The world is running out of water and Sami's father has disappeared. Everything is bad. Then everything changes. Brian, alien from the planet Adonae, arrives and becomes Sami's only friend. When the government orders the aliens rounded up, Sami and her frenemy, Alejandro, save Brian. But they need to get him back to Adonae, while running from police, parents, and a very dangerous goon.Sami Lightfoot is not so thrilled about her life in Paradise, Arizona. To begin with, there is the sixth grade, which is, well, school. Then there is the fact that the world is running out of fresh water, making everything drab, difficult, and scary. Worst of all is that her astrophysicist father has disappeared. Without a trace. So now it’s just Sami and her over-worked mother, and a big hole in her humdrum world. Then an alien boy named Brian—one of fifty-seven refugees from the (supposedly) doomed planet of Adonae—is plopped down in the seat beside her at school. And everything changes. Brian may be an alien, but he is soon the only friend Sami’s got. When the fear-mongering business tycoon, Todd Rover, blames the country’s problems on the aliens, the government orders them rounded up. But Sami and her frenemy, Alejandro, are definitely not going to let that happen to Brian. They spirit him away. But that is not enough, of course. They need to get him back to the safety of his home planet. Outsmarting police, parents, and a relentless and dangerous goon named Mr. Sombra, is one thing. But finding a way to transport Brian back to his home planet is something else. A big something else. All of this would be quite enough adventure for anyone. But, as it turns out, it is only the beginning for Sami.

Joe the Bouncer seeks the killer of NYC's most desirable call girls in the newest caper in "a unique and worthwhile series" (CrimeReads)Expulsed Harvard student and ex-Special Forces operative suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome so severe that it turned him to drug and alcohol abuse, Joe Roth is getting his life back together, living with his grandmother in Queens and taking what should be a simple job as a bouncer at a strip club where he can spend most of his night reading the classics. The only catch is that his childhood friend Gio Caprisi, now head of New York's Italian Mafia, relies on Joe's extra-legal expertise when things get particularly nasty on the streets — where, in an agreement between Gio and the rest of the city's biggest crime syndicates, it's understood that Joe is the sheriff for an industry that doesn't call the cops.Most recently, New York's criminal underworld has been shaken by the disappearance of its most...

RetailThirteen hilarious, moving, and beautifully brutal stories by David Gordon, the award-winning author of Mystery Girl and The Serialist.In these funny, surprising, and touching stories, Gordon gets at the big stuff—art and religion, literature and madness, the supernatural, and the dark fringes of sexuality—in his own unique style, described by novelist Rivka Galchen as “Dashiell Hammett divided by Don DeLillo, to the power of Dostoyevsky—yet still pure David Gordon.”Gordon's creations include ex-gangsters and terrifying writing coaches, Internet girlfriends and bogus memoirists, Chinatown ghosts, and vampires of Queens. “The Amateur” features a cafe encounter with a terrible artist who carries a mind-blowing secret. In the long, beautifully brutal title story, a man numbed by life finds himself flirting with and mourning lost souls in the purgatory of sex chatrooms. The result is both unflinching and hilarious, heartbreaking and life-affirming.

A DARK AND STYLISH PAGE-TURNER FROM A BOLD NEW VOICE IN FICTION Harry Bloch is a struggling writer who pumps out pulpy serial novels--from vampire books to detective stories--under various pseudonyms. But his life begins to imitate his fiction when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Darian Clay, New York City's infamous Photo Killer. Soon, three young women turn up dead, each one murdered in the Photo Killer's gruesome signature style, and Harry must play detective in a real-life murder plot as he struggles to avoid becoming the killer's next victim. Witty, irreverent, and original, The Serialist is a love letter to books--from poetry to pornography--and proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction.

In David Gordon's diabolically imaginative new thriller, The Bouncer, nothing and no one is as expected—from a vial of yellow fragrance to a gangster who moonlights in women's clothes. Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and whose best friend from Catholic school happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest—just one piece of a city-wide sweep aimed at flushing out anyone who might have a lead on the various terrorists whose photos are hanging on the wall under Most Wanted. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a nonstop plot that goes from back-road gun show...