Deuce

J.J., John Shannon's son, is a huge fan of hip-hop artist Yousef al-Salaam, formerly known as Deuce F., who recently converted to Sufism. The musician also happens to be on a terrorist watch list. When al-Salaam is shot dead, John Shannon agrees to investigate.

“Friedman has drawn a vivid picture of the Times Square area and its denizens. He writes about the porn palaces with live sex shows, and the men and women who perform in them, prostitutes and their pimps, the runaways who will likely be the next decade's prostitutes, the clergymen who fight the smut merchants and the cops who feel impotent in the face of the judiciary.”—Publishers Weekly This classic account of the ultra-sleazy, pre-Disneyfied era of Times Square is now the subject of a documentary film of the same name to be theatrically released this year. With this edition, Tales of Times Square returns to print with seven new chapters.

It’s July, and Nicholas Borelli II’s parents are scheduled to spend two weeks on a cruise. Nicholas will spend those two weeks, as he does every summer, at Camp Wannameka. The night before he’s to leave, however, there’s a phone call: thanks to an explosion in the septic system, camp is canceled. The only place for Nicholas to go instead is to his grandmother’s house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York. Nicholas’s father grew up in Brooklyn, but you’d hardly know it. An Italian dinner at Nicholas’s house in the suburbs is whole wheat pasta, organic tomato sauce, and, if he’s lucky, a tofu meatball. And Brooklyn? Well, Brooklyn is the place his father left and never talks about. Nicholas has never been there, and he doesn’t want to go now. But when Nicholas tastes his grandma Tutti’s meatballs for the first time, gets a nickname from his uncle Frankie, and makes a friend in the neighborhood, his feelings about Brooklyn–and family–begin to change.

Family tensions escalate when Pete, A.K.A. Philippa, A.K.A. Phil abruptly moves to a new city. Gilda Peterborough has always worried about her twin, but when Pete deletes his Facebook page, she is doubly concerned. Pete, A.K.A. Philippa, A.K.A. Phil, is intersex, and Gilda credits all of Pete's social problems with this biological fact. As far as Pete is concerned, however, the problems all lie with Gilda, who is constantly on his case for reasons that are unclear to him. Meanwhile, Pete and Gilda's mother Beth frets about both of her twins, neither of whom seem to be thriving. Beth tries desperately to be a patient and laid back parent, but when Pete abruptly decides to move away from Edmonton to Montreal, both Gilda and Beth are separately compelled to try to find him and somehow reconcile the family's unresolved past, a family history haunted by the influence of Ralph Peterborough, a father who has never accepted his child for who they are. Events in Edmonton and Montreal spiral with the dual reckoning of Beth in one city and Pete and Gilda in another, but ultimately Beth, Pete and Gilda will have the final say in their relationships and their identities. Fiction.

72 spectacular and entertaining tricks: card locations, coincidence tricks, mental magic with cards, tricks with double endings, tricks with two decks, predictions, tricks with borrowed decks, trick poker deals. Easy-to-learn, clearly illustrated, these tricks produce spectacular effects with a minimum of practice. 42 illustrations.

Spenser is forced by loyalty into an alien world where violence is a way of lie and outsiders enter at a lethal risk. When Spenser's cohort, Hawk, is hired by the tenants of a gang-plagued Boston housing project known as "Double Deuce", he enlists his friend's aid. A friend's girl and her infant daughter have been gunned down. Though the act at first appears to be an accidental drive-by shooting, it soon becomes clear that it was premeditated murder. Before they can solve the crime, Spenser and Hawk must take on an adolescent band of hardened urban warriors. As bullets fly and the brutality escalates, Spenser learns more than he ever dreamed about a generation imprisoned in a hell of poverty and hopelessness where muscle is the ticket to survival, and the surest way out is in a body bag. Pulsing with moral complexity, Double Deuce is the kind of no-holds-barred action thriller only Robert B. Parker can create.

In the 1970s and 80s New York was internationally renowned for its seedy underbelly; the world capital of leisure, luxury, and sin. And the epicenter of New York vice, hands down, was 42nd Street-Times Square-a.k.a. the Forty-Deuce. On any given night on the Forty-Deuce you could take in the latest blockbuster, B-movie, or skin flick; cop drugs or cop a feel. A playground for the perverse, as well as a destination for thrill-seekers and partiers from every borough of New York City and beyond, Times Square was the electric heart of the city that refused to sleep. The Forty-Deuce: The Times Square Photographs of Bill Butterworth, 1983-1984 is a series of photographs capturing a gritty, glamorous, and authentic old-school New York, well before Mickey Mouse took over Times Square and scrubbed it clean. Curators and editors Beatriz and Hilton Arial Ruiz have collected and preserved the work of local street photographer Bill Butterworth, and have drawn from his work to create a revealing portrait of the Forty-Deuce, inside and out-capturing the unique street life and street style of the era, but also drawing us deeper in, to the peep shows, sex shops, backroom brothels, dimly lit arcades, and low-budget theatres where the action happened. In the tradition of Jamel Shabazz's classic, Back in the Days, The Forty-Deuce showcases the early-80s style of New York's first b-boys, out on the town and dressed to impress, but it adds some sin to the mix, with the Deuce's own slick pimps, strung out hustlers, and the spandex and leather clad prostitutes, strippers, and trannies that worked 42nd Street nightly, and defined it for years.

Squirrel shifter Elly has been captured by Freedom, beaten, and then handed off to be raped. Only her new hotter-than-hell jailor, Deuce Pierce, isn’t keen on forcing her and is all about saving her curvy, furry ass and getting her to safety. After she’s freed, she can’t forget about the lion who saved her life, and she hunts for him, determined to find the man who haunts her. The council has tried to keep Deuce separated from Elly, convinced he’s abused her in some way, as if he would hurt his mate. He finally beats (literally) her location out of one of their soldiers, only to find she lives in the hometown he’d vowed to leave behind. His lush squirrel may be happy to see him, but the townspeople and their families take up where the council left off. Good thing he and Elly have wicked teeth, sharp claws, a gun or two, and more love than any two people ought to share. Because no one is going to separate them, come hell, high water, or shot-out knees.