Pete Hautman Books In Order

Joe Crow Books In Publication Order

  1. Drawing Dead (1993)
  2. Short Money (1995)
  3. The Mortal Nuts (1996)
  4. The Ring Game (1997)
  5. Mrs. Million (1999)

Denn Doyle Books In Publication Order

  1. Stone Cold / No Limit (1998)
  2. All-in (2007)

Bloodwater Mysteries Books In Publication Order

  1. Snatched (2006)
  2. Skullduggery (2007)
  3. Doppelganger (2008)

The Klaatu Diskos Books In Publication Order

  1. The Obsidian Blade (2012)
  2. The Cydonian Pyramid (2012)
  3. The Klaatu Terminus (2014)

Flinkwater Chronicles Books In Publication Order

  1. The Flinkwater Factor (2015)
  2. The Forgetting Machine (2016)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Mr. Was (1996)
  2. Feeling Lucky (1999)
  3. Hole in the Sky (2001)
  4. Rag Man (2001)
  5. Doohickey (2002)
  6. Sweetblood (2003)
  7. Godless (2004)
  8. Invisible (2005)
  9. The Prop (2006)
  10. Rash (2006)
  11. How to Steal a Car (2009)
  12. Blank Confession (2010)
  13. The Big Crunch (2011)
  14. What Boys Really Want (2012)
  15. Eden West (2015)
  16. Slider (2017)
  17. Otherwood (2018)
  18. Road Tripped (2019)

Joe Crow Book Covers

Denn Doyle Book Covers

Bloodwater Mysteries Book Covers

The Klaatu Diskos Book Covers

Flinkwater Chronicles Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Pete Hautman Books Overview

Short Money

Unenthusiastically accepting a job as a bodyguard for an unsavory plastic surgeon, ex cop Joe Crow soon learns that his employer has vicious enemies and is swept into a web of deadly big game hunting. NYT. PW. ‘

The Mortal Nuts

Seventy three year old Axel Speeter, now a proud taco concession owner, finds that his six figure life savings, squirreled away in coffee cans, has attracted the attention of his sometime lover’s daughter’s ex con boyfriend.Tour.

The Ring Game

Ex cop Joe Crow has gotten on the bad side of his father’s best friend, Axel Speeter. He introduced Axel’s almost daughter, Carmen Roman, to a character by the name of Hyatt Hilton, a onetime coke dealer who claims to be walking the straight and narrow. Wedding bells are about to ring and Axel insists that Joe dust off his investigative skills to make sure the groom isn’t selling any lines.

Mrs. Million

Everybody loves somebody sometime. Everybody falls in love somehow. But when you mix love with a million dollars, somebody’s going to get hurt. Barbaraannette Quinn loved her husband, Bobby, right up until the day he got in his Jeep, left their home in Cold Rock, Minnesota, and never returned. She’s waited six years for him either to turn up dead or walk through her door with a crooked smile and a pocketful of lies. Everything changes when Barbaraannette wins the lottery. Bobby Quinn is alive, well, and watching TV when Barbaraannette suddenly appears on screen waving a snapshot of him and offering a million dollars to anyone who can find her runaway husband and drag him back to Cold Rock. Bobby and his girlfriend, Phlox, decide that she will turn him in, collect the million bucks, and then they’ll both hightail it back to Arizona to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, everybody wants a piece of Bobby including a pair of hulking good ole boys, who figure Bobby owes them, and a sociopathic pretty boy fresh out of St. Cloud Correctional, who notices that Barbaraannette’s offer doesn’t require that Bobby arrive alive. Toss in a shy, marathon running banker, a lovestruck humanities professor, and Barbaraannette’s kleptomaniac mother, and things start getting a little hot in Cold Rock. ‘I’ve really started something, haven’t I?’ Barbaraannette says. What she’s started is a crackpot criminal conspiracy the likes of which you’ve never seen. Mrs. Million is Pete Hautman’s wildest and funniest work yet, a tale certain to reach the first rank of criminal comedies.

Stone Cold / No Limit

‘All I want is to play cards, to run my fingers over those slick, hard surfaces, to feel that cold power flowing in and out through my hands and eyes.’ Dennis Doyle is feeling lucky. His landscaping business is thriving, his girlfriend loves him, he’s got money in the bank, and the city bus that ran into him that morning left him alive and well. Soon he’ll turn sixteen and buy himself a car. Everything is going his way. So when his buddies ask him to play poker, Denn says yes. The cards are dealt, the money is bet…
and the worst possible thing happens. Denn wins. And he likes it.

All-in

‘You know how they say you can’t climb out of a hole till you hit bottom?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m trying to find the bottom.’

At seventeen, Denn Doyle isn’t old enough to gamble legally, but thanks to his talent for reading tells, he’s made a fortune and along the way, he’s upset some of the most notorious Texas holdem players in Las Vegas, including Artie Kingston, who had already lost his nightclub to Denn. But now Denn’s luck has run out and he’s just about broke. His only chance is a million dollar, winner take all tournament at Artie’s new casino, but Denn can’t play unless he comes up with the $10,000 entry fee. Denn’s future all comes down to one hand of poker.

National Book Award winning author Pete Hautman introduced Denn Doyle in No Limit, of which School Library Journal said, ‘Fast paced and powerfully delivered…
as taut and suspenseful as a high stakes game.’ Here he deals another hand of love, luck, and greed in the high stakes world of poker.

Snatched

Roni Delicata is the pushy crime reporter for the school newspaper The Bloodwater Pump. Brian Bain is a quiet science geek who has a tendency to blow things up. Ordinarily, they would have nothing to do with each other. But today isn t an ordinary day: their snobby classmate Alicia Camden has been Snatched. Soon enough, Roni and Brian are on the case. But as they dig deeper into the mystery, they find nothing but suspects: Alicia’s hothead boyfriend Maurice, her creepy stepfather, and even Driftwood Doug, the hobo who always seemed to be watching Alicia from the woods. It s up to Roni and Brian to find Alicia and reveal the shocking secret that led to her disappearance. An eerie mystery that never loses its sense of humor, Snatched marks the beginning of a great new series set in the small town of Bloodwater featuring two offbeat detectives you ll be thrilled to meet.

Skullduggery

While on a class field trip, Roni Delicata and Brian Bain find a local archaeologist unconscious in a cave. Professor Andrew Dart is trying to find evidence of an Indian burial ground to stop the Bloodwater family from developing the site. But it is Dr. Dart who has been stopped first, in this exciting follow up to ‘Snatched.’

Doppelganger

Brian and Roni are looking for another case to crack when Roni finds an age progressed picture of a boy who looks alarmingly like Brian on a missing children website. Brian is sure it is only a coincidence after all, he’s lived happily with his adoptive parents for as long as he can remember. But then again, his parents have never really told him about his adoption…
Could there be more to his family history than he knows? As Roni and Brian piece together the clues, other people emerge from the shadows of the past and suddenly Brian isn t just a detective on the case he s the key to a mystery that everyone is after. Can he and Roni uncover the truth before it s too late? Featuring the strong plotting and offbeat humor that won the Bloodwater Mysteries a prestigious Edgar nomination, Doppelganger is full of twists and turns that will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Mr. Was

This involving tale of destiny, passion, and death takes teenager Jack Lund from the mysterious town of Memory, Minnesota, to the steamy jungle of World War II Guadalcanal to the sterile walls of a secret government asylum all because of a strange metal door that changes the lives of all who pass over its threshold .

Hole in the Sky

In 2028, a deadly Flu virus ravages the earth. Only one in two thousand survive the virus, and these ‘Survivors’ are rarely left unaffected. By 2038, only 38 million people remain on Earth. Most of them live in small communities, ever fearful of outsiders who might bring the deadly Flu. Ceej Kane lives with his uncle and his Survivor sister Harryette in an abandoned hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon. His quiet, boring life suddenly becomes a desperate adventure when Uncle and Harryette disappear. Searching for them, Ceej and his only friend, Tim, are attacked by the Kinka, a renegade band of half mad Survivors who spread the Flu to make more of their own. Worse yet, it appears that Harryette has joined them. Fleeing deep into the Canyon, a narrow land of ghosts and ancient secrets, Ceej and Tim meet Bella, a mysterious Hopi girl. She has been searching the canyon for the Sipapuni, a mystical portal that the Hopi believe leads to another world. Tim thinks Bella is crazy, but Ceej is not so sure. Maybe there is a way out of this Flu ravaged world. But first they must find out what happened to Uncle, and they must save Harryette from the Kinka if she wants to be saved. As with his earlier novels, Mr. Was and Stone Cold, acclaimed author Pete Hautman pushes the boundaries of young adult fiction. Combining action, science fiction, and spirituality, Hole in the Sky is the rarest of novels: a thrilling page turner that will make you think.

Rag Man

Suppose you quit your job, took out a second mortgage, and borrowed every penny of your in laws’ nest egg to start up a surefire new business. What if your partner ran off with all your money? What if you caught up with him? These are the questions Pete Hautman’s hero faces in ‘Rag Man, a wryly funny, Faustian tale of a good man going bad. Mack MacWray’s new clothing manufacturing company was wildly successful until the day his charming, street savvy partner, Lars Larson, disappeared with all the assets, leaving Mack stuck with nothing but debts and shattered dreams. Devastated, Mack thinks he has nothing left to live for until, at the edge of a cliff on the idyllic Mexican resort of Isla Mujeres, he comes face to face with his former partner. Mack discovers something about himself that fateful afternoon that maybe he’s not such a nice guy after all. After push comes to shove, Mack must live with what he has become. Mack returns to the U.S. with his moral compass demagnetized and discovers a world of opportunity. Without the ball and chain of guilt and accountability, making money is all but guaranteed. He transforms himself from bankrupt loser to hard nosed success story but at what cost? His wife wants the old Mack back; her best friend wants Mack in bed; Lars’s widow wants money or revenge; and Detective Jerry Pleasant wants answers or maybe more. As the pace quickens and tensions rise, these characters begin to surprise even themselves. Pete Hautman treads the line between psychological darkness and laugh out loud funny as he asks tough questions about the nature of good and evil and offers some unexpected answers.

Doohickey

Nick Fashon is having a bad day. He’s just found out his estranged grandfather has died mysteriously in the Arizona desert. Then he meets his potential father in law, who turns out to be an ex cop with a screw loose and a penchant for bean dip. To top it off, he returns home to find his successful clothing shop has just burned to the ground and taken his upstairs apartment with it. Love & Fashion was Nick Fashon and Vince Love’s thriving clothing store until it went up in flames the work of an arsonist, police say. Suddenly Nick is homeless and disillusioned, and both the insurance investigators and the police want a word with him. Where can he turn for help? He’s wearing out his welcome with his archaeologist girlfriend, Gretchen, who’s developing her own suspicions about him. His business partner and best friend, Vince, isn’t much help either, as Nick discovers more and more disturbing clues that point to Vince as the one who set the blaze. Things begin to look up when Nick finds out his eccentric late grandfather has left him an unusual inheritance: a thriving pet coffin business and a barn full of peculiar inventions, including one particularly interesting Doohickey called the HandyMate. The HandyMate is the ultimate kitchen gadget a simple tool that can cut, core, chop, slice, and potentially transform the domestic world. Full of entrepreneurial zeal, Nick is determined to see one in every kitchen drawer in America. But Nick isn’t the only one planning to strike it rich with the HandyMate. Yola Fuentes, Nick’s grandfather’s irresistibly sexy business partner, is so determined to get the HandyMate that she makes Nick an offer he can’t refuse. And Robo Fuentes, her jealous ex husband, has a bullet with Nick’s name on it if he takes her up on that offer. Nick quickly finds himself caught in a situation where a twisted thing of plastic might end up costing him his girlfriend, his self respect and his life. With the help of a cast of colorful characters, master storyteller Pete Hautman delivers a stylish and funny mystery with more twists and turns than the HandyMate itself.

Sweetblood

There are only two races that matter: the Living and the Undead…
. and with every year that pas*ses, the numbers of the Undead grow. It is inevitable. So says Lucy Szabo. She has a theory: Hundreds of years ago, before the discovery of insulin, slowly dying diabetics were the original ‘vampires.’ Lucy, a diabetic herself, counts herself among the modern Undead. As Sweetblood, she frequents the Transylvania room, an Internet chat room where so called vampires gather to discuss all things goth. But Draco, one of the other visitors to Transylvania, claims to be a real vampire and Lucy’s not entirely sure he’s kidding. As Lucy becomes more involved with the goth/vampire subculture, everything in her life begins to unravel. Her grades plummet, her relationship with her parents deteriorates, and her ability to regulate her blood sugar worsens dramatically. Then she meets Draco face to face, and he invites her into his strange world. Lucy realizes that she needs to make some difficult choices if it isn’t already too late. Pete Hautman’s new take on vampires is a disturbing and fascinating story about an intelligent, cynical teen reinventing herself in the face of a chronic illness.

Godless

‘I refuse to speak further of the Ten legged One…
but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion? All you need is a disciple or two…
and a god.’

Fed up with his parents’ boring old religion, agnostic going on atheist Jason Bock invents a new god the town’s water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers: his snail farming best friend, Shin, cute as a button whatever that means Magda Price, and the violent and unpredictable Henry Stagg. As their religion grows, it takes on a life of its own. While Jason struggles to keep the faith pure, Shin obsesses over writing their bible, and the explosive Henry schemes to make the new faith even more exciting and dangerous.

When the Chutengodians hold their first ceremony high atop the dome of the water tower, things quickly go from merely dangerous to terrifying and deadly. Jason soon realizes that inventing a religion is a lot easier than controlling it, but control it he must, before his creation destroys both his friends and himself.

Pete Hautman, author of Sweetblood and Mr. Was, has written a compelling novel about the power of religion on those who believe, and on those who don’t.

Invisible

You could say that my railroad, the Madham Line, is almost the most important thing in my life. Next to Andy Morrow, my best friend…
.I guess you could say that I’m not only disturbed, I’m obsessed. Lots of people think Doug Hanson is a freak he gets beat up after school and the girl of his dreams calls him a worm. Doug’s only refuge is building elaborate model trains in his baseme*nt and hanging out with his best friend, Andy Morrow. Andy is nothing like Doug: He’s a popular football star who could date any girl in school. Despite their differences, Doug and Andy talk about everything except what happened at the Tuttle place a few years back. As Doug retreats deeper and deeper into his own world, long buried secrets come to light and the more he tries to keep them Invisible, the looser his grip on reality becomes. In this fierce, disturbing novel, Pete Hautman spins a poignant tale about inner demons, and how far one boy will go to control them.

The Prop

National Book Award winner Pete Hautman delivers a fast paced mystery set in the torrid, unforgiving Southwestern desert, where the stakes are sky high and all bets are off. Peeky Kane is a prop player at an Arizona casino owned by the Santa Cruz tribe. Her job is to play poker. She makes a handsome living off the suckers who populate the card room. Life is sweet. But something’s not right at Casino Santa Cruz. When Peeky inadvertently finds herself in a fixed game and comes away a couple thousand dollars richer, she finds herself drawn unwittingly toward the dark side of professional poker. Peeky has always thought of herself as a straight shooter, but now things aren’t so clear. And they’re about to get a lot murkier. When a band of clown masked robbers makes off with millions of the casino’s dollars and leaves behind four corpses, Peeky recognizes one of the robbers as a casino employee, and fears that one of her closest loved ones might also be involved. That same day, Peeky’s son in law turns up to tell her that Jaymie, her beloved daughter, has been stealing money from Peeky for years to feed a crack habit. Numb from these revelations, Peeky is compelled to action by an unlikely source when the most powerful member of the Santa Cruz tribe calls upon her to help him save his troubled casino. Peeky must draw on her years of reading poker faces and playing the odds to save the casino, her daughter, and herself.

Rash

‘Of course, without people like us Marstens, there wouldn’t be anybody to do the manual labor that makes this country run. Without penal workers, who would work the production lines, or pick the melons and peaches, or maintain the streets and parks and public lavatories? Our economy depends on prison labor. Without it everybody would have to work whether they wanted to or not.’

In the late twenty first century Bo Marsten is unjustly accused of a causing a rash that plagues his entire high school. He loses it, and as a result, he’s sentenced to work in the Canadian tundra, at a pizza factory that’s surrounded by hungry polar bears. Bo finds prison life to be both boring and dangerous, but it’s nothing compared to what happens when he starts playing on the factory’s highly illegal football team. In the meantime, Bork, an artificial intelligence that Bo created for a science project, tracks Bo down in prison. Bork has spun out of control and seems to be operating on his own. He offers to get Bo’s sentence shortened, but can Bo trust him? And now that Bo has been crushing skulls on the field, will he be able to go back to his old, highly regulated life?

Pete Hautman takes a satirical look at an antiseptic future in this darkly comic mystery/adventure.

How to Steal a Car

From National Book Award winner Pete Hautman, the story of a girl who acts out by stealing cars.
Some girls act out by drinking or doing drugs. Some girls act out by sleeping with guys. Some girls act out by starving themselves or cutting themselves. Some girls act out by being a bit*ch to other girls.
Not Kelleigh.
Kelleigh steals cars.

In How to Steal a Car, National Book Award winner Pete Hautman takes teen readers on a thrilling, scary ride through one suburban girl’s turbulent life one car theft at a time.

What Boys Really Want

National Book Award winning author Pete Hautman lets us in on the secret. Lita is the writer. Adam is the entrepreneur. They are JUST FRIENDS. So Adam would never sell copies of a self help book before he’d even written it. And Lita would never try to break up Adam’s relationship with Blair, the ska*nkiest girl at school. They’d never sabotage their friends Emily and Dennis. Lita would never date a guy related to a girl she can’t stand. They’d never steal each other’s blog posts. And Adam would never end up in a fist fight with Lita’s boyfriend. Nope, never. Adam and Lita might never agree on what happened, but in this hilarious story from Pete Hautman, they manage to give the world a little more insight into what boys and girls are really looking for.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment