Today's recommended read: 'Skinny Dip' by Carl Hiaasen

If you're stuck at home and looking for something to cheer you up, you can't go wrong with a Carl Hiaasen book. Just be careful whom you choose to read.

Hiassen is the author of many children's books, and they're great for the kids; his alter ego, the chronicler of sordid stories that can come only from the underbelly of South Florida, is strictly for adults.

There is always someone on the take, a threat to the Florida wilderness, delightfully goofy goons and a deeply flawed cop involved in Hiaasen's capers. And loads of outsized, funny writing along the way.

In "Skinny Dip," a hack marine biologist throws his wife overboard during an ocean cruise because he thinks she's onto his Everglades-polluting scam. "Chaz" spends much of the story believing he's succeeded in eliminating the threat, but he is oh so wrong.