Pete Hautman

Desperate for cash, small town cop Joe Crow takes a security job that could cost him his life Joe Crow celebrates his thirty-third birthday in his patrol car, watching for speeders and sniffing fat lines of cocaine. A depressed cop with a faltering marriage, a rotten stomach, and an increasingly expensive drug habit, Crow is just looking for a drink and a poker game when he steps into Birdy's. Instead, he meets a man who might be able to save his...

Jen and Wes do not "meet cute." They do not fall in love at first sight. They do not swoon with scorching desire. They do not believe that they are instant soul mates destined to be together forever. This is not that kind of love story. Instead, they just hang around in each other's orbits...until eventually they collide. And even after that happens, they're still not sure where it will go. Especially when Jen starts to pity-date one of Wes's friends,...

Targeted by drug addicts, a carnival taco vendor must defend his fortune After years playing professional poker, Axel Speeter knows not to trust people. Retired from the table, this no-nonsense old salt makes ends meet by selling tacos at the Minnesota State Fair, and he's got two things on his mind: developing a state-of-the-art burrito, and keeping an eye on the $260,000 he's got squirreled away in coffee cans inside his room at the Motel 6. He's...

The first time his father disappeared, Tucker Feye had just turned thirteen. The Reverend Feye simply climbed on the roof to fix a shingle, let out a scream, and vanished - only to walk up the driveway an hour later, looking older and worn, with a strange girl named Lahlia in tow. In the months that followed, Tucker watched his father grow distant and his once loving mother slide into madness. But then both of his parents disappear. Now in the care...

A lottery jackpot winner decides to turn one of her millions into a bounty for the man who left her Barbaraannette is decorating a cake when the Powerball numbers come in. They sound suspiciously familiar, but she finishes the cake before checking her ticket, knowing that if she wins her hands will be too shaky to handle the icing. This quiet Midwesterner has just won nine million dollars-and nine million kinds of trouble to go with it.   Accepting...

Lita is the writer. Adam is the entrepreneur. They are Just Friends.So Adam would never sell copies of a self-help book before he'd even written it. And Lita would never try to break up Adam's relationship with Blair, the skankiest girl at school. They'd never sabotage their friends Emily and Dennis. Lita would never date a guy related to a girl she can't stand. They'd never steal each other's blog posts. And Adam would never end up in a fist fight...

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...

"Ginger Crump solves the mystery of why people in her town are forgetting things they should definitely know"--

"'Hatred combined with lies and secrets can break the world." Grandpa Zach used to say that before he died, but Stuey never really knew what he meant. It was kind of like how he used to talk about quantum physics, or how he used to say ghosts haunted the overgrown golf course. But then one day, when Stuey and his best friend, Elly Rose, are playing in the deadfall in the middle of the woods, something totally unbelievable happens. As Stuey and Elly...