As an author, I spend a lot of time sitting at the keyboard, as do many in my and similar professions. Prior to becoming a novelist, I was a long-haul trucker, another sedentary lifestyle. Over the course of many years, the body I once had as an active-duty Marine turned into a blob.
So, I decided to do something about it. The change from Marine to blob took decades, so I didn’t even notice it happening. But when I put the aging process in reverse, the changes were very noticeable and fast-coming.
This was thanks mostly to Sam Hoster, my co-author and owner of Stay Strong Fitness. I know very little about health and fitness, except that I’m living proof that even in our mid-sixties, it’s not too late to become fit and strong. So, I invited Sam to write this book with me. Through the guidance and tutelage of his trainers and coaches, I went from blob to competitive powerlifter in just over a year.
This book isn’t a memoir, but a motivational. Anyone can become stronger and healthier. All you need is guidance and a little push. That’s what we’re here for. Sam provides the guidance and I do the pushing. Kinda like in the gym.
Jesse McDermitt has returned to the Florida Keys. But things in the islands are different now. The locals are worried, but nobody can explain why. A sense of foreboding hangs in the humid July air.
One of the locals, an investment banker, is waiting tables at the Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill. He seems a shell of the man he used to be—a hollow man whose fortune and wife are gone. He’s tight-lipped about how he came to be a guest in Rufus’s little shack behind the bar.
Something very sinister is going on—Jesse smells it. He’s usually very good at rooting out the source of a problem, but is stumped this time.
Until another tight-lipped hollow man shows up.
Since the recent death of a wealthy, yet perverted, businessman, Charity Styles has been hiding in plain sight, as if challenging anyone to come after her.
She’s on her own once more, living day to day on her beloved Wind Dancer, anchored near a quaint little Gulf Coast town in the Florida Panhandle. But when the son of a fishing client ends up dead, the father’s employer hires Charity to find the person responsible.
Intrigue mounts faster than the list of suspects and Charity finds new purpose and direction, and possibly a guide. But will her new outlook make her fall prey to the local crime boss? Very few know of her abilities and many have come up short in trying to take her. Will this be Charity’s final downfall from grace?
Jesse McDermitt discovers an environmental nightmare of deception and greed taking place in Central America. A cartel is branching into smuggling things other than drugs. And they’re doing it quite effectively.
The Honduran rain forests and its inhabitants are at peril. The cartel needs hidden places to grow coca, used in the manufacture of cocaine. The exotic and endangered hardwood trees are cut and sold on the black market, along with any creature found dwelling deep in the humid jungle.
Environmental activists in the area who try to intercede are swiftly dealt with in the manner the cartel deals with anyone who stands between them and the almighty dollar—with a sharp machete.
Having so many moving parts and numerous smuggling routes, can Jesse and the crew of Ambrosia, on a dive vacation in the Bay Islands of Honduras, be able to make a difference? Or will the beautiful reef surrounding the island of Utila be Ambrosia’s grave?
After a long hiatus, Charity Styles is itching to get back into the fray. She’s had a succession of minor assignments, none of which provided her with the action she craves.
After months of recharging and rethinking her position in the Armstrong organization, she’s on the verge of walking away, returning to what could be a more normal life. But what’s a normal life look like for a former covert assassin?
Then she gets two assignments, which have nothing to do with each other. The first is to ferry a group of people out to a large mega-yacht. When it turns out that one of those people is the girl she thinks of as a niece and the mega-yacht is captained by an old friend, she sets her sails and is quickly underway.
What the second assignment is, will not only test Charity’s abilities as an undercover asset to the giant Armstrong Research conglomerate, but will also assess her ability to keep a lid on her emotions when faced with the type of people she most loathes.
From the Cayman Islands to the Eastern Caribbean, the coast of Brazil, and finally, the U.S. Virgin Islands, her mental state is constantly being tested. Will she find the one person who is at the head of a vast sex trafficking operation? Or will she become just another victim to the traffickers? Will she even be able to restrain her inner demons when she encounters the worst of the worst of human society?
Jesse McDermitt is starting a new chapter in his life. As captain of the research vessel Ambrosia, his mission is to study the oceans and seafloor, searching for rich oil deposits. His unstated mission is to locate and eradicate the enemies of society on behalf of Armstrong Research, a secretive organization funded by some of the richest men in the world.
When word gets out about a massive drug and human trafficking cartel moving tons of illegal drugs, along with hundreds of slave laborers, out of Venezuela, Jesse is tasked with stopping them at all cost. But how can one man find the traffickers amid the thousands of ships coming and going from Venezuela's ports every year? Can Jesse close on and engage the traffickers?
