Review\n"I loved this book - it's quirky, edgy, charming, funny and serious, all in one. Very highly recommended." 
―Lee Child, #1 bestselling author of BLUE MOON\n"...the first in a dark new private detective series that's a tightly coiled double helix of offbeat humor and unflinching violence."―Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review\n"While the macabre seriousness of the crimes and the narrator’s good-nature and sardonic humor might seem to be at odds, Ames makes it work through assured plotting, superb local color, and excellent prose. Readers will happily root for Doll, a good detective and a decent human, in this often funny and grisly outing."―Publishers Weekly\nReaders expecting action won’t be let down, and the sparkling yet unpretentious language gives the whole an extra kick. Recommend to noir fans, action fans, anyone who likes a good read.―Don Crinklaw, Booklist\n"Ames knows exactly what he's doing, and keeps the action kinetic but realistic, while imbuing the narration with sufficient hard-boiled style to anchor things firmly within the tradition."―Declan Hughes, The Irish Times\n“A MAN NAMED DOLL is so fun and propulsive I didn’t just read it in one sitting, I read it in what felt like a single breath. Happy Doll is a tremendously likable main character, and the Los Angeles he inhabits is vibrantly alive in every detail. I hope Jonathan Ames has many more adventures planned for the newest P.I. in town.” 
―Lou Berney, author of the New York Times-bestselling NOVEMBER ROAD\n“If Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe landed in the middle of Uncut Gems, you’d have something like Jonathan Ames’s A MAN NAMED DOLL, which expertly mines the dark humor, mordant wit and dreamy fatalism of great LA noir. And at its center is a detective with a battered heart and bruised conscience. I’d follow him, and his dog George, anywhere.” 
―Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of DARE ME\n“A Man Named Doll is a smart, sharp, and stylish noir for the modern day. In his cinematic tour of Los Angeles that is both gritty and gorgeous, Ames has delivered a novel that is both current and timeless and has introduced a sleuth who fits all the old traditions while creating his own. Crime at its finest!” 
―Ivy Pochoda, author of THESE WOMEN and WONDER VALLEY\n"Ames's keen-eyed observations of the city make this a contemporary noir, it's frequently macabre goings-on shot through with darkly comic flourishes. Motel, money, murder, madness: it has all you need to keep you happy."―The Times\n“A MAN NAMED DOLL: a singular read about the peril of having a body. Gallows humor in overdrive on Dilaudid, crashing merrily downhill.” 
―Bill Beverly, author of Gold Dagger Award-winning DODGERS\n"A MAN NAMED DOLL infuses the private eye concept with an unpredictable, vibrant energy, while losing none of the genre’s core, noir elements. Ames is a master of blending humor, pathos, and grit - and A MAN NAMED