Prettyboy Must Die

A CIA prodigy's cover is blown when he accidentally becomes an internet sensation in #Prettyboy Must Die, Kimberly Reid's fun, fast thriller inspired by the #Alexfromtarget story and perfect for fans of Alex Rider. When Peter Smith’s classmate snaps a picture of him during a late night run at the track, Peter thinks he might be in trouble. When she posts that photo—along with the caption, “See the Pretty Boy Run,”—Peter knows he’s in trouble. But when hostiles drop through the ceiling of his 6th period Chem Class, Peter’s pretty sure his trouble just became a national emergency. Because he’s not really Peter Smith. He’s Jake Morrow, former foster-kid turned CIA operative. After a massive screw-up on his first mission, he's on a pity assignment, a dozen hit lists and now, social media, apparently. As #Prettyboy, of all freaking things. His cover’s blown, his school’s under siege, and if he screws up now, #Prettyboy will become #Deadboy faster than you can say, 'fifteen minutes of fame.' Trapped in a high school with rabid killers and rabid fans, he’ll need all his training and then some to save his job, his school and, oh yeah, his life. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The two works collected in this volume sprang from the same fruitful collaboration that gave rise to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. Both are set in America, but an America of myth. In The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Brecht's parable of greed and indifference, Mahagonny is a boom-town fusing Miami with Sodom and Gomorrah. Founded on the principle that it is easier to prospect gold from people's pockets than from the earth, it is a city threatened with catastrophe but also obsessed with pleasure and the problem of how to pay for it. The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Brecht's supremely ironic ballet libretto, is the story of two sisters who in seven years traverse seven cities. In each, one sister is tempted by one of the seven deadly sins. First performed in Paris and London in 1933, with music by Weill and choreography by George Balanchine, it premiered in the United States in 1958 in a production by Balanchine. Of the translations by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman that are reprinted here, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1960 that she knew of "no other adequate rendering of Brecht into English". Arcade's definitive edition also contains an introduction by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, the editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English, together with extensive notes and variants.