Florida Palms, Joe Pan
Florida Palms, Joe Pan
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Florida Palms

Author: Joe Pan

Narrator: Charlie Thurston

Unabridged: 16 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/22/2025


Synopsis

The Outsiders meet Sons of Anarchy in this gripping debut about a group of young men dragged into a drug-running operation on the Space Coast of Florida.

It’s 2009, the height of the Great Recession. Best friends Eddy, Cueball, and Jesse are fresh out of high school and wild at heart, but the economy is in the dumps. With jobs scarce along Florida’s Space Coast, they join a furniture-moving company run by Cueball’s father, a gruff ex-con biker who’s supposedly retired from the fast life. But when a mysterious old boss arrives in town, the payload is switched out, and the young men are coerced into shipping a new designer drug up the East Coast.

What is advertised as a bastion of brotherhood and respect quickly spirals into back-alley deals, bloodshed, and an all-out turf war that will test the bounds of love and friendship. Enticed by larger paychecks, and fueled by burgeoning drug habits, the young friends find themselves trapped between rank opportunists, warring gangsters, meth zombies, crazed bikers, and a blowgun-wielding hitman, all vying for a shot at the big time.

Soaring, ambitious, and deeply humane, Florida Palms is a gritty coming-of-age story with enormous heart and an unflinching vision of the violence and inequities facing forgotten communities. In a relentless race against desperate circumstances, the young friends must fully embrace the crime life or abandon their loyalties and risk ending up face down in the muck of the unforgiving swamps.

About Joe Pan

Joe Pan is the author of five poetry books and founder of Brooklyn Arts Press, one of the smallest independent houses ever honored with a National Book Award in Poetry, and publisher of Augury Books, honored with a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. His writing has appeared in the Boston Review, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and Poets & Writers, and he’s been profiled by Publishers Weekly, The Rumpus, and The Wall Street Journal. He grew up along the Space Coast of Florida and now lives in Los Angeles. With his wife he cofounded BAH, an activist group that serves unhoused populations with sleeping bags and goods. Florida Palms is his debut novel. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Debbie H on July 13, 2025

4.5 ⭐️ This is a gritty, slow burn of a crime thriller and I Ioved it! I read that Joe Pan is a poet and it translates to some of the most intensely descriptive prose that kept me absorbed in the story! Set in Fl in 2009, it focuses on the lives of high school friends Eddy and Cueball. Their lives c......more

Goodreads review by Chris Vanasse on January 31, 2025

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the free eARC! I was a huge fan of “Sons of Anarchy” when it first aired, so when the first line of the description said this was “The Outsiders” meets “Sons of Anarchy”, I knew I wanted to give this a read! The story centers on best friends, Eddy, Cueba......more

Goodreads review by Stacy40pages on July 18, 2025

Florida Palms by Joe Pan. Thanks to @simonbooks #simonbooksbuddy for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Eddie and Cueball have just started their adult life’s after high school but it’s 2009 in Florida and the recession hit hard. When they join a new job shipping a designer drug up the coast, their lives spira......more

Goodreads review by MikeLikesBooks on July 13, 2025

I enjoyed this crime thriller based along the space coast of Florida. So many times youth are the product of their environment and it’s easy to fall into the culture and vibe of the people you are around. This is what happens with Eddie and Cueball. They go to work for Cueballs dad and then find the......more

Goodreads review by The Page Ladies on July 07, 2025

Eddy, Cueball, and Jesse are fresh out of high school with zero job prospects. When Cueball’s biker dad ropes them into what looks like a simple moving job, it quickly turns into running drugs and dealing with some seriously wild characters, think meth zombies and a blowgun-wielding hitman! It’s a gr......more