenty books in this series, and Wayne is still full of stories for his main character. This book sets the pacing and the storytelling for the entire series, and it takes you on a rollercoaster ride. Reading it, you can smell the fresh Florida Keys air and hear the waves crashing on the beach and against the side of a boat. A fantastic start to this series, which continues to impress me as well as a lot of other readers. Once you start the first one, you’ll dive into the rest. Guaranteed. 

This book is as much a manual as a book, but I particularly liked it because it provided me with specific examples of ways that local communities had been involved in forest issues – a topic I was struggling with how to implement in the late 1990s (as we developed the ACM approach on which my own book focuses). Carter’s book also had chapters on collaboration, on learning, on local management – all within a forestry framework, in a variety of tropical countries. As I glance through it again, to consider this description, I realize much of its contents remain relevant in 2022.