2018 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel (nominee)
It's 1987. Billy Marvin, the tallest boy in ninth grade, has just witnessed history.
Wheel of Fortune presenter Vanna White is on the cover of Playboy.
Billy and his friends, Alf and Clark, know that if they can get hold of the magazine, their world will change. For ever.
But as Billy says, 'No shopkeeper in America was going to sell Playboy to a fourteen-year-old boy.'
As they set out on their mission to find the most wanted images in America, they're blissfully unaware of the dangers, dramas and garbage dumpsters that lie ahead. And of how a girl called Mary might just change one of their lives. For ever.
Genre: General Fiction
Wheel of Fortune presenter Vanna White is on the cover of Playboy.
Billy and his friends, Alf and Clark, know that if they can get hold of the magazine, their world will change. For ever.
But as Billy says, 'No shopkeeper in America was going to sell Playboy to a fourteen-year-old boy.'
As they set out on their mission to find the most wanted images in America, they're blissfully unaware of the dangers, dramas and garbage dumpsters that lie ahead. And of how a girl called Mary might just change one of their lives. For ever.
Genre: General Fiction
Praise for this book
"A love letter to the 1980s, adolescence, technology, nerd-dom, and Vanna White, The Impossible Fortress will make you laugh and remind you of how much is possible when you're fourteen." - David Ebershoff
"A sweet, funny and moving tribute to nerds and misfits everywhere." - Seth Grahame-Smith
"The Impossible Fortress is hilarious, compulsively readable and surprisingly poignant, a teenage caper novel set in a time where U2 could still be considered a one-hit wonder and pornography was as close and as unobtainable to a 14-year-old boy as a Playboy magazine kept behind the counter at an office supply store. I absolutely loved it." - Carolyn Parkhurst
"Part love story, part coming-of-age tale, and part heist picture, The Impossible Fortress is an endlessly clever novel about friendship, heartache and computers - all rendered with the bright colors and buoyant spirit of Q*bert for the Commodore 64." - Ben H Winters
"A sweet, funny and moving tribute to nerds and misfits everywhere." - Seth Grahame-Smith
"The Impossible Fortress is hilarious, compulsively readable and surprisingly poignant, a teenage caper novel set in a time where U2 could still be considered a one-hit wonder and pornography was as close and as unobtainable to a 14-year-old boy as a Playboy magazine kept behind the counter at an office supply store. I absolutely loved it." - Carolyn Parkhurst
"Part love story, part coming-of-age tale, and part heist picture, The Impossible Fortress is an endlessly clever novel about friendship, heartache and computers - all rendered with the bright colors and buoyant spirit of Q*bert for the Commodore 64." - Ben H Winters
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