Shelf Life: Citrus County by John Brandon

• Courtesy McSweeney's

Genre: A criminal bildungsroman

The Pitch: Toby is your average small-town, adolescent delinquent living in Florida's Citrus County. He litters and scowls at good children. His teacher offers to schedule detention in advance of his offenses. He doesn't want to be bad, but he's "no match for his lesser urges." After attracting the interest of Shelby, a new girl in his class, he commits a crime that suddenly changes the direction of his life.

Not That Florida: "She'd imagined a place that was warm and inviting and she'd gotten a place that was without seasons and sickeningly hot. She'd wanted palm trees and she'd gotten grizzly low oaks. She's wanted surfers instead of rednecks. She'd thought Florida would make her feel glamorous or something, and there was a region of Florida that might've done just that, but it wasn't this part."

Southern Food: The novel is populated with soda and fast food, Styrofoam boxes from Cracker Barrel and frozen fish sticks. It's a small but telling set of details. Citrus County is a southern novel, but utterly aware of the ways that the South has changed.

Sinking State: "Toby hoped that when the manatees gave up the ghost or a hurricane finally got a bead on Citrus County, trucks of guys would come down from Tallahassee and dynamite the place and slide it off in to the Gulf of Mexico to sink."