Here are 100 books that Stolen Sommer fans have personally recommended if you like
Stolen Sommer.
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I’m an entrepreneur who was born literally within sight of the Intracoastal Waterway in South Florida. Got my first boat (a dinghy) when I was six. I used to drive an airboat on Lake Okeechobee and learned to fly back when I was a teenager. Since then, I’ve flown over a dozen different types of planes and even a helicopter. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, and the Antilles. In my late teens I worked on various private sportfishing boats in Florida, Georgia, and the Bahamas. With this much time spent on, in, under, or around the water, I was destined to write coastal novels.
Dawn Lee was a friend and an inspiration to me. Cancer took her from us way too soon, but she left behind a large legacy of great books that were set on the Gulf coast in the panhandle of Florida. Low Tide is the first book in her Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense series which launched her into the bestseller ranks. If you ask anyone who’s read her what makes her writing so special, they’ll all tell you it’s her uniquely crafted characters. The plots and the twists of her stories are top-notch as well, but the characters are simply amazing.
In Apalachicola, Florida, sinister things are afoot, as sinister things tend to be.Lt. Maggie Redmond is called to a crime scene on St. George Island, where she is met with the body of Gregory Boudreaux. The medical examiner calls it a suicide, but no one knows that Maggie has a horrible connection to the dead man.When Gregory’s uncle, Bennett Boudreaux, the richest and scariest man in town, takes a sudden interest in Maggie, people start to wonder, Maggie included. Maggie knows he may suspect her of killing his nephew, but she finds herself slowly drawn to the man. As Maggie…
I grew up in California when cameras had flashcubes, skateboards had clay wheels, and kids longed for a lime-green Schwinn Stingray. Sailing, surfing, beach parties, and rock music were staples of my youth. Over time, we lost the Beatles but found the Allman Brothers, Zeppelin, and The Who. Disco had not yet destroyed us. I ditched the skateboard but kept sailing. Later, I became a criminal defense attorney. My profession inspires me to write realistic mystery/thriller novels. My sailing provides the setting. My goal is to give readers a solid, entertaining tale while bringing them to warm waters and island cultures and putting a little sand between their toes.
Travis McGee lives aboard a houseboat he won in a poker game. A self-described “salvage consultant,” he’ll keep half of whatever he recovers for you. Travis locates a stolen boat for a friend, but this offends some South American drug dealers and they put him on a hit list. A subplot develops when somebody leaves little cats made of pipe cleaners on his houseboat. I enjoyed the strong female characters in this book and the non-stop action. The resolution is wonderful and shows a side of McGee the reader has never seen before. This is the last of twenty-one Travis McGee novels written by MacDonald.
From a beloved master of crime fiction, The Lonely Silver Rain is one of many classic novels featuring Travis McGee, the hard-boiled detective who lives on a houseboat.
Travis McGee has luck to thank for his reputation as a first-rate salvager of stolen boats. Now Billy Ingraham, a self-made tycoon, is betting that McGee can locate his $700,000 custom cruiser. McGee isn’t so sure. He knows all too well the dangerous link between Florida boatjackings and the drug trade, and he’s vowed never to swim with the sharks—but if he wants to keep his head (AKA finances) above water, swim…
I’m an entrepreneur who was born literally within sight of the Intracoastal Waterway in South Florida. Got my first boat (a dinghy) when I was six. I used to drive an airboat on Lake Okeechobee and learned to fly back when I was a teenager. Since then, I’ve flown over a dozen different types of planes and even a helicopter. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, and the Antilles. In my late teens I worked on various private sportfishing boats in Florida, Georgia, and the Bahamas. With this much time spent on, in, under, or around the water, I was destined to write coastal novels.
As a veteran actor of stage and screen, Sullivan is well versed in the art of movie-making. In his best-selling book, Deep Focus, he blends this along with his love of SCUBA diving and the Cayman Islands into a great coastal mystery and suspense read. As he asks in his book description, “Who wouldn’t want to shoot a movie in paradise? What could possibly go wrong?” As it turns out, plenty of things. So, grab a good sipping rum, settle into your favorite reading chair, and prepare to be entertained.
Who wouldn't want to shoot a movie in paradise? What could possibly go wrong?
Divemasters Boone Fischer and Emily Durand have left the relative bustle of Cozumel to start anew on the sleepy Sister Island of Little Cayman; population 200, give or take. In the Cayman Islands, the reefs are so spectacular and extensive, you can dive a different site every day of the year.
