Jai Alai


Book Description

Paula Morton provides a fun, concise introduction to jai alai, a fast-paced ball game with ancient roots that is admired by fans for the sport’s power and spectacle. Cesta punta, as the game is known in its Basque homeland, became a phenomenon during the twentieth century as organized jai alai spread from Spain into the Caribbean, Latin America, the United States, and Asia. This book outlines the multifaceted history of the sport, from its beginnings in Basque country to its North American “unveiling” at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition and World’s Fair and to its rise and fall in popularity in the United States. Guest essays and historic photographs offer extensive insight into the sport’s fascinating history. Morton further explores the players and venues, providing a carefully crafted and thoroughly researched look into jai alai. Sports lovers and cultural history enthusiasts will marvel at the sport’s unique history and reach.




Florida Breweries


Book Description

The craft brew revolution has spread south. This all-new guidebook profiles the Sunshine State's 66 breweries and brewpubs.




Made in Florida


Book Description

Discover some of Florida’s most fascinating personalities in this entertaining kaleidoscope of interviews. Made in Florida showcases a colorful lineup of notable people who got their start in the state and who have helped make it the unique, diverse place it is today. Hear from Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry about their weirdest writing inspirations. Discover why Shaquille O’Neal never complains. Find out what happens when Burt Reynolds goes to Costco. Listen to Theresa Manuel’s experiences as one of the first black women to compete in the Olympics. Learn about the lives of Seminole Tribe elder Louise Gopher, pop art painter Romero Britto, NASA senior executive JoAnn Morgan, circus daredevil Bello Nock, football coach Steve Spurrier, state CFO Alex Sink, and Muhammad Ali’s “fight doctor” Ferdie Pacheco. In addition to the widely celebrated, Art Levy introduces many unsung individuals. Meet innovative industrialists like “Chainsaw Al” and dedicated naturalists like “The Shark Lady.” Mingle with a legendary rancher, a civil rights historian, and a commercial fisherman. Marvel at an anticrime crusader, a space skydiver, and a snake-venom enthusiast. These and other stars—many of whom rarely give such extensive interviews—talk family and work, joys and worries, failures and triumphs, dislikes and desires. Levy has thoughtfully selected their words from ten years of conversations. Each person tells a different story of Florida from a perspective all their own. Read on and get ready to laugh and lament, to be surprised and inspired.




Calculated Bets


Book Description

A story of using computer simulations and mathematical modeling techniques to predict the outcome of jai-alai matches and bet on them successfully.




But Not for Love


Book Description

This Texas Traditions Series reprint takes us back to the Lone Star State during the Cold War at the beginning of the 1960s. The postwar generation is in a frenzy of high living and profligate spending. Big Texas oil is still subsidized by a federal depletion allowance and cattle still account for much of the state’s wealth. But these longtime mainstays of Texas finance are giving way to transistors and computers. A new millionaire class is growing up around business mergers and electronic technology. The characters in Shrake’s novel are caught in this brave new world in one way or another. Some are the princes of prosperity; others are victims of it. This is a world of lobbyists, merger lawyers, small-time politicos, sons of oil money, and the women who cheer them on or worry about their souls. In the opening section of the novel, we visit the Texas Gulf Coast and see the machinations of Sam Guthrie and Waddy Morris Jr. as they attempt to take over a rival technology company. Back in Dallas, idealistic attorney Ben Carpenter moves to thwart the Guthrie/Morris takeover. Then we move to Fort Worth and attend the drunken party given in honor of Ben Carpenter’s thirtieth birthday. The party moved to Mexico on Cadmus Wilkins’s bus where everyone has to confront his or her inner self. And some are found wanting. The several vignettes of the novel paint an accurate picture of Texas as it moves into the urban era and as its middle class began deserting the old verities and tasting what were once forbidden pleasures. Shrake is a first-rate stylist who knows how the upper half lives.




The 12 Principles of Pyong'Hwa


Book Description

Pyong'hwa translates to English as peace and tranquility. The 12 Principles bring new understandings and enlightenments to ease life's journey and to serve as a powerful yet comforting guide for every day and every moment of your experiences going forward. A fun, entertaining and easy read, each Principle is presented with memorable combinations of humor, insight, personal narratives and the collected wisdom of the ages. There are over 250 quotations of valuable perspectives, including everyone from Einstein, Disney, Gandhi, Shakespeare, Franklin, Lincoln, Kennedy and Mother Teresa, to Nin, Dyer, Forbes, Emerson, Aristophanes, Maher, and many more. Plus Zen, Buddhist, and Scottish proverbs, biblical citations, and original creations, including a direct quote from the Almighty, "Here you go: Life! Let's see what you do with it." There are cultural references spanning the generations, with more than sixty movie associations, including the memorable lines of Eastwood, Elvis, Sinatra, Marx, Chaplin, Buehler, Master Oogway, Forrest Gump, Captain James T. Kirk, and more. Plus apt quotations from celebrities of all sorts, including Michael Jordan, Robin Williams, Carly Simon, Will Rogers, Bill Cosby, George Burns, Doris Day, Rod Stewart, Gary Larson, Peter Ustinov, Yogi Berra, and many more. In an increasingly complex, fast-changing and emotionally challenging world, pathways and perspectives for more peace and tranquility are needed more than ever. This book will guide you along a path that will bring you to the yin of greater optimism, inner calm, appreciation and understanding, while providing the yang of new opportunity to create and realize your own joyful being!




Half the Day Is Night


Book Description

Half the Day Is Night by Maureen F. McHugh In a twenty-first-century undersea city, terrorists threaten old-money banker Mayla Ling, potentially plunging her and her bodyguard, war veteran David Dai, back into the nightmare of David's violent past. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




To Cast a Dream


Book Description

2020 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize Winner




Tim Dorsey Collection #2


Book Description

Five acid-splashed Florida capers in one great package! Prepare for the road trip of a lifetime with everyone's favorite serial killer, Serge A. Storms, in the New York Times bestselling series from the “compulsively irreverent and shockingly funny” (Boston Globe) Tim Dorsey. In CADILLAC BEACH, Serge A. Storms, the one-man crime spree, hits no speed bumps as he swings through Tampa, Disney World, and parts south before settling down in Miami Beach to team up with a former sidekick and launch his long-overdue offbeat travel service. Our overachieving antihero has a full to-do list, and he multitasks during the tourist juggernaut to battle the Palermo crime family, mystery assassins, local police, the FBI, the CIA, Fidel Castro, and telemarketers. Serge and his customers have become the hunted, hopscotching through a series of famous hotel rooms. But Serge tells them not to worry. He has a master plan, which is about to unfold in all of its insane glory . . . on Cadillac Beach! In TORPEDO JUICE, this time our lovable but maniacal hero is on a mission: Stay off police radar and reinvent himself. Naturally Serge makes a beeline to the Reinvention Capital of the United States, the Florida Keys, where nobody is who they seem to be and the freaks are the least of your worries. The perfect place for Serge to blend in! Unfortunately, some other less likable lunatics have latched on to the same idea, and the sheriff's fax machine keeps jamming because of all the APBs coming in like a storm front about to break... Lurking beneath paradise are many questions: Who is the mystery driver of the metallic green Trans Am? The brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates? What about the white Mercedes with tinted windows? In THE BIG BAMBOO, Serge finds time to resurrect his obsession with movies, particularly those showcasing his beloved home state. And he wants answers! Why aren't more films shot here? How come the ones that are stink so bad? And what's up with filming "Florida" scenes in California? Then there's the cryptic message from his grandfather, Sergio, telling him to go to Los Angeles to uncover a mysterious secret from the distant past. It's too much of a coincidence. It's fate. Naturally, Serge, accompanied by his substance-sustained sidekick, Coleman, must immediately hop a transcontinental flight to straighten out Hollywood once and for all. In HURRICANE PUNCH, our lovable, under-undermedicated dispenser of truth, justice, and trivia is back with a vengeance—just as his cherished home state is about to take a beating from a conga line of hurricanes bearing down on the peninsula. But as Serge and his burnout buddy Coleman go storm-chasing, bodies begin turning up at a disturbing rate, even by Florida standards. It looks like a serial killer is on the loose—another serial killer—which highly offends Serge's moral sensibilities. And he vows he'll stop at nothing to unmask his thrill-killing rival and make All Things Right—though Coleman's triathlete approach to the sport of polyabuse binging threatens to derail the mission more completely than the entire combined Sunshine State police community could ever hope to. In ATOMIC LOBSTER, Serge is back with a bullet, torn between homicide and souvenirs. So is Coleman, torn between getting hammered and getting more hammered. Then there's good ol' Jim Davenport, the E-Team, the Diaz Brothers, and Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin, cranking up the fevered action as the pot boils over on a street called Lobster Lane. It's reunion time in the Sunshine State, and we're not just talking the family jamboree of that blood-soaked criminal clan, the McGraws, whose nastiest, meanest member is finally released from prison and heads south bent on revenge. On top of it all, the government is covering up a growing list of mysterious victims across Florida who may or may not be connected to a nefarious plot being hatched against national security.




Fabrication


Book Description

In this meditation on manufactures, Susan Neville journeys to factories and plants in the heart of Indiana, looking for the sources of things.