No one is more stunned than Mermaid Swimwear sales exec Holly Schlivnik when a fisherman hooks her unscrupulous colleague’s battered corpse attached to a surfboard and hauls it onto the Washington Street Pier. The coroner ruled that while Jack Tyne drowned, he “had help dying,” and Holly’s boss is wrongly arrested for the crime. To save the big cheese from a life behind bars, the wise-cracking, irreverent amateur detective dons her sleuthing hat to find Jack’s real killer. But the trail has more twists and turns than a pretzel, and nothing turns out the way Holly thinks it will as she tangles with a clever killer hellbent for revenge.
How to convert the power of “I Will” into a life-changing mantra The twelve stories in this book, taken from Shaun Tomson’s own life experiences in and out of the surfing world, offer the simple message—I Will—as a model to face life’s challenges and help you achieve your goals. All you need is to be encouraged to find your voice and commit yourself to positive values. The stories resonate with positivity and hope for the future, and are infused with the belief that even in the darkest time, light shines ahead to show you the way forward.
Covering famed surf spots all over the world, this unique full-color gift book and travel guide invites you to discover such unexpected gems as the Amazon and the Gulf of Alaska. From the frigid waters off Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula to Nazaré, Portugal, where in 2013 Garrett McNamara broke a world record for surfing the tallest wave (78 feet!), highlights also include: North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii Gold Coast, Australia Malibu, California Faroe Islands, Denmark Cocoa Beach, Florida Hossegor, France Grajagan, Indonesia Montauk, New York Thurso, Scotland Jeffreys Bay, South Africa And dozens more! Fifty Places to Surf takes readers on a wide-roving adventure, divulging the details that make each venue unique—and plenty of tips for those who aspire to surf there. Author Chris Santella writes in his introduction, “Surfing means different things to different people. For some it might mean longboarding mellow chest-high waves in board shorts, followed by a great sushi dinner; for others it may mean donning a six-millimeter wetsuit to brave near-freezing waters and triple overheads. Fifty Places to Surf Before You Die attempts to capture the spectrum of surfing experiences—from beginner-friendly to downright death-defying.” Featuring interviews with seasoned surfing experts such as pro surfer Joel Parkinson and Billabong executive Shannan North, Fifty Places to Surf Before You Die is an essential travel companion for surfers of all levels who are looking to catch that perfect wave.
**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography** Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List “Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” —The New York Times Magazine Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.
The inspirational story of one woman learning to surf and creating a new life in gritty, eccentric Rockaway Beach Unmoored by a failed marriage and disconnected from her high-octane life in the city, Diane Cardwell finds herself staring at a small group of surfers coasting through mellow waves toward shore--and senses something shift. Rockaway is the riveting, joyful story of one woman's reinvention--beginning with Cardwell taking the A Train to Rockaway, a neglected spit of land dangling off New York City into the Atlantic Ocean. She finds a teacher, buys a tiny bungalow, and throws her not-overly-athletic self headlong into learning the inner workings and rhythms of waves and the muscle development and coordination needed to ride them. As Cardwell begins to find her balance in the water and out, superstorm Sandy hits, sending her into the maelstrom in search of safer ground. In the aftermath, the community comes together and rebuilds, rekindling its bacchanalian spirit as a historic surfing community, one with its own quirky codes and surf culture. And Cardwell's surfing takes off as she finds a true home among her fellow passionate longboarders at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, living out "the most joyful path through life." Rockaway is a stirring story of inner salvation sought through a challenging physical pursuit--and of learning to accept the idea of a complete reset, no matter when in life it comes.
Once a snowbird, now full-time resident and sometime sleuth Kate Kennedy “is a stylish and sophisticated Miss Marple, seeking justice in sunny South Florida instead of a rainy English Village, and meeting the most delightfully eccentric suspects in the process.” (Victoria Thompson, author of Murder in Chinatown) Tired of college, Kate Kennedy’s granddaughter, Katherine, drops out and heads for Florida, landing in the apartment of Kate’s best friend. In her quest for a new life, she takes up with a gang of surfers that go by name “The Four Boardsmen of the Apocalypse.” But catching waves can be a dangerous pastime. When Katherine’s surfer crush is killed in a shark attack, foul play is suspected, especially by the police. Fingers are pointing at Katherine—including, to Kate’s disappointment, that of her friend Detective Nick Carbone. It’s up to Kate to prove her beloved granddaughter’s innocence or else Katherine’s “new life” will be spent behind bars.
With 1,500 alphabetical entries and 300 illustrations, this resource is a comprehensive review of the people, places, events, equipment, vernacular, and lively history of this fascinating sport.
"Eccentric characters shuffle and strut in and out of Doyle's tale and breathe life into this unusual history of surfing." - Honolulu Star Bulletin "Full of humor and inside stories that capture the youthful joy and innocence of the formative years of the California beach culture." - San Diego Union-Tribune "Morning Glass is a thoughtful portrait of a man enthralled with the ocean." - Orange County Register "Mike has an incredible story to tell and every surfer who believes surfing is more than just a hobby must read it.” - Surfing Magazine "He came from a period when surf heroes were individuals, each with a distinct personality and character.... I suspect his revelations may ruffle a few feathers." - Steve Pezman, Surfer's Journal
“I don’t normally read books about surfers, but this is like Truman Capote, with shorts.” —Lee Child “Andy Martin, to his immense credit, knows that surfers are misfits and accidental comics, as well as great athletes.” —Matt Warshaw “A sublime mixing of stoke and sorrow, hedonism and the macabre—skillfully and deftly penned by someone who had, and still has, intimate access to many of the key players." —Tom Anderson, author of Riding the Magic Carpet: A Surfer's Odyssey to Find the Perfect Wave This is the true story of Ted, Viscount Deerhurst, the son of the Earl of Coventry and an American ballerina who dedicated his life to becoming a professional surfer. Surfing was a means of escape, from England, from the fraught charges of nobility, from family, and, often, from his own demons. Ted was good on the board, but never made it to the very highest ranks of a sport that, like most, treats second-best as nowhere at all. He kept on surfing, ending up where all surfers go to live or die, the paradise of Hawaii. There, in search of the “perfect woman,” he fell in love with a dancer called Lola, who worked in a Honolulu nightclub. The problem with paradise, as he was soon to discover, is that gangsters always get there first. Lola already had a serious boyfriend, a man who went by the name of Pit Bull. Ted was given fair warning to stay away. But he had a besetting sin, for which he paid the heaviest price: He never knew when to give up. Surf, Sweat and Tears takes us into the world of global surfing, revealing a dark side beneath the dazzling sun and cream-crested waves. Here is surf noir at its most compelling, a dystopian tale of one man’s obsessions, wiped out in a grisly true crime.