When a prominent film studio decides to shoot their upcoming science-fiction flick in the waters of the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman, everything initially goes well. Eccentric director Heinz Werner is brought on board, and…
I’m an entrepreneur who was born literally within sight of the Intracoastal Waterway in South Florida. Got my first boat (a dinghy) when I was six. I used to drive an airboat on Lake Okeechobee and learned to fly back when I was a teenager. Since then, I’ve flown over a dozen different types of planes and even a helicopter. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, and the Antilles. In my late teens I worked on various private sportfishing boats in Florida, Georgia, and the Bahamas. With this much time spent on, in, under, or around the water, I was destined to write coastal novels.
I first started reading Becker with his Mac Travis series (which I also loved), but when he created Kurt Hunter, I was totally hooked. He and I both share a love for the area around Biscayne Bay, which is where he set the Kurt Hunter Mysteries. Hunter is a Park Ranger who patrols and protects the underwater national park in that area. This creates great and unique plot opportunities, of which Becker takes full advantage. Oh, and then there are the rare saltwater crocodiles that make appearances throughout Backwater Channel. Real creatures, unique to the area. Really nasty, too!
You’d think a nuclear power plant was dangerous enough …
That’s what special agent Kurt Hunter thought until, while out fishing, he witnesses a murder at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant. After being assigned the case, Kurt is pulled into the convoluted politics of Miami only to find out that the embattled power plant is only a pawn in a more deadly game.
Greed and corruption are nothing new to pristine Biscayne Bay. With the plant's miles of cooling canals providing essential habitat for several endangered species, Kurt is thrown into a rift between warring environmentalists and power-hungry corporate…
I am such a huge fan of Thrillers. Always have been, since I started reading Dean Koontz at 12. The Tropical Authors listed are some of my favorites, but they are a stepping stone to other great authors who write unique thrillers as well. I hope you’ll check them out, and let me know if you find a new favorite. I also love suggestions as well. (Of other authors, please don’t be tacky and suggest your own book!)
A great start to a new series, but you really need to read anything by this author. He has an easy cadence with his stories, and his characters are layered and can surprise you. So can the ‘bad guy’ in this one, too. Lots of diving and puzzle-solving in this adventure story, with the secondary characters equally as exciting as the main one. I’m looking forward to the second book, coming in 2022.
One missing girl. Two lives on the line. Four treacherous challenges.
Nora Sommer's first case for the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service is one she'll never forget - if she survives.
When the daughter of a wealthy businessman is taken, Nora is first on the scene and unwittingly 'chosen' by the kidnapper. With the crime live-streamed across the internet, the eyes of the world are upon her as she faces a sequence of difficult challenges with the life of the kidnapped girl hanging on Nora's success - or failure.
Deadly Sommer is the thrilling first book in the Nora Sommer…
Although my Midwestern roots in southwest Michigan situated me far away from the sea, I am now an expert on small islands and remote communities in the greater Caribbean. As a result, I grew to understand that much of the everyday lived experiences of island people must contend with the sea. As a result, I have spent the last two decades studying topics such as migration, fishing, and even conservation as related to small islands from the better-known Cayman Islands to the lesser-known San Andrés and Providencia Islands. I am a history professor at the US Naval Academy.
Peter Matthiessen was considered one of America’s great wilderness writers. Yet in an interview, before he died in 2014, Matthiessen identified Far Tortuga as his personal favorite of all the books he had written. In this novel, Matthiessen offers a fictional account of his participation on one of the last turtle hunting voyages in the Caribbean. Drawing on his experience on the said voyage in the 1960s, Matthiessen vividly displays his keen observation skills with his depictions of the Caymanian turtle hunters and the challenges of this last generation of turtlemen.
This adventure story is set in the Caribbean and describes the last voyage of the "Lillias Eden", an old wooden schooner employed in the turtle trade. The author's previous books include "The Snow Leopard", "Men's Lives", "The Cloud Forest" and "Under the Mountain Wall".
Even as a kid, I was intrigued by the underwater world, so as an adult, I learned to scuba dive. I took to it like a fish to water, and my husband and I spent the next several years traveling to tropical islands to experience the local dive conditions whenever possible. I loved learning how every island had a different culture and a different undersea environment. Since I love tropical islands, scuba diving, mysteries, and adventure stories, these books really hit my sweet spot.
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.
A mysterious shipwreck. A ruthless treasure hunter. A race against time.
Cayman Islands divemaster AJ Bailey is searching for a long forgotten WWII U-boat at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. Armed with nothing more than an adventurous spirit and her late grandfather’s tale, she's determined to find the submarine and the secret it protects.
When a wealthy treasure hunter shows up with a ruthless crew, AJ becomes entangled in a frantic duel to find the precious piece of history. Diving into the path of merciless killers at treacherous depths, she must fight to keep her grandfather’s dream - and…
I am an Antiguan-Barbudan writer. When I was a teen, there weren’t a lot of books from my world. So, I was excited when the Burt Award for teen/young adult Caribbean literature was announced. While that prize ran its course after five years, it left a library of great books in this genre, including my own Musical Youth which placed second in the inaugural year of the prize. I have since served as a judge of the Caribbean prize and mentor for the Africa-leg. I love that this series of books tap into different genres and styles in demonstrating the dynamism of modern Caribbean literature. For more on me, my books, and my take on books, visit my website.
This has often been recommended for boys (including by me) but, since there is no such thing as exclusivelyboy books and girl books, I’m calling this a good book period – with a highly entertaining and deeply endearing adolescent-ish boy, surrounded by a robust cast of supporting characters, at its center. More vignettes than plot, it is rooted in character and voice – in this case, the rare and highly effective use of the second voice. Tonally, it’s a callback to the adventures of boyhood captured in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and the mostly harmless incorrigibility of the boy protagonist as he moves between home, school, and community (the community, in this case, being rural Jamaica), getting into trouble and growing up. It’s the heart and humour for me!
All Over Again is a hilarious and enchanting coming of age story as a young boy goes through the trials and joys and puberty, battles with his 6-year-old sister who is the bane of his existences, worries about disappointing his mother and understanding his father. He has to learn to get around the town's bully while moving beyond know-it-all Kenny. The story is energetically told and has an enchanting narrative style that pulls you into it immediately. Growing up is hard. You know this. And when your mother has X-ray eyes and dances like a wobbling bag of water? When…
I have always had a lifelong passion for all things maritime. In the early 1980s, I crossed the Atlantic Ocean as a crew companion to the late famous Captain Ted Falcon Barker, author of The Devil’s Gold. The expedition made landfall in the Bahamas, so this area became a focus of fascination. I also have a very strong historical sense, reflected in my poetry and two of my other works of fiction, the novels Charity Amour and No Gentle Bondage.
Michener’s work is an historical panorama, embracing pre-Columbian history, the colonial era – including piracy, right up to the rise of Fidel Castro’s regime. ‘No holds barred.' An absolute ‘must’ for anyone wanting a full background perspective. I found this a fantastic broadener of my horizons.
In this acclaimed classic novel, James A. Michener sweeps readers off to the Caribbean, bringing to life the eternal allure and tumultuous history of this glittering string of islands. From the 1310 conquest of the Arawaks by cannibals to the decline of the Mayan empire, from Columbus’s arrival to buccaneer Henry Morgan’s notorious reign, from the bloody slave revolt on Haiti to the rise of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Caribbean packs seven hundred dramatic years into a tale teeming with revolution and romance, authentic characters and thunderous destinies. Through absorbing, magnificent prose, Michener captures the essence of the islands in all…
During my 37 years of teaching philosophy to undergraduate students, most of whom had no prior exposure to it, my purpose was to promote self-examination of the sort practiced and encouraged by Socrates. Such self-examination is upsetting, unsettling. It leads one to insights and realizations one would prefer not to have. But by undermining one’s assumptions, these insights break one open to a whole universe of which one had been oblivious. Breakdowns make possible breakthroughs. My students didn’t realize that, just as I was trying to provoke this kind of spiritual transformation in them, their questions, criticisms, challenges, and insights provoked it in me.
A cruise ship is, perhaps, the least likely of all possible venues for the beginning of a spiritual breakthrough. But this is where spiritual transformation starts for Avey Johnson, the 64-year-old African American woman who is the central character in this Marshall novel. Breakthroughs are often set in motion deep down inside us, below the surface of our ordinary awareness. In fact, a real breakthrough can’t happen unless it goes all the way down in us. I know of no book that conveys this truth more effectively.
From the acclaimed author of Daughters and Brown Girl, Brownstones comes a "work of exceptional wisdom, maturity, and generosity, one in which the palpable humanity of its characters transcends any considerations of race or sex"(Washington Post Book World).
Avey Johnson-a black, middle-aged, middle-class widow given to hats, gloves, and pearls-has long since put behind her the Harlem of her childhood. Then on a cruise to the Caribbean with two friends, inspired by a troubling dream, she senses her life beginning to unravel-and in a panic packs her bag in the middle of the night and abandons her friends at the…
