LAURENCE KLAVAN
LAURENCE KLAVAN won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original for Mrs. White, written under a pseudonym. He is also the author of The Cutting Room and The Shooting Script, novels featuring Roy Milano, movie geek detective. His graphic novels, Germantown and The Fielding Course, co-written with Susan Kim, will soon be published by First Second Books at Macmillan. His work for the theater includes the librettos for the Obie Award-winning musical Bed and Sofa and the acclaimed Embarrassments. He lives in New York.
GUARDIANS
A Wasteland Novel
HarperTeen – March 24, 2015
The Emmy Award-nominated and Edgar Award-winning duo of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan deliver a heart-pounding finale to the postapocalyptic teen world of the Wasteland, filled with dramatic twists and turns. Bestselling author of Criminal, Karin Slaughter, called Wasteland “a Lord of the Flies for future generations. An irresistible page-turner.”
No one dares to leave the District—the towering structure of glass and steel that is their protection against the unruly bands of Outsiders that roam Mundreel and the deadly rain that carries the disease that kills all over the age of nineteen.
This skyscraper stands amid the urban devastation, the city rumored to have once been called “Montreal.” Esther and her allies have created a haven on the rooftop, a garden that flourishes, and a home for her new baby, hidden from all but the very few who know her secret. But as Gideon’s power grows and factions form, the ultimate darkness is born from greed, and Esther must find a way to save the citizens from themselves.
Praise for GUARDIANS
“A forbidding tower of glass and steel called the District; nefarious bands of roving Outsiders; a poisonous rain that kills anyone over the age of 19. In this dark dystopia, Esther and her friends struggle to survive in their rooftop garden, caring for and protecting her new baby. This installment wraps up the trilogy for devoted fans.”—School Library Journal
WANDERERS
A Wasteland Novel
HarperTeen – March 25, 2014
Emmy Award nominee Susan Kim and Edgar Award–winning Laurence Klavan bring readers back to the Wasteland in this thrilling, action-packed sequel. Karin Slaughter, bestselling author of Criminal, called Wasteland “a Lord of the Flies for future generations. An irresistible page-turner.”
The former citizens of Prin are running out of time. Esther and Caleb must begin a harrowing journey in the hopes of finding find food and shelter—not to mention a way to make it past age nineteen. On the way, Esther must rally to take charge with the help of a blind guide, Aras. He appears unbelievably cruel, but not everything is as it seems in the Wasteland. . . .
In this sequel to Wasteland, the stakes are even higher for Esther, Caleb, and the rest of their clan. They’re pinning all their hopes on the road . . . but what if it’s the most dangerous place of all?
WASTELAND
HarperTeen – March 26, 2013
Welcome to the wasteland
At fifteen,
the citizens of Prin marry.
At seventeen,
they reproduce.
And at nineteen,
they die.
Esther thinks there’s more to life than toiling at the assignments—Harvesting, Gleaning, Excavating—day after day under the relentless sun, just hoping to make it to the next day.
She doesn’t care that her best friend, a variant, is considered “the enemy.” She doesn’t care that Levi, who controls the Source, is the real enemy and might send his Taser boys after her if she makes one wrong move.
Then Caleb shows up. Could there be another way to fight for survival?
Praise for WASTELAND
“A Lord of the Flies for future generations. An irresistible page-turner.“—Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Criminal
“Kim and Klavan’s world building enticingly trickles through the brutal, fast-paced, multilayered plot, which is fueled by a sweet romance…Wasteland raises plenty of captivating questions and doesn’t shortchange readers on satisfying answers.“—Booklist
BRAIN CAMP
First Second – August 3, 2010
Neither artistic, dreamy Jenna nor surly, delinquent Lucas expected to find themselves at an invitation-only summer camp that turns problem children into prodigies. And yet, here they both are at Camp Fielding, settling in with all the other losers and misfits who’ve been shipped off by their parents in a last-ditch effort to produce a child worth bragging about.
But strange disappearances, spooky lights in the woods, and a chilling alteration that turns the dimmest, rowdiest campers into docile zombie Einsteins have Jenna and Lucas feeling more than a little suspicious . . . and a lot afraid.
Praise for BRAIN CAMP
YALSA 2011 Top Ten Great Graphic Novel for Teens
From its shock opening right out of a horror movie, this graphic novel sets the scene for an old-fashioned scare story. Kim and Klavan, who balanced adventure and kid’s social issues so well in City of Spies (2010), do the same in another well-rounded adventure here, as the far-out (and kind of gross) climax mixes with genuine insight into dealing with parents, fitting into a new crowd, and handling the pressures of performance. Hicks’ line work is cool enough to assuage older readers who might be suspicious of the summer-camp setting.“—Booklist
“Kim and Klavan offer a sly social commentary with a fizzy dash of stomach-lurching horror. Hicks’s chunky art goes to town with the revolting possibilities. Smart, disgusting fun.“—Kirkus
CITY OF SPIES
First Second – April 27, 2010
By Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Pascal Dizin
Mystery, intrigue, and pastries abound in this World War II spy tale.
Evelyn typically satisfies her longing for adventure with the help of a pencil and a sheet of paper. But when she makes a new friend, Tony, she’s happy to abandon her art for a real-life search for spies. When the two accidentally uncover a genuine mystery, it looks like Evelyn might end up in the kind of adventure she writes in her comics!
Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Pascal Dizin present a period piece that creates an inviting world you won’t want to resist.
Praise for CITY OF SPIES
“Kim and Klavan put a sophisticated spin on classic boys’ adventure story elements and handle issues of friendship, economic class, and abandonment. And with villains and danger that just border on the genuinely scary, the tale is filled not only with a thrilling sense of excitement but also with a child’s longing for a grown-up to believe in.“—Booklist, starred review
“[City of Spies], told with seat-of-the-pants, graphic-novel immediacy, is an artful melding of jewel-box illustration with noir atmosphere—Tintin directed by Hitchcock. The snappy, uncluttered tale has arousing visual flow and plot depth on a variety of fronts.“—Kirkus Reviews
“[City of Spies] is truly a beautiful, moving book. For both Young Adults and Old ones. Five out of five time-traveling zeppelin savers.“—Comic Book Resources
“A strong book…Engaging…the tale has an authentic feel which brings the historical setting to life.“—School Library Journal
THE SHOOTING SCRIPT
Ballantine Books – March 1, 2005
Following his critically acclaimed novel The Cutting Room, Laurence Klavan returns with The Shooting Script. Establishing shot: New York City, present day. Zoom in on a run-down tenement building, somewhere west of Times Square, the home of Roy Milano, a thirtyish, divorced typesetter who lives for the movies. In fact, by pursuing the legendary uncut print of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Roy has become something of a minor celebrity among the fellow misfit film fanatics he caters to in his homemade newsletter, Trivial Man. But there’s nothing trivial when Roy’s old rival Abner Cooley shows up with a check in his hand and the words “Someone is trying to kill me” on his lips.
With his mother ailing, Roy needs the money as badly as Cooley needs someone to head off a trigger-happy stalker who’s determined to put both him and his controversial new screenplay into permanent turnaround. And though Roy does his best, like many a private eye before him, he quickly finds his head turned by an enticing distraction. Not a femme fatale, but a flick.
Roy is all but powerless to resist an e-mail from a mysterious fan that lures him with the promise of an elusive treasure as fiercely sought after by the celluloid cognoscenti as the Ark of the Covenant was by Indiana Jones. It’s Jerry Lewis’ famous unreleased drama, The Day the Clown Cried. But when he arrives at a rendezvous too late to save a dying man, Roy realizes he’s stumbled into a dangerous race to possess a piece of cinema history. To catch up, he’ll have to match wits with a rogues’ gallery: a bored and bitter superstar comedian, a hot-shot producer turned drugged-out has-been, a ferocious German actor who likes to role-play off-camera, a mercurial director with a scary sense of humor, and a hard-bitten cop who’s mad about movies.
Meanwhile, Roy will be tempted by the wiles of three fetching females—and tormented by a single-minded psychopath with more faces than Lon Chaney. He’ll even go on location, pursuing and being pursued from the mansions of the Hamptons to the harbors of Maine, the boulevards of L.A. to the canals of Amsterdam. No one’s ever gone to this much trouble just to see a movie. But for Roy, the reward far outweighs the risk. And a chance to glimpse the Big Picture might just be worth coming face-to-face with the Big Sleep.
Praise for THE SHOOTING SCRIPT
“A gratifying ending drops the curtain on this wholly entertaining sequel: a frenzied encore for suspense fans and an edifying indulgence for seasoned film buffs.”—Publishers Weekly
“Hard-boiled nerd Roy Milano is back is another screwball adventure…Enough delightful insanity to please fans of silly suspense (from Jonathan Lethem to Kinky Friedman).”—Booklist
“Another madcap adventure for the self-described ‘trivial man’…with a cast and crew of zanies.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A sparkling, fast-paced jewel of a novel.“—Katherine Neville, author of The Eight
THE CUTTING ROOM
A Novel of Suspense
Ballantine Books – February 3, 2004
Like the hero in a classic Hitchcock thriller, the innocent movie buff at the center of this witty and suspenseful novel finds his ordinary life suddenly transformed when he’s plunged into a harrowing game of intrigue, duplicity, and danger. Spurred into a frantic race from New York to Hollywood to Barcelona and back, he’ll encounter enough hairpin twists, shocking surprises, white-knuckle tension, and sinister characters to give even the master of suspense himself a serious case of vertigo. But in this scenario, the mayhem and murder are all too real.
Self-proclaimed movie geek and divorced thirty-something Roy Milano lives alone in a cramped Manhattan apartment, toiling as a freelancer to make ends meet. It’s a life perfectly suited to the creator of Trivial Man, Roy’s self-published newsletter—filled with tidbits of little-known Tinseltown lore for the delight of other fringe-dwelling cinemaphiles. And it’s a tantalizing phone call from one such kindred spirit that thrusts Roy headlong into his waking noir nightmare.
“I’ve got The Magnificent Ambersons,” declares Alan Gilbert, host of a homemade cable-TV show about the silver screen, who now claims to possess the rarest of the rare: the long-lost and never-released complete print of Orson Welles’s classic follow-up to Citizen Kane. But when Roy arrives at his fellow movie maven’s abode to sneak a peek at celluloid history, the front door is ominously open, Alan Gilbert is dead, and The Magnificent Ambersons is nowhere in sight. Even though the cops arrest a local drug addict for the murder, Roy knows they’re wrong—because the theft of the movie masterpiece points to a different kind of junkie. The kind Roy knows only too well . . . and the kind he’s certain only he can catch.
But Roy Milano is no Sam Spade, even if he does run into more gun-toting goons, sucker punches, and double-crosses than Bogey on a busy day. And the suspects prove to be anything but usual—including a bodybuilding film fanatic obsessed with bizarre rumors about an A-list actress, a rotund reporter who holds Hollywood in thrall via red-hot Internet dispatches from his parents’ basement, and a starstruck street punk with a thousand voices. And then there’s the transatlantic love triangle that finds Roy caught between his very own eager Gal Friday and a sultry Spanish siren with a stunning secret. But when the bodies start to fall faster than a box-office bomb, Roy must cut to the chase in his perilous quest to save the Holy Grail of cinema—and unmask a killer—before everything fades to black.
Praise for THE CUTTING ROOM
“A lightning-paced, high-concept thriller . . . Astonishingly inventive, The Cutting Room stands out as one of the best mysteries of the year!”—Tess Gerritsen, author of The Sinner
“In 1984, writing under the pseudonym Margaret Tracy, Klavan won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original for Mrs. White. Now—two decades later and best known as the librettist for the Obie Award-winning musical Bed and Sofa—Klavan has produced this wry, whimsically romantic crime novel. Brimming with engaging tidbits of movie trivia, it is narrated in the self-effacing voice of its bumbling, endearing hero, Roy Milano, publisher of Trivial Man, a cultish movie trivia newsletter sold through bookstores and video outlets around the Big Apple. . . This tongue-in-cheek whodunit marks the long overdue second coming of a gifted novelist.“—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A great bit of escapism for film and mystery buffs alike. . . Klavan’s touch is playful and deft.“—Booklist
“Klavan gleefully slices and dices every known specimen of the Hollywood film trade. . . . Worth its weight in popcorn.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Highly entertaining . . . Klavan knows his turf. . . . Sure to put a smile on any movie buff’s lips.”—Leonard Maltin