Author Information
Laurence Shames's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    20 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    June 1992
  • Latest Book:
    January 2023
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Full Series List in Order

A Key West Mystery

Florida Straits (Jun-1992)
Scavenger Reef (Feb-1994)
Sunburn (Jan-1995)
Tropical Depression (Mar-1996)
Virgin Heat (Mar-1997)
Mangrove Squeeze (Mar-1998)
Welcome to Paradise (May-1999)
The Naked Detective (Jun-2000)

Book List in Order: 20 titles



  • Joey Goldman's flying south for the winter. The second-string New York wiseguy just packed up his faithful girlfriend Sandra and took off for Key West- land of sun, surf, and sleaze -- where a small-time hustler in search of a racket can score the bi...



  • WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE ... What is an Augie Silver painting worth? It depends. Dead, the Key West artist is hot. Alive ... that's another story Augie's grieving widow wants her husband back. A down-and-out wharf rat could turn Augie's paintings i...



  • When Vincente Delgatto, an aging Mafia godfather, heads down to I Key West to spend time with his half-Jewish bastard son, Joey Goldman, hee thinks that the worst thing that can happen is that he'll get a little too much sun.... But it's other peo...



  • Murray Zemelman, a.k.a. "the bra king," wakes up one morning contemplating suicide. Instead, he leaves his trophy wife and his thriving lingerie business, gets in his car, and drives to Key West to start a new life. Was it brilliant insight or a glit...



  • There's a first time for everyone... . For years, Angie Amaro has pined for the lost love of Sal Martucci--the man who made her feel whole, the man she dreamed of, and the man who ratted out her father, cape Paulie Amaro, and had him sent to priso...



  • Key West seduces people--then asks them to leave in the morning. Take Aaron Katz. He shucked his nine-tofive to restore Mangrove Arms, a rotting wreck of a guest house. Suki Sperakis sees opportunity in Florida too. In the meantime she's peddling ad ...



  • Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuschman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the tasteful Paradise Hotel...



  • The gumshoe bit wasn't Peter Amsterdam's idea. His accountant made him do it. But Pete should have figured that with a comfortable tax dodge in the sunny Florida Keys comes the inevitable knockout blonde looking for help. Sometimes life can be like t...



  • 1949 was a pivotal moment of economic dominance; the MBA was still exotic, arcane, and swaggeringly potent. The men of Harvard Business School 49 would be the class the dollars fell on. By 1974, nearly one 49er in five was a millionaire. Forty-five p...






  • Three love stories. Two worlds. Six characters trying bravely, if not always wisely, to make their romantic destinies come out right -- if not in this lifetime, well, maybe in the next. Set partly in Santa Barbara, CA and its nearby wine country, and...



  • Take three speedboats, a disgruntled ghostwriter, and a hit TV show starring a gorgeous but impossible diva and created by a driven genius who may be losing his marbles. Add a fearless and gleefully profane stuntwoman, an ancient Mafioso with a chihu...



  • Wanted: NY apartment in exchange for a great Key West house with swimming pool. In February. Who wouldn’t take a swap like that? Then again, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is, as Meg and Peter Kaplan soon discover. Heading south f...



  • From the Foreword: Money Talks is a novel with a strange past behind it -- and an even stranger present all around it. It’s a book that some readers and reviewers have been kind enough to call prophetic. That’s a nice word, and very flattering, b...



  • Sometimes small dreams are the ones most worth fighting for… Phoebe has a dream -- a very modest dream. She wants to own a Sno-Cone truck at the beach in Key West. Nicky, her would-be boyfriend, also dreams small. All he wants is a decent gig as a ...



  • Perfect romance. Perfect nightmare. Sometimes it’s a fine line. Meet Key West native Renita Daughtry--22, wide-eyed, gorgeous, and very much in love with love. In other words, an irresistible target for professional impostor and pathological liar R...



  • “What is with you lately?” Lenny’s wife would like to know. “You’ve been acting like everything is one big joke.” And it’s true -- unemployed TV writer Lenny Sullivan has been having trouble seeing his life and times as anything more th...



  • Key West has a new hero...He weighs four pounds and stands eight inches off the ground. His name is Nacho and he's the bravest, shrewdest, funniest Chihuahua you will ever meet. He'll do anything to help his master, the retired Mafioso Bert the Shirt...



  • FACT: In September 1964, the Beatles, their private flight diverted by Hurricane Dora, made an unplanned visit to Key West. FICTION: Poolside at their motel, the Fab Four fell into conversation with a snappy-dressing local named Bert the Shir...



  • So what, exactly, is Key West Normal?Well, Key West Normal is when two friends in need of a place to live drag away an abandoned hot dog truck in the middle of the night...But an insomniac New Yorker has got himself trapped inside it while searching ...






  • Ever notice that things get sticky when family comes to town?Pete Amsterdam, world's most reluctant private eye, is living the bachelor dream in Key West, Florida. Then his mother, the undaunted Gertie, shows up with her new hip, her large suitcase, ...


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Laurence Shames has published 20 books.

Laurence Shames does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Relative Humidity, was published in January 2023.

The first book by Laurence Shames, Florida Straits, was published in June 1992.

Yes. Laurence Shames has 1 series.