55 Books Like Permed to Death

I love a quirky small-town mystery with screwball comedy, and this one absolutely delivers–with a wonderful twist: the detective is Sheriff Arly Hanks, a woman forced to go home and start over after a meltdown in the big city.

I love Arly’s intelligence and spirit…and the fact that while she has a gun (and even a bullet or two), she doesn’t need more than her wits and the help of the crazy locals–including her own mother–to catch the killer. She’s my favorite funny, badass woman sleuth. 

Newly widowed Miss Julia, a pillar of her small southern community, is the poster child for my wise Nana’s theory that things never turn out the way you think they will when she finds herself smack dab in the center of a smarmy love triangle scandal involving her late husband.

I adore Miss Julia’s razer-sharp wit as she morphs from a clueless stuffed shirt into an endearingly strong southern woman who doesn’t take crap from anyone.

I am a big fan of a fast-paced tale that deftly weaves comic characters through a plot wrought with hand-wringing angst. Miss Julia and her cast of crazy characters does not disappoint.   

Nothing tickles my funny bone more than my husband describing the antics of his boyhood family dog, a singing ninety-pound boxer aptly named Troubadour.

So, naturally, I fell in love with mortician Callie Valentine Jones’ basset hound who’s convinced he is the reincarnation of the King of Rock n’ Roll. Business takes a nasty nosedive when the corpse of a local doctor goes missing from the Eternal Rest Funeral Home.

I almost died laughing when kookie Callie and her wake caterer cousin Lovie race in hot pursuit of the recently embalmed, last seen bound for Las Vegas by way of downtown Tupelo, Mississippi.

The fast-paced plot is nothing short of sheer Southern fried lunacy as Callie, Lovie, and Elvis track the dearly departed doctor inside a freezer owned by his showgirl mistress. 

Maybe it’s because I had to do it throughout my career as a sales exec in a historically male-dominated industry before I became an author, that I am a hopeless sap for a heroine who picks herself up no matter how many times she gets knocked down.

So, it is no surprise that Savannah, Georgia-based recent divorcee Reagan Summerside has a special place in my heart. Reagan, left with almost nothing, thanks to the ruthless tactics of her husband’s divorce lawyer, discovers the bimbo her ex dumped her for dead in her former Lexus.

I cheered the consignment shop owner on as she relentlessly searched for the murderer.

Gurmit Singh is a funny man. His sense of humor and his love of life have turned him into a well-known celebrity in Singapore, as he plays the most notorious character, “Phua Chu Kang” in the TV Hit Comedy series of the same name.

A book written in the same style as the author’s voice, with all the same characteristics as the role he plays in the Comedy Series Phua Chu Kang. I found his writing witty, funny, and laugh-out-loud humorous, which at the same time, is peppered with a spritz of melancholy and a deep-seated emotional yank every now and then. 

Singh outlines how the events of his upbringing and the impact of his mother’s influence on him sculpted him into the person he is today. 

In this holiday romance presented by Georgia Beers, Mackenzie Campbell is planning the perfect holiday wedding. Everything is on track until her fiancé dumps her. Shattered and confused she decides to go on her honeymoon. She enlists her best friend Allison to go along with her. Shedding the cold weather, they head to Florida. Kenzie doesn’t realize that the adventure is about to begin.

Noll and Tegeder wrote the most comprehensive book about the history of the Ocklawaha River and the Cross Florida Barge Canal ever written.

Documenting the story of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, the authors provide the inside story about the longest environmental conflict in Florida history, those who wanted to dig a ditch across the peninsula to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and Marjorie Harris Carr, the mastermind and "housewife from Micanopy," who founded the Florida Defenders of the Environment.

One of the best books I’ve read on the drug trade. This book examines how Cuban organized crime was in some respects like the Mafia, how it achieved dominance in cocaine by corruption as well by violence. A fantastic book!

I found that the narrative drew me in, as English always does in his books, as he provided fascinating portraits of the major characters.

This was one of Hiaasen’s early books before he made it big time. Even though it is a crime book, the chuckles I derived in almost every chapter were hilarious.

Living in South Florida myself, I enjoyed the descriptions of the area and believed the crazy people in this book were actually based on people here.

You want to say: “it can’t be that people act this way” but living here, I have seen it.

Carl Hiaasen’s Florida-set books are dark, clever, and ever so funny, with his perfectly drawn characters being eccentric, shady as hell, or just plain whack-a-doodle.

Sometimes all three at the same time. Most of his books are standalones but his one recurring character, the sidekick to lots of the books’ protagonists, is Clinton Tyree, the ex-governor of Florida. Tyree was one of the few honest men to hold that office, until one day, sick of the corruption, he simply vanished into the Everglades.

He appeared later as Skink, a one-eyed man at one with nature who dined on roadkill and engaged in the occasional act of ecoterrorism. He’s frequently the protector of Florida’s downtrodden. In Stormy Weather, he befriends Bonnie Lamb, an unhappy honeymooner, and kidnaps her new husband.