They're known as Storm Devils and Peat Fairies, Skunk Apes and Were-Panthers. They sinuate through ficus hedges and tunnel under beach towels. They lurk in the mangroves and springs. Some you can smell a mile away. Others you don't notice until they grab at your ankles. They're the wildly imaginative bestiary that populates John Henry Fleming's Fearsome Creatures of Florida. Fleming offers an eerie portrayal of the parallel lives of modern-day Floridians and the living landscape that surrounds them. Matched with haunting illustrations by David Hazouri, these tales may forever change your view of the Sunshine State. Voted one of Top Ten Cryptozoology Books of 2009,

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Brief text and illustrations introduce such strange creatures from American folklore as the snawfus, billdad, lufferlang, and tripodero.

In this hysterical #1 New York Times bestseller, one kid has to wrangle gators, snakes, bats that bite, and a reality show host gone rogue! This is Carl Hiaasen's Florida—where the creatures are wild and the people are wilder! When Wahoo Cray’s dad—a professional animal wrangler—takes a job with a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo figures he'll have to do a bit of wrangling himself to keep his father from killing Derek Badger, the show's inept and egotistical star. But the job keeps getting more complicated: Derek Badger insists on using wild animals for his stunts; and Wahoo's acquired a shadow named Tuna—a girl who's sporting a shiner courtesy of her father and needs a place to hide out. They've only been on location in the Everglades for a day before Derek gets bitten by a bat and goes missing in a storm. Search parties head out and promptly get lost themselves. And then Tuna's dad shows up with a gun . . . It's anyone's guess who will actually survive Expedition Survival. . . “Only in Florida—and in the fiction of its native son Carl Hiaasen—does a dead iguana fall from a palm tree and kill somebody.” —New York Post “Chomp is a delightful laugh-out-loud sendup of the surreality of TV that will be enjoyed by readers of all ages.” —Los Angeles Times

"A nonfiction picture book exploring the mysterious life of the elusive giant squid"--

Meet the snoligoster, who feeds on the shadows of its victims. The whirling whimpus, who once laid low an entire Boy Scout troop. And the hoop snake, who can chase prey at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and then, with one sting of its venomous tail, cause it to turn purple, swell up, and—alas—die. These and 17 other fearsome creatures are among the most fantastical beasts in American folklore. Their stories, as narrated by one of the last surviving cryptozoologists, are best enjoyed while sitting around a campfire. If you dare.