Kirjahaku

The author of ECHOES OF A KILLING is back with a collection of stories about damaged people who can't control their self-destructive urges. MALFUNCTION includes unsettling tales of a serial killer returning to his Nicaraguan village, a drunken street clown turning violent in El Salvador, and a Brooklyn man whose life goes from bad to nightmarish over a mistaken identity, among many others. These are stories where the dark shadows of human nature collide with the naive and trusting among us, with startling consequences.

Sam returns in CAME UP HARD as a hardened and conflicted New Yorker who falls in with a dangerous, if eccentric fraternity of con men. Complicit in a series of street hustles and robberies gone wrong in this sequel to ECHOES OF A KILLING, Sam soon finds himself cornered and fighting to stay alive and out of prison.

Sam Verbicaro is a man with no future and an unspeakable past. A fugitive with the entire country closing in. A perfect recruit for a global crime syndicate that needs an expendable assassin on the payroll.

Ruthlessly pushed by his fame-obsessed parents to master every instrument he touched, Jimmy could translate the most complex classical music from piano to guitar. Dreams of Julliard, record contracts, and world tours were within reach. Only one problem: Jimmy the music prodigy suffered from crippling stage fright. Defeated and bitter, his parents abandoned him to the New York City streets. Desperate for a way out and finding a muse in his fianc , he produces a master tape of bulletproof rock hits, the distillation of thousands of hours of practice and songcraft that he believes will revolutionize music. Is the world ready for Jimmy Strings? Is Jimmy Strings ready for the world?

Echoes of a Killing tells the gripping story of Sam, a teenager whose regimented life plunges into chaos after witnessing his family's grisly murders in 1980s New York City. Inconsolable, relentlessly pugnacious, drug-addicted, and green-Mohawked, he disappears into the Lower East Side's vicious hardcore punk scene. Finally facing his demons, he opens up to Stiggy, a sage pizzeria owner who convinces him he'll be dead without radical changes. Sam soon agrees to visit Stiggy's friend Lucho in Nicaragua, a sweltering, war-torn land of shark-filled lakes and jungle-covered volcanoes, where his accumulated street smarts face their harshest test. Ted Gogoll's debut novel provokes the reader, forcing them off the sidelines into material they don't want to think about. Murder, mayhem, abandoned street kids, drink, drugs, self-exile, hustled women-Echoes of a Killing will produce visceral reactions.