Download or read book The Boy Detective Fails written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “charming” and melancholic novel, a former child sleuth “investigates the hard-to-crack case of Lost Innocence” (Entertainment Weekly). A Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist Book of the Year In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St. Vitus’ Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes. Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy befriends two lonely, extraordinary children—one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, he experiences the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job; encounters a beautiful, desperate pickpocket; and confronts the nearly impossible solution to his sister’s case. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown. “Haunted by the mystery of his sister’s death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible . . . The story of Billy’s search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up.” —Publishers Weekly “The author gives Billy a gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the Convocation of Evil at a local hotel (‘Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?’). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the author takes his compulsive investigator at face value.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Comedic, imaginative, empathic . . . investigates the precincts of grief [and] our longing to combat chaos with reason.” —Booklist

Download or read book The Boy Detective Fails written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As children Billy Argo and his sister Caroline solve a series of mysteries using a detective kit, but as an adult, Billy faces an uncertain future after his sister commits suicide and he finds himself trying to connect with the world again after a stay in

Download or read book The Boy Detective Fails written by Joe Meno and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As children Billy Argo and his sister Caroline solve a series of mysteries using a detective kit, but as an adult, Billy faces an uncertain future after his sister commits suicide and he finds himself trying to connect with the world again after a stay in

Download or read book Hairstyles of the Damned Punk Planet Books written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2004-09-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut novel from Akashic’s new imprint, Punk Planet Books. Also check out the smash hits How the Hula Girl Sings, Tender as Hellfire, and The Boy Detective Fails. “A funny, hard-rocking first-person tale of teenage angst and discovery.” —Booklist “Captures the loose, fun, recklessness of midwestern punk.” —MTV.com Hairstyles of the Damned is an honest, true-life depiction of growing up punk on Chicago’s south side: a study in the demons of racial intolerance, Catholic school conformism, and class repression. It is the story of the riotous exploits of Brian, a high school burnout, and his best friend, Gretchen, a punk rock girl fond of brawling. Based on the actual events surrounding a Chicago high school’s segregated prom, this work of fiction unflinchingly pursues the truth in discovering what it means to be your own person.

Download or read book How the Hula Girl Sings written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strange and darkly magical, this wonderful novel begins where most pulp fiction usually ends, with the vivid episode of the terrible crime itself. Three years later, Luce Lemay, out on parole for the awful tragedy, does his best to find hope: in a new job at the local Gas-N-Go; in his companion and fellow ex-con Junior Breen; and finally in the arms of the lovely but reckless Charlene. 'A wonderful accomplishment. The power is in the writing. Mr. Meno is a superb craftsman.' - Hubert Selby, Jr.

Download or read book Office Girl written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This quirky tale of two young artists in love in 1990s Chicago is “a gorgeous little indie romance . . . A sweetheart of a novel” (Kirkus Reviews). In the last year of the twentieth century, Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker who’s most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art movement, in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the tedious and the obvious. Set just before the end of one world and the beginning of another, this is the story of two people trying to capture a moment in the face of an uncertain future. Named a Best Book of the Year by Daily Candy and chosen as a favorite fiction work of the year in The Believer’s readers’ poll, Office Girl “reads as a parody of art-school types . . . and as a tribute to their devil-may-care spirit” (The New York Times Book Review). “Mr. Meno excels at capturing the way that budding love can make two people feel brave and freshly alive to their surroundings . . . The story of the relationship has a sweet simplicity.” —The Wall Street Journal “Meno’s tender, hip, funny, and imaginative portrayal of two Chicago misfits . . . dramatizes that anguished and awkward passage between legal age and actual adulthood.” —Booklist Features black-and-white illustrations by artist Cody Hudson and photographs by Todd Baxter.

Download or read book Demons in the Spring written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features a collection of short stories about the surreal yet dark lives of individuals considered outcasts, misfits, or peculiar to loved ones or the outside world.

Download or read book Tender As Hellfire written by Joe Meno and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2007-08-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning author of The Boy Detective Fails: A novel of two brothers growing up on the other side of the tracks. “A trailer park in the Plains town of Tenderloin is the setting of this crusty coming-of-age debut, which features some of the liveliest characters just this side of believable that one is apt to meet in a contemporary novel. The first-person narrator is a moral but susceptible eleven-year-old called Dough, who lusts after his fifth-grade teacher and idolizes his trouble-making older brother, Pill-Bug. The boys, who are new to the town and shamed by the stigma of living in a trailer, were named by a father who wanted them to remain tough and who ended up dying while smuggling cigarettes along a Texas highway. Their mother and her new boyfriend, French, are low-life swingers, allowing the siblings to spend nights with Val, who entertains a slew of men but whom Dough worships as a virginal Madonna. Dough’s own adoring friend is Lottie, a slightly deranged girl who offers Dough a gift of one of her taxidermist father’s specimens; meanwhile, Pill-Bug earns a special affection from Lunna, a high school floozy. Each character is vividly described . . . Meno’s passionate new voice makes him a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Timmy Failure Now Look What You ve Done written by Stephan Pastis and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The clueless, comically self-confident kid detective returns in a sequel to the New York Times bestseller Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. "When you lose hope, find it." —Timmy Failure He doesn’t like to pull rank. To reveal that he’s this guy: Timmy Failure, founder, president, and CEO of the greatest detective agency in town, perhaps the nation. But he is. And he’s about to crack the biggest case of his generation: a school competition to find a stolen globe. It’s his ticket to bringing home a $500 prize, which is guaranteed to set him up for life. But someone is clearly trying to game the system. Hoodwink. Con. Defraud. So it’s up to Timmy Failure, with the dubious help of Total, his lazy polar-bear partner, and his unlikely new ally, eccentric Great-Aunt Colander, to find a way to avenge these shenanigans. Defeat this injustice. If he can only get his entry form in on time.

Download or read book Camouflage written by Bill Pronzini and published by Forge Books. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nameless may not like David Virden, but the case is simple enough: find his ex-wife—and they know where she is. Deliver some papers to her and it's all done. But she refuses the papers, sends a message to Virden to never contact her again, and slams the door. His colleague, Tamara, tells Nameless that Virden threatens to sue, stops payment on his checks, and claims that the woman they located isn't his wife. Then he disappears and his fiancée hires Nameless to find out why. Clearly, someone is trying to make Nameless the monkey in the middle. The investigation that Nameless's partner, Jake Runyon, has to undertake is personal...and urgent. His girlfriend Bryn's son, a pawn in a bitter divorce settlement, is being beaten and every indication is that his father is responsible. Is he bitter enough to take out his frustrations on a young boy, to fracture his arm? Then events turn on Jake: a dead woman, a bloodied Bryn, and a scared and silent child force him to look in other, darker, more deadly directions. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Detectives in Togas written by Henry Winterfeld and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to save a boy wrongly accused, a group of young friends living in ancient Rome search for the culprit who scrawled graffiti on the temple wall.

Download or read book Between Everything and Nothing written by Joe Meno and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, this harrowing true story of two young men from Ghana and their quest for asylum highlights not only the unjust political system of their homeland, but the chaos of the United States’ failing immigration system. Long before their chance meeting at a Minneapolis bus station, Ghanaian asylum seekers Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal had already crossed half the world in search of a new home. Seidu, who identifies as bisexual, lived under constant threat of exposure and violence in a country where same–sex acts are illegal. Razak’s life was also threatened after corrupt officials contrived to steal his rightful inheritance. Forced to flee their homeland, both men embarked on separate odysseys through the dangerous jungles and bureaucracies of South, Central, and North America. Like generations of asylum seekers before, they presented themselves legally at the U.S. border, hoping for sanctuary. Instead they were imprisoned in private detention facilities, released only after their asylum pleas were denied. Fearful of returning to Ghana, Seidu and Razak saw no choice but to attempt one final border crossing. Their journey north to Canada in the harsh, unforgiving winter proved more tragic than anything they had experienced before. Based on extensive interviews, Joe Meno’s intimate, novelistic account builds upon the international media attention Seidu and Razak’s story has already received, highlighting the harrowing journey of asylum seekers everywhere while adding dimension to one of the greatest humanitarian concerns facing the world.

Download or read book The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs written by Richard Yancey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the critically acclaimed author of The Highly Effective Detective comes this deliciously funny follow-up featuring the lovable but bumbling P.I. Teddy Ruzak. After the state shuts him down for practicing detection without a license, Teddy thinks his investigating days are over. Then he discovers the body of a man outside his office, a homeless man whom he had befriended just the day before. Teddy suspects foul play, but the police think he's barking up the wrong tree. Then his normal befuddlement is exponentially enhanced by two very unexpected--and potentially very dangerous--visitors from the pound. With his signature wit and gripping suspense, Richard Yancey has written yet another irresistible page-turner. It is sure to win him and Teddy Ruzak a whole new series of fans.

Download or read book The Son written by Jo Nesbo and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the bestselling Harry Hole series comes an electrifying tale of vengeance set amid Oslo's brutal hierarchy of corruption. “The crime author of the moment.”—The New York Times Book Review Sonny Lofthus has been in prison for almost half his life: serving time for crimes he didn't commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin—and a stream of fellow prisoners seeking out his Buddha-like absolution. Years earlier Sonny’s father, a corrupt cop, took his own life rather than face exposure. Now Sonny is the center of a vortex of corruption: prison staff, police, lawyers, a desperate priest—all of them focused on keeping him stoned and jailed. When Sonny discovers a shocking truth about his father’s suicide, he makes a brilliant escape and begins hunting down the people respons ible for his and his father’s demise. But he's also being hunted, and by enemies too many to count. Two questions remain: who will get to him first, and what will he do when he’s cornered? Don't miss Jo Nesbo's new thriller, Killing Moon, coming soon!

Download or read book Mistakes Were Made written by and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Resolving to earn so much money that his mother will no longer stress out over the bills, eleven-year-old Timmy Failure launches a detective business with a lazy polar bear partner named Total but finds their enterprise "Total Failure, Inc." challenged by a college-bound spy and a four-foot-tall girl whom Timmy refuses to acknowledge.

Download or read book The Auschwitz Detective written by Jonathan Dunsky and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boy was murdered in Auschwitz. The killer isn't a Nazi. Poland, 1944: Adam Lapid used to be a police detective. Now he's a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz. Reduced to a slave after losing his family in the gas chambers, Adam struggles to find a reason to carry on living. But when a boy is found murdered inside the camp, Adam is given the chance to be a detective again. Ordered to discover the identity of the killer, Adam must employ all his wits to solve the mystery while surviving the perils of Auschwitz. And he'd better catch the killer soon because the punishment for failure is death.

Download or read book The Department of Sensitive Crimes written by Alexander McCall Smith and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Swedish criminal justice system, certain cases are considered especially strange and difficult, in Malmö, the dedicated detectives who investigate these crimes are members of an elite squad known as the Sensitive Crimes Division. These are their stories. The first case: the small matter of a man stabbed in the back of the knee. Who would perpetrate such a crime and why? Next: a young woman's imaginary boyfriend goes missing. But how on earth do you search for someone who doesn't exist? And in the final investigation: eerie secrets that are revealed under a full moon may not seem so supernatural in the light of day. No case is too unusual, too complicated, or too, well insignificant for this squad to solve. The team: Ulf “the Wolf” Varg, the top dog, thoughtful and diligent; Anna Bengsdotter, who's in love with Varg's car (and possibly Varg too); Carl Holgersson, who likes nothing more than filling out paperwork; and Erik Nykvist, who is deeply committed to fly fishing. With the help of a rather verbose local police officer, this crack team gets to the bottom of cases other detectives can't or won't bother to handle. Equal parts hilarious and heartening, The Department of Sensitive Crimes is a tour de farce from a true master.