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Catchpenny

A novel

Author Charlie Huston
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Knopf | Vintage
On sale Apr 09, 2024 | 400 Pages | 9780593685099
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A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

"I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.” —Stephen King

Sidney Catchpenny has had a bad run. Laid low by a years-long bout of debilitating depression, he’s all but squandered his reputation as one of the most uniquely talented thieves in LA. There aren’t many who can do what Sid does. He’s a sly, a special kind of crook with the uncanny ability to move through mirrors. And the spoils he’s after are equally unusual. Forget jewels and cold cash—Sid steals curiosities—items imbued with powerful mojo, a magical essence gleaned from the accumulated emotion that seeps into interesting, though often banal objects. That spot on the carpet where your old dog used to lay at your feet? The passed-down family heirloom nobody wants but everybody refuses to throw away? These curiosities are full of mojo, which is both the currency of the criminal underground and the secret source of magic in the world.

When a friend from Sid’s past comes looking for his help with an important client, and the chance to pay off old debts presents itself, Sid seizes the opportunity … as best he can. But the case he stumbles into is more complicated than it seems, and it portends a seismic shift in the world, one that will leave no one untouched. As the fog of his depression begins to lift, Sid sees connections everywhere he looks, and the once disparate threads of the case—a missing teenage girl, an entire bedroom saturated with mojo, and Sid’s own long-dead wife—begin to coalesce.
“I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.”
—Stephen King

“A supernatural thriller set in a mystically bent Los Angeles of dark enchantment, looking-glass larceny, and apocalyptic gaming. . . . A hallucinatory adventure rife with the kind of extreme violence, false leads, and hairbreadth escapes you find in thrillers only amped up with 1980s-style rock lyrics, video game arcana, and a mysterious force dubbed ‘mojo.’ . . . Huston’s writing packs a rock band’s hard-driving propulsion along with an electric guitar’s plaintive lyricism. . . . If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel’s loaded with it.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Dark, soulful, laconic—like the very best of Tim Powers and Jim Thompson, thrown together in an L.A. dive bar after-hours. This is smart fantasy for our times, resonant and real, a love letter to youth and dreams and a biting critique of what the modern world is doing to both. Join down-at-heel, ruined dreamer Sidney Catchpenny and his ghosts on a turbo-charged narrative ride through the mean streets of a weirdly tilted noir, and find out what it means, once more, to care. Spread the word: Charlie Huston is back, and it’s a triumphant return. Until I read Catchpenny, I never realized how much I’d missed his voice.”
—Richard K. Morgan, award-winning author of Altered Carbon

“Gripping and deeply imaginative, Catchpenny has the soul of a classic LA noir and the beating heart of an epic fantasy. Filled with literal magic and an unforgettable cast of characters, this novel pulsates with life and heat, anchored by a lovable anti-hero you can’t help but root for. Much like the eponymous Sid Catchpenny, a thief who can travel through mirrors, this book grabbed me by the collar and pulled me across the threshold of its world. A dazzling joyride of a book.”
—Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog
© Virginia Louise Smith
Charlie Huston is the author of the bestsellers The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and The Shotgun Rule, as well as the Henry Thompson trilogy, the Joe Pitt casebooks, and several titles for Marvel Comics. He lives with his family in Los Angeles. View titles by Charlie Huston

About

A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

"I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.” —Stephen King

Sidney Catchpenny has had a bad run. Laid low by a years-long bout of debilitating depression, he’s all but squandered his reputation as one of the most uniquely talented thieves in LA. There aren’t many who can do what Sid does. He’s a sly, a special kind of crook with the uncanny ability to move through mirrors. And the spoils he’s after are equally unusual. Forget jewels and cold cash—Sid steals curiosities—items imbued with powerful mojo, a magical essence gleaned from the accumulated emotion that seeps into interesting, though often banal objects. That spot on the carpet where your old dog used to lay at your feet? The passed-down family heirloom nobody wants but everybody refuses to throw away? These curiosities are full of mojo, which is both the currency of the criminal underground and the secret source of magic in the world.

When a friend from Sid’s past comes looking for his help with an important client, and the chance to pay off old debts presents itself, Sid seizes the opportunity … as best he can. But the case he stumbles into is more complicated than it seems, and it portends a seismic shift in the world, one that will leave no one untouched. As the fog of his depression begins to lift, Sid sees connections everywhere he looks, and the once disparate threads of the case—a missing teenage girl, an entire bedroom saturated with mojo, and Sid’s own long-dead wife—begin to coalesce.

Reviews

“I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.”
—Stephen King

“A supernatural thriller set in a mystically bent Los Angeles of dark enchantment, looking-glass larceny, and apocalyptic gaming. . . . A hallucinatory adventure rife with the kind of extreme violence, false leads, and hairbreadth escapes you find in thrillers only amped up with 1980s-style rock lyrics, video game arcana, and a mysterious force dubbed ‘mojo.’ . . . Huston’s writing packs a rock band’s hard-driving propulsion along with an electric guitar’s plaintive lyricism. . . . If mojo is another word for magic, then this novel’s loaded with it.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Dark, soulful, laconic—like the very best of Tim Powers and Jim Thompson, thrown together in an L.A. dive bar after-hours. This is smart fantasy for our times, resonant and real, a love letter to youth and dreams and a biting critique of what the modern world is doing to both. Join down-at-heel, ruined dreamer Sidney Catchpenny and his ghosts on a turbo-charged narrative ride through the mean streets of a weirdly tilted noir, and find out what it means, once more, to care. Spread the word: Charlie Huston is back, and it’s a triumphant return. Until I read Catchpenny, I never realized how much I’d missed his voice.”
—Richard K. Morgan, award-winning author of Altered Carbon

“Gripping and deeply imaginative, Catchpenny has the soul of a classic LA noir and the beating heart of an epic fantasy. Filled with literal magic and an unforgettable cast of characters, this novel pulsates with life and heat, anchored by a lovable anti-hero you can’t help but root for. Much like the eponymous Sid Catchpenny, a thief who can travel through mirrors, this book grabbed me by the collar and pulled me across the threshold of its world. A dazzling joyride of a book.”
—Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog

Author

© Virginia Louise Smith
Charlie Huston is the author of the bestsellers The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and The Shotgun Rule, as well as the Henry Thompson trilogy, the Joe Pitt casebooks, and several titles for Marvel Comics. He lives with his family in Los Angeles. View titles by Charlie Huston

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