Pete Hautman

"National Book Award winner Pete Hautman explores a friendship like no other--and the universal truth that dogs make life better, especially for underdogs. Evan doesn't seem to fit in at school or at home. He goes out of his way to avoid attention. He sits at the back of the bus, keeps his head down in class, and keeps to himself. But when a burr-covered border collie--a survivor with a gut instinct about the Boy--starts following him around and joining him on his runs, Evan's simple duck-and-dodge existence becomes a lot more complicated ... a lot more like life. Evolving from wary companions to steadfast friends, Evan and the dog run fast and far together, thwart an abusive dog breeder and the school bully, and find the courage to stand up for themselves and to open up to those who matter most. Narrated in alternating viewpoints, this relatable contemporary novel with classic coming-of-age themes has all the hope, pathos, and emotional complexity that mark Pete Hautman's books for middle-grade readers--and is a deeply satisfying read for animal lovers."

National Book Award winner Pete Hautman explores a friendship like no other--and the universal truth that dogs make life better, especially for underdogs. Evan doesn't seem to fit in at school or at home. He goes out of his way to avoid attention. He sits at the back of the bus, keeps his head down in class, and keeps to himself. But when a burr-covered border collie--a survivor with a gut instinct about the Boy--starts following him around and joining him on his runs, Evan's simple duck-and-dodge existence becomes a lot more complicated . . . a lot more like life. Evolving from wary companions to steadfast friends, Evan and the dog run fast and far together, thwart an abusive dog breeder and the school bully, and find the courage to stand up for themselves and to open up to those who matter most. Narrated in alternating viewpoints, this relatable contemporary novel with classic coming-of-age themes has all the hope, pathos, and emotional complexity that mark Pete Hautman's books for middle-grade readers--and is a deeply satisfying read for animal lovers.

"Exemplary storytelling. . . . There are dark corners to explore and challenging lessons to be learned, but the overall effect is magical." -- Booklist (starred review) For Annie's tenth birthday, her papa gives her a pad of paper, some colored pencils, and the Klimas family secret. It's called the nuodeema burna, or eater of sins. Every time Annie misbehaves, she has to write down her transgression and stick the paper into a hidey-hole in the floor of their house. But Annie's inheritance has a dark side: with each paper fed to the burna, she feels less guilty about the mean things she says and does. As a plague of rats threatens her small suburban town and the mystery of her birthright grows, Annie--caught in a cycle of purging her misdeeds--begins to stop growing. It is only when she travels to her family's home country of Litvania to learn more about the burna that Annie uncovers the magnitude of the truth. Gripping and emotionally complex, National Book Award winner Pete Hautman's inventive yarn for middle-grade readers draws on magical realism to explore coming-of-age and the path to moral responsibility.

In this captivating story about loss, love, and changing your ways, National Book Award--winning author Pete Hautman imbues the classic road trip novel with clever wit and heartfelt musings about life and death. Steven Gerald Gabel--a.k.a. Stiggy--needs to get out of Minnesota. His father recently took his own life, his mother is a shell of the person she used to be, and his sort-of-girlfriend ghosted him and skipped town. What does he have left to stick around for? Armed with his mom's credit card and a tourist map of Great River Road, Stiggy sets off in his dad's car. The only problem is, life on his own isn't exactly what he expected and, soon enough, he finds himself at a crossroads: keep running from his demons, or let them hitch a ride back home with him.

Competitive eating vies with family expectations in a funny, heartfelt novel for middle-grade readers by National Book Award winner Pete Hautman. David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, he'll have to do better: he's going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl, the world's greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it, because he borrowed his mom's credit card and accidentally spent $2,000 on it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if training to be a competitive eater weren't enough, he's also got to keep an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in labels, would be labeled autistic, but they don't, so they just label him Mal). And don't even get started on the new weirdness going on between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman has cooked up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put down.

Competitive eating vies with family expectations in a funny, heartfelt novel for middle-grade readers by National Book Award winner Pete Hautman. David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, he'll have to do better: he's going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl, the world's greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it, because he borrowed his mom's credit card and accidentally spent $2,000 on it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if training to be a competitive eater weren't enough, he's also got to keep an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in labels, would be labeled autistic, but they don't, so they just label him Mal). And don't even get started on the new weirdness going on between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman has cooked up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put down.

"Hautman sensitively and gracefully explores powerful ideas about faith. . . . Thought-provoking and quietly captivating." -- Booklist (starred review) Twelve square miles of paradise make up Nodd, the land of the Grace. It is all seventeen-year-old Jacob knows. Beyond the fence lies the World, a wicked, terrible place, and when the Archangel Zerachiel descends from Heaven, only the Grace will be spared the horrors of the Apocalypse. But something rotten is taking hold in paradise. When Jacob meets Lynna, a girl from the ranch just across the fence, he is tempted to sample the forbidden Worldly pleasures--and his faith, his devotion, and his grip on reality will all be tested.

People all over Flinkwater are losing their memories--and it's up to Ginger to figure out what's going on--in this sequel to the "quirky, dryly funny" (Booklist) The Flinkwater Factor from National Book Award-winning author Pete Hautman. Absentmindedness in Flinkwater, a town overflowing with eccentric scientists and engineers, is nothing new. Recently, however, the number of confused, forgetful citizens has been increasing, and no one seems to know why. Ginger Crump figures it's none of her business. She has her own problems. Like the strange cat that's been following her around--a cat that seems to be able to read. And the report for school due Monday. And the fact that every digital book in Flinkwater has been vandalized by a fanatical censor, forcing Ginger to the embarrassingly retro alternative of reading books printed on dead trees. But when Ginger's true love and future husband Billy Bates completely forgets who she is, things suddenly get serious, and Ginger swings into action.

National Book Award winner Pete Hautman weaves several diverging time streams into one satisfying masterwork in this stunning and revelatory series finale. In a far distant future, Tucker Feye and the inscrutable Lia find themselves atop a crumbling pyramid in an abandoned city. In present-day Hopewell, Tucker's uncle Kosh faces armed resistance and painful memories as he attempts to help a terrorized woman named Emma, who is being held captive by a violent man. And on a train platform in 1997, a seventeen-year-old Kosh is given an instruction that will change his life, and the lives of others, forever. Tucker, Lia, and Kosh must evade the pursuit of maggot-like Timesweeps, battle Master Gheen's cult of Lambs, all while they puzzle out the enigmatic Boggsians as they search for one another and the secrets of the diskos. Who built them? Who is destroying them? Where -- and when -- will it all end?

Racing to save a friend's daughter from a threatening marriage, Joe Crow finds himself caught in the middle of a conflict between the would-be groom and a murderous cult as he faces cultists, carnies, and cocaine dealers. Poker-playing ex-cop Joe Crow has been dealt some rotten hands in his life, but he's been lucky enough to survive them all. But when Axel Speeter starts begging for help to save his girlfriend's daughter, Carmen, from a dangerous marriage, Crow suspects his luck is about to run out. Carmen has just gotten engaged to Hyatt Hilton, a onetime drug pusher who sells bootlegged Evian to pay his bills. When Speeter asks Crow to make sure Hilton is on the straight and narrow, it becomes evident that he is involved in something much more dangerous than fake designer water. As Hilton is dangerously close to becoming a member of a New Age cult convinced of having found the secret to immortality and not scared of killing to prove it, Crow finds himself in the middle of a dangerous fight as he struggles to bring Carmen to safety.

Pete Hautman, the acclaimed author of Drawing Dead and Short Money, returns with his funniest, fastest, most irresistible thriller yet with the story of seventy-three-year-old Axel Speeter and his final winner-takes-all gamble with a pair of crooks after his life savings. With his cross-country poker-playing days closing, Axel Speeter has his affairs in order and is ready to settle down. He owns a taco concession at the Minnesota State Fair, and keeps his sometimes lover, Sophie Roman, and her spectacularly endowed daughter, Carmen, on the payroll. He's made a nice home for himself at the Motel 6 six, where he holds his stash of $260,000 in seven coffee cans scattered around the room. But when Carmen gets a new guy in her life, a skinhead ex-convict named James Dean, the two of them decide they want a piece of Axel's stash. They may not be the smartest couple around, but how tough can it be to take a few coffee cans away from an old guy? Carmen and James are in for a surprise, though, as they learn Axel's got one more hand to play--and the loser pays with his life.

Desperate for cash, addicted to prescription drugs, and mourning his failed marriage, ex-cop Joe Crow takes a security job that could cost him his life in this hilariously thrilling mystery by Pete Hautman. A depressed ex-cop with a dead-end job, a faltering marriage, a rotten stomach, and an increasingly expensive drug habit, Joe Crow is just looking for a drink and poker game on the night he steps into Birdy's. Instead, he comes face to face with the man who might either save his life or absolutely destroy it. Crow first notices Dr. Nelson Bellwether when a chair is smashed over his head. A surgeon with a big mouth, a gambler's personality, and some serious debt to the IRS, Bellwether is on his way to deep trouble. Bringing him along for the ride when he hires him as a body guard, Crow finds himself in the midst of trophy elk's murder, a dual kidnapping, and a six-hundred-pound tiger, making the small town cop wish he had a bodyguard of his own.

From Simon & Schuster, Drawing Dead is Pete Hautman's novel about an ex-cop and his latest, chaotic case. In a fast-paced comic thriller set in Minneapolis, ex-cop Jim Crow finds himself in over his head in a scheme replete with poker-playing hustlers, cocaine, and two con artists selling shares of a rare comic book collection.

Consumption of alcohol: Illegal. Football and other "violent" sports: Illegal. Ownership of guns, chain saws, and/or large dogs: Illegal. Body piercings, tattoos: Illegal. It's late in the twenty-first century, and the United Safer States of America (USSA) has become a nation obsessed with safety. For Bo Marsten, a teenager who grew up in the USSA, it's all good. He knows the harsh laws were created to protect the people. But when Bo's temper flares out of control and he's sentenced to three years of manual labor, he's not so down with the law anymore. Bo's forced to live and work in a factory in the Canadian tundra. The warden running the place is totally out of his mind, and cares little for his inmates' safety. Bo will have to decide what's worse: a society that locks people up for road rage, or a prison where the wrong move could make you polar bear food.

"In 2028, a deadly Flu virus ravages the earth. Only one in two thousand survive the virus, and these "Survivors" are rarely left unaffected. By 2038, only 38 million people remain on Earth. Most of them live in small communities, ever fearful of outsiders who might bring the deadly Flu." Ceej Kane lives with his uncle and his Survivor sister Harryette in an abandoned hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon. His quiet, boring life suddenly becomes a desperate adventure when Uncle and Harryette disappear. Searching for them, Ceej and his only friend, Tim, are attacked by the Kinka, a renegade band of half-mad Survivors who spread the Flu to make more of their own. Worse yet, it appears that Harryette has joined them. Fleeing deep into the Canyon, a narrow land of ghosts and ancient secrets, Ceej and Tim meet Bella, a mysterious Hopi girl. She has been searching the canyon for the Sipapuni, a mystical portal that the Hopi believe leads to another world. Tim thinks Bella is crazy, but Ceej is not so sure. Maybe there is a way out of this Flu-ravaged world. But first they must find out what happened to Uncle, and they must save Harryette from the Kinka -- if she wants to be saved. As with his earlier novels, "Mr. Was" and "Stone Cold, " acclaimed author Pete Hautman pushes the boundaries of young adult fiction. Combining action, science fiction, and spirituality, "Hole in the Sky" is the rarest of novels: a thrilling page-turner that will make you think.

""All I want is to play cards, to run my fingers over those slick, hard surfaces, to feel that cold power flowing in and out through my hands and eyes."" Dennis Doyle is feeling lucky. His landscaping business is thriving, his girlfriend loves him, he's got money in the bank, and the city bus that ran into him that morning left him alive and well. Soon he'll turn sixteen and buy himself a car. Everything is going his way. So when his buddies ask him to play poker, Denn says yes. The cards are dealt, the money is bet...and the worst possible thing happens. Denn wins. And he likes it.

From award-winning author Pete Hautman and Mary Logue comes a lively mystery series. When high school student Alicia Camden suddenly disappears, the small town of Bloodwater is in shock. And it's up to Roni Delicata, reporter for the school newspaper The Bloodwater Pump, and her brilliant sidekick, Brian Bain, to figure out what's going on. With suspects all around them and suspicions high, Roni and Brian risk their lives -- and a few groundings from their parents -- to get to the bottom of things. But can they find Alicia and solve the mystery before it's too late? Full of suspense and humor, readers will love to watch the hilarious relationship between Roni and Brian as they save the day.

You could say that my railroad, the Madham Line, is almost the most important thing in my life. Next to Andy Morrow, my best friend. Lots of people think Doug Hanson is a freak -- he gets beat up after school, and the girl of his dreams calls him a worm. Doug's only refuge is creating an elaborate bridge for the model railroad in his basement and hanging out with his best friend, Andy Morrow, a popular football star who could date any girl in school. Doug and Andy talk about everything -- except what happened at the Tuttle place a few years back. It does not matter to Andy that we live in completely different realities. I'm Andy's best friend. It does not matter to Andy that we hardly ever actually do anything together. As Doug retreats deeper and deeper into his own reality, long-buried secrets threaten to destroy both Doug and Andy -- and everything else in Doug's fragile world.