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Book Cover for: Felony Juggler, Penn Jillette

Felony Juggler

Penn Jillette

IN THE EARLY 1970s, Poe is living a nomadic life, hopping trains, sleeping rough, and juggling to feed himself. He eventually settles in Philadelphia and masters his street act before ever-growing crowds. When one of his fellow buskers presents him with an opportunity--a bank heist--he should have refused, an innocent bystander is killed, and he splits town a felon.

Unable to resist the lure of performing, he resurfaces halfway across the country as a regular act in a Renaissance Fair(e). Unfortunately, his notoriety outs him to the criminal organization who believes he took something of importance from them during the bank heist. Using all of the wit and misdirection that has made him the best street performer anyone has ever seen, Poe must outsmart and outmaneuver them in order to return to the peaceful life of juggling.

Drawing from his own youthful experience as a nomadic juggler--before earning international acclaim as one half of the magic duo Penn & Teller--Jillette's madcap thriller is an authentic and often hilarious glimpse into the pleasures and perils of performing on the street.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
  • Publish Date: May 6th, 2025
  • Pages: 240
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.00in - 1.10in - 0.70lb
  • EAN: 9781636142388
  • Categories: CrimeLiteraryComing of Age

About the Author

Jillette, Penn: - PENN JILLETTE is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy Award-winning magic duo Penn & Teller, whose live show spent years on Broadway and is now the longest-running headlining show in Las Vegas. The pair have their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Jillette cohosted the Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit! which was nominated for thirteen Emmy Awards and won him a Writers Guild Award. He currently cohosts the CW Network competition series Penn & Teller: Fool Us! His weekly podcast, Penn's Sunday School, was the number one downloaded podcast on iTunes during its debut week and was named by iTunes as Best New Comedy Podcast. He is the author of numerous books, including the nonfiction New York Times best-selling books Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales and God No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales; the essay collection Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday!; and the novels Sock, Random, and Felony Juggler.

Praise for this book

Jillette's latest novel, Random, is about a young man who inherits his father's crushing debt to a loan shark and turns to dice--and other dangerous measures--to dig himself out. That the dice bring him luck sends him a new philosophy of leaving decisions both big and small up to chance.-- "New York Times, on Random"
Penn Jillette is an atheist, triple-goddamned lunatic, and his book is a glorious Las Vegas lunatic paean to chance and adventure--a page-turning, scabrous, hilarious ride into randomness.--Neil Gaiman, on Random
Jillette (Presto!), the magician best known as the verbal half of Penn and Teller, unveils an entertaining Las Vegas picaresque . . . Jillette's acerbic wit and perfect pacing keep this afloat. Readers will hope Jillette has more fiction up his sleeves.-- "Publishers Weekly, on Random"
Penn Jillette is half of Penn & Teller, the longest-running magic show in Las Vegas. This is his crime-fiction debut, and he has put together a wild story set in Sin City that is sinfully diverting . . . [A] crackerjack caper.-- "Booklist, on Random"
Jillette is one of our weirder national treasures. [His] unironic hero is Bobby Ingersoll, a nobody who makes his living driving strip club ads up and down the Strip . . . After accidentally ripping off some gangbangers during a botched robbery, Bobby drops it all on a roll of the dice and suddenly finds himself a multimillionaire with an epiphany: 'The Dice now owned Bobby. He owed his life to Chance' . . . An average joe's free-spirited, madcap romp through the last days of American empire.-- "Kirkus Reviews, on Random"
Penn Jillette's tremendous new novel is about juggling. Not just literal juggling--though it is the great American juggling novel--but on every metaphoric level too: moral, sexual, biographical, linguistic. Felony Juggler is deep and hilarious, raunchy, breakneck, entertaining, and thoughtful--everything you'd expect from Penn Jillette.--Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book