Where Jerry Snyder goes, trouble follows. Someone tried to kill him and his bride on their honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. And moving there permanently is proving to be anything but tranquil.
First, he’s working for the secretive Armstrong Organization - a group dedicated to hunting terrorists, drug smugglers, and the nastiest criminals since Blackbeard.
Second, his partner is DJ Martin, a one-legged Airborne vet, who has the temperament of a croc with a toothache. DJ has never met a nose he couldn’t break, and he’s tested plenty of them.
When a body washes ashore at an island resort in Culebra, a family desperate for help turns to Jerry and DJ. Sailing the Caribbean looking for answers, their course proves deadlier than either man bargained for. And when Jerry’s past dealings appear on the horizon, the two men have to find common ground to overcome a cunning, powerful enemy with a desire more dangerous than murder.
When a small homemade boat drifts under the Seven Mile Bridge, Jesse McDermitt doesn’t hesitate to jump in and pull the boat ashore on Pigeon Key with an injured boy aboard.
The boy provides more questions than answers. He’s believed to be a Cuban refugee, yet when he regains consciousness, he speaks perfect English, but can’t even remember his name.
Clues point to the boy coming from Fort Myers, Jesse’s hometown. After going to war with drug smugglers there, Jesse has no desire to go back. But something is pulling at his wife’s heart strings.
With only a week before he has to leave for bigger, broader horizons, will Jesse be able to solve the mystery of the “lost boy” in time. Will the clues he finds along the way lead him deeper into the world of gang warfare than he wants to go?
Things are about to get hot in the Florida Keys, and it’s not just the spring weather.
On Grassy Key, things aren’t as idyllic as they seem. The quiet, sleepy community has been awakened. A young woman with strong ties to the community is missing.
A local craftsman, the last person to see the girl, is questioned and released. The girl’s friends are interviewed. Nobody knows what happened to Cobie, except that she left for work one day and didn’t arrive. The only lead is the girl’s car, parked where she worked. But it provides no clues, and nobody saw anything.
Days go by. Then weeks. The case grows cold.
The employer of the girl’s mother knows Jesse McDermitt, a retired Marine and reputed government spook. Jesse leans on people the way only he can and soon finds there is a lot more to the abduction than anyone knew.
Does he find the missing girl? Does he survive what he uncovers?
Find out in this 19th novel in Wayne Stinnett’s wildly popular Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure series.
After returning home to the Florida Keys, Jesse moves on to Fort Myers, his hometown on the Southwest Florida coast. There is much work to be done, and Jesse is no stranger to hard work.
On a kayak outing with friends, Jesse's daughter finds and rescues a manatee suffering from respiratory problems. The red tide has returned, and fish are dying by the thousands, along with dolphins, manatees, and sea birds.
The algal bloom is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but this time it's much worse. Theories abound; it's something left over from the previous spring's coronavirus outbreak, it's caused by pollution, someone is intentionally creating a super-algae....
But there's something far more sinister at work, and it's up to Jesse to find out what it is and put a stop to it.
Paradise isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Few people know this as well as Jesse McDermitt, retired Marine and former government operative.
In the aftermath of an intense mission in coastal Mexico, Jesse wants nothing more than to get back to his boat; to just sail away and forget all about the firefight and his warrior past.
The Caribbean sun is warm, the azure water inviting, he has the woman of his dreams at his side, and everything seems to be smooth sailing.
Until a severed leg is found tangled in a line securing Jesse’s dinghy to his 61-foot sailing yacht, Salty Dog. The former owner of the appendage turns out to be the eighth victim of a lunatic who kills for money and a former Russian smuggler who won’t pass up a chance for one more big score.
Jesse is forced to don the warrior’s mask once again. This time to catch a ghoulish killer who is stalking the villages and jungles outside Belize City.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, Jesse McDermitt has rebuilt his island in the Content Keys far better than it was before the storm. The task was enormous, but so was his need to make things better.
Unbeknownst to Jesse, an environmentally conscious woman from his past has stumbled onto a drug manufacturing cartel in Virginia while working on a pollution mitigation problem. The cartel responds by sending someone to kill people Jesse cares for. A contract killer stalks the woman all the way to Miami, leaving bodies in his wake.
With the help of an old flame in the FBI, Jesse goes to the snow-covered Appalachians to get to the root of the trouble: an unscrupulous prosecutor and dirty sheriff, who are producing LSD on an unbelievable scale.
Is Jesse out of his element this time? Can he protect the people he cares for most? It’s a race against time and Mother Nature to find a killer stalking the quiet neighborhoods of Coconut Grove.
