<DIV>Miro Basinas is an experimental botanist who sells his rarefied product to a discerning clientele. Only Miro's not growing heirloom tomatoes or making organic wine?he's growing weed. And when Miro hits the big time by winning Amsterdam's famed Cannabis Cup, cannasseurs and ganjaficionados aren't the only people who want a piece of him and his mind-blowing pot that tastes like mangoes.<br><BR>A wickedly funny crime novel, <I>Baked</I> opens with a bang as Miro is cut down by a bullet. A mild-mannered hipster who doesn't know the first thing about revenge?or even who shot him?Miro is soon on a quest to recover his prize invention and to secure his place as the Floyd Zaiger (creator of the pluot) of weed. It's a journey packed with a delicious cast of characters, including a string-theory obsessed cop, a kinky paramedic, a Mormon missionary struggling to keep his ?sap” under control in a city that is the personification of sex, a half-Irish-half-Salvadoran drug dealer and his dim-witted associates, a cougar starlet, and an entrepreneur who wants to turn his medical marijuana Compassion Centers into the Starbucks of pot. <I>Baked</I> is a hilarious, rip-roaring romp from a talented, utterly original novelist.<BR></DIV>