- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Published: 5/6/25
- IBSN: 9781636142388
- e-IBSN: 9781636142395
- Genre: Fiction
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Felony Juggler
From Penn Jillette of the legendary magic duo Penn & Teller: a street performer finds himself enmeshed in a crime and must outwit his fellow conspirators in his greatest juggling act yet.
Now available for preorder. All preorders will ship on or before May 6, 2025.
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Forthcoming: 5/6/25
What people are saying…
“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
“If you think street performing isn’t fun and bank robbery is fun or that you know how the Rolling Stones make money, you’ve got a lot to learn. And it’s all in Penn Jillette’s can’t-put-it-down page-turner Felony Juggler, where you’ll discover that ‘everything is juggling.'”
—Lawrence O’Donnell, television host
Description
In the early 1970s, Poe—a quick-witted young juggler from rural Massachusetts—abandons the talent shows of his childhood in favor of a nomadic life. He hops trains, hitchhikes, lives on the streets, sleeps rough, and juggles to feed himself. A few years before, he would have been a hobo; a few decades later, he would have been homeless; but in 1973, he is just a street-juggling hippie.
After roaming the country for a few years, Poe settles in Philadelphia and masters his street act before ever-growing crowds. In time, he runs all the busking around South Street like the don of a street-performing mafia. But his talent at manipulating crowds attracts the attention of a criminal organization who convince him to provide a diversion during a bank heist for a payday far greater than the coins he collects in his hat. Things go south, an innocent bystander is killed, and this peace-love talking hippie is now a felony murderer.
He splits town and goes into hiding, but he can’t resist the lure of the crowd, and resurfaces under a pseudonym in Hibbing, Minnesota, drawing large crowds as a regular performer at a Renaissance Fair(e). Unfortunately, his notoriety outs him to the criminal organization who believes he took something of importance from them during the 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.
Felony Juggler is an accurate depiction of the streets and street performing in the 1970s, told with the excursive and a-little-too-honest style of Penn Jillette—who was, just coincidently, in his own words, a street juggler and carny trash in the 1970s. Like his previous novel Random, Jillette’s intellectual curiosity, twisting morality, and honed stagecraft fuel a madcap narrative brimming with his renowned humor.
- Subjects: Forthcoming, Literary Fiction, Mysteries & Crime
- Tags: Felony Juggler, Penn Jillette
Book Details
Author
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 novel Sock; and the essay collection Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday! He is the author of Random.