The Saltwater Cowboy

In 1979, Wisconsin native Tim McBride hopped into his Mustang and headed south. He was twenty-one, and his best friend had offered him a job working as a crab fisherman in Chokoloskee Island, a town of fewer than 500 people on Florida's Gulf Coast. Easy of disposition and eager to experience life at its richest, McBride jumped in with both feet. But this wasn't a typical fishing outfit. McBride had been unwittingly recruited into a band of smugglers--middlemen between a Colombian marijuana cartel and their distributors in Miami. His elaborate team comprised fishermen, drivers, stock houses, security--seemingly all of Chokoloskee Island was in on the operation. As McBride came to accept his new role, tons upon tons of marijuana would pass through his hands. Then the federal government intervened in 1984, leaving the crew without a boss and most of its key players. McBride, now a veteran smuggler, was somehow spared. So when the Colombians came looking for a new middle-man, they turned to him. McBride became the boss of an operation that was ultimately responsible for smuggling 30 million pounds of marijuana. A self-proclaimed "Saltwater Cowboy," he would evade the Coast Guard for years, facing volatile Colombian drug lords and risking betrayal by romantic partners until his luck finally ran out. A tale of crime and excess, Saltwater Cowboy is the gripping memoir of one of the biggest pot smugglers in American history.

One secret will tear them apart. The other will pull them closer. Lizzie McCreary needs to disappear. As danger stalks her, she escapes to windswept Cape Corral with her eight-year-old son, Preston. The isolated island offers her a desperate hope for safety. Saltwater cowboy Dash Fulton isn't looking for love. Yet when he rescues a woman and boy from the woods, he immediately feels a bond with the two. He can sense the pair are harboring secrets. The question is, what are they? Dash has secrets of his own, and pressure continues to mount for him to come clean. But as he's caught up in the peril surrounding Lizzie and Preston, his own problems become a low priority. He can't let anyone hurt the sweet single mom and her precocious son. As more details come to light, will wounds from the past ultimately drive Lizzie and Dash apart? Or will the man chasing Lizzie destroy any hope for the future?

Wander to "where the song of the ocean / Meets the salty piece of land" with Tully Mars, washed up from Margaritaville and in the mood for monkeyshines, in a shimmering Caribbean epic by the late king of tropical rock, Jimmy Buffett. It's not on any chart, but the tropical island of Cayo Loco is the perfect place to run away from all your problems. Waking from a ganja buzz on the beach in Tulum, Tully can't believe his eyes when a 142-foot schooner emerges out of the ocean mist. At its helm is Cleopatra Highbourne, the eccentric 101-year-old sea captain who will take him to a lighthouse on a salty piece of land that will change his life forever. From a lovely sunset sail in Punta Margarita to a wild spring-break foam party in San Pedro, Tully encounters an assortment of treasure hunters, rock stars, sailors, seaplane pilots, pirates, and even a ghost or two.

When the money dries up, a wrangler looks toward the Pacific for new opportunity in the latest installment of Ralph Compton's bestselling Trail Drive series. Clay Forsythe never even knew there was such a thing as a paniolo—a Hawaiian cowboy—before two of them save his life. But when he meets Jose Vasquez and Leo Suarez he quickly realizes two things: they're talented and worldly—Clay's never even seen the ocean. With no job offers on the horizon, things aren't going as well for Clay as they are for the paniolo. So when the pair offer him a job helping them drive new breeding stock to the coast, he sees no reason to decline. But there is a long way to go before they hit the saltwater trail to Hawaii. And not everyone wants the to see Barker Ranch prosper; in fact, they'll do almost anything to stop the trio. But Clay and the paniolos aren't to be trifled with. If they can get the herd to their safe patch of land along the coast, it'll be smooth sailing after—and Clay vows that he'll get them there, come hell or high water.

The last frontier is no more. Commercial fishing has been banned in Everglades National Park, and the locals were forced to find other means of work, but no one expected drug-smuggling to become big business in a small sleepy fishing village with less than one thousand people in population called Everglades City, Florida, and an island called Chokoloskee. The intertwined and dense mangrove system of the Ten Thousand Islands that surrounded the area and with remote locations provided a perfect environment for smugglers to bring and hide their drugs until they could deliver them for big profits. The Daniels family knew the backcountry of the Everglades and the complicated waterways of the area and knew how to travel through the shallow and treacherous waters and go through other passages unknown to anybody else. The Daniels family were sought after and hired to bring in large loads of drugs from South and Central America, as well as a few other countries. This family was born in the area and knew it like the backs of their hands. The Daniels crew was dubbed the "Saltwater Cowboys" because of their daring and reckless style and the "Ghost People of the Everglades" because they could disappear at a blink of an eye. Their wild and daring stunts happened on the high seas as well as in the complicated waterways of the Ten Thousand Islands. These boys could turn into a cluster of mangroves and disappear into another waterway just behind it. This adventurous family that turned outlaw became the largest importer of drugs into the United States that ran throughout our country. This area was world-renowned to some of the largest cartels or drug-smuggling rings around today and now call Everglades National Park their home.

The wild, true story of the Mutiny, the hotel and club that embodied the decadence of Miami’s cocaine cowboys heyday—and an inspiration for the blockbuster film, Scarface... In the seventies, coke hit Miami with the full force of a hurricane, and no place attracted dealers and dopers like Coconut Grove’s Mutiny at Sailboat Bay. Hollywood royalty, rock stars, and models flocked to the hotel’s club to order bottle after bottle of Dom and to snort lines alongside narcos, hit men, and gunrunners, all while marathon orgies burned upstairs in elaborate fantasy suites. Amid the boatloads of powder and cash reigned the new kings of Miami: three waves of Cuban immigrants vying to dominate the trafficking of one of the most lucrative commodities ever known to man. But as the kilos—and bodies—began to pile up, the Mutiny became target number one for law enforcement. Based on exclusive interviews and never-before-seen documents, Hotel Scarface is a portrait of a city high on excess and greed, an extraordinary work of investigative journalism offering an unprecedented view of the rise and fall of cocaine—and the Mutiny—in Miami.

A new approach to business ethics is quietly taking hold in executive suites and corporate boardrooms across America. Frustrated by an epidemic of misbehavior at all employee levels, management teams are getting back to basics—back to the idea that personal character and individual responsibility are the ultimate keys to integrity, just as they were back in the days of the Open Range. A decade ago, the book Cowboy Ethics first inspired businesspeople to look to the Code of the West. Once they did, they discovered that its simple, common-sense principles can be more effective guides to business leadership than a truckload of corporate mission statements, rules, and ethics manuals. “Cowboys are role models because they live by a code,” says author James P. Owen. “They show us what it means to stand for something, and to strive every day to make your actions line up with your beliefs. And isn’t that as good a definition of integrity as you can find?” In the years since, the book’s “Ten Principles to Live By” have been embraced by scores of companies, universities, and even a state government. This updated Tenth Anniversary hardcover edition traces the evolution of this grassroots business movement in brand-new chapters while preserving the inspirational lessons and stunning photography of the original. It’s ideal for corporate gifts, the new graduate, business students, or any career person who cares about doing the right thing.

Rusty goes to the beach for the first time. He's got his boots on and learns what it takes to be a Saltwater Cowboy.