Sanibel holiday

Toddlers often squeal upon first seeing the ocean, jumping up and down as the tide tickles their toes. Older kids charge forward into the waves with a whoop. But every now and then, a little girl stands on the shoreline with arms outstretched, as if to embrace the sweep of sky and water. Her  expression is one of [...]

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Reading lite

Toss these two novels in the beach bag to share with your mom, sisters, daughters, gal pals. Easy reading that still illuminates the ties of family and friendship. Best-selling romance writer Debbie Macomber’s eighth entry in her Blossom Street series, A Turn in the Road, takes three generations of women from Seattle to Florida on [...]

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Write away, Carl

I haven’t read much the last few days because I’ve been ranting to my friends about Florida Gov. Rick Scott using “emergency powers” to make immediate deep cuts to programs that serve tens of thousands of developmentally disabled residents. The story hit the headlines across the state on Friday, but this was no  April Fool’s joke.  If you [...]

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Nuclear family

If revenge is a dish best served cold, Marylou Ahearn has kept hers on ice for so long it has freezer burn. Yikes! But now at age 77, she has found Dr. Wilson Spriggs, who headed up a 1953 government research project that gave pregnant women a radioactive cocktail without their consent. Marylou believes Spriggs’ “vitamin drink” [...]

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Justice for Adam

The empty swing on the cover of Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America provides an arresting image of a lost child, but what I’ll always remember is the photo of the grinning, freckled six-year-old in a red baseball cap.  Still, Adam Walsh, who was abducted from a Hollywood, Fla. shopping mall on July 27, [...]

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The Tiffany Girl

Peacocks and dragonflies. Wisteria and daffodils. Cobalt blue. Iridescent green. Opalescent purple. Gleaming gold. Louis Comfort Tiffany made a name for himself as an American master of stained glass, drawing inspiration for his designs from nature’s brilliant hues. Thanks to Winter Park’s Morse Museum of Art, Central Floridians are not only familiar with Tiffany’s name [...]

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Vamps like us

How do you like your vampires? Southern and sexy and dripping with true blood, courtesy of Charlaine Harris and HBO? What about the soul-sucking virals who jump out of trees in the post-apocalyptic world of Justin Cronin’s The Passage? Or maybe the romantic tortured teens of Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and Vampire Academy? My inner-Buffy finds entertainment [...]

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Flying High in Florida

Oohhh… Forgive me. I’m feeling giddy, word-drunk, high on the sights and sounds and smells of Connie May Fowler’s intoxicating new novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly. Thickets of roses. Heat-blanched sky.  A marble tumbling on a heart pine floor.  Faint fiddle music. Ghosts and graveyard dirt.  A woman standing on the worn planks [...]

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Thrill Ride

It’s Race Week in Daytona; Bike Week coming up next month. I mention this because motorcycles play a crucial role in Rescuing Olivia, a spiffy new thriller from Central Florida writer Julie Compton. First, someone steals Anders and Olivia’s helmets at a secluded springs in the Ocala National Forest. Then they’re the victims of a [...]

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