Catchpenny, Charlie Huston
Catchpenny, Charlie Huston
List: $22.50 | Sale: $15.75
Club: $11.25

Catchpenny
A novel

Author: Charlie Huston

Narrator: Pete Cross

Unabridged: 12 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/09/2024


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Billie's Not So Secret Diary on April 11, 2024

Catchpenny by Charlie Huston Science Fiction NetGalley ARC Pub Date: Apr. 9, 2024 Knoph, Pantheon, Vintage, Anchor Ages: 16+ Controlled by severe depression, Sidney Catchpenny is down on his luck, his depression keeping him from living, and because of this his reputation as a talented thief is gone, and no......more

Goodreads review by Librariann on September 18, 2023

**I received a DRC from the publisher because I am a librarian and librarians are awesome** Sometimes, you take a sick day and you just need a book to carry you through the congestion and snorfling. Last Wednesday, this was that book for me. I had tried two other DRCs on my Kindle to middling effect,......more

Goodreads review by Benjamin on January 21, 2024

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. Based on the descriptions and cover blurbs, it hits a lot of my buttons for a good book: a noir story, an urban fantasy akin to Jim Butcher and Neil Gaiman, a thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtu......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on April 24, 2024

This book has a very unique premise. It's a sci-fi detective story and was mostly interesting. The magic in the book was very different from anything I've read before. It got off to a super fast start and immediately grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, as the story went on, it all became muddled and......more

Goodreads review by Rafael on February 05, 2024

It was a page-turner, but there was some straight ridiculousness regarding villain plans in the last 60 pages that pulled me completely out of belief in the world–surprising in a book about a thief who travels through mirrors. Combine this with a "here's how everyone ended up" epilogue immediately f......more


Quotes

“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