In South Florida, everyone wants to get a head. But not just any head. A very famous human head--severed and snugged away in a cryonic container. A head that could spark a revolution and change the course of history.

Everybody wants a piece of the noggin: rotund gangster Big Joey G., a 102-year-old environmentalist, hard-boiled Miami reporter Britt Montero, lawyer Jake Lassiter,  and a would-be dictator in exile--with ex-president Jimmy Carter and a lovable manatee named Booger thrown in for good measure.

With bodies piling up it's anybody's guess what will happen from one chapter to the next, as an all-star line-up of Florida's finest writers take turns at taking this outrageously original novel to the limit--and beyond.

Tired of making faux pas because you don't know the difference between sub rosa and sub voce? Then this lexicon is a bona fide desideratum.

Simply and concisely, it clarifies hundreds of words and phrases from Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Yiddish that have become part of the English language but are often confused or misused. Along with its definition, every term is accompanied by a phonetic guide to its pronunciation. Plus, there's an appendix of words derived from classical mythology -- such as delphic, erotic, laconic, odyssey, and thespian -- and two comprehensive lists of Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes. The result is a sui generis (Latin, SU-ee GEN-er-is, unique, in a class itself) Meisterstuck (German, MY-ster-shtook, masterpiece) of lexicography that's guaranteed to give cognoscenti or naifs a greater understanding of the English language and its foreign borrowings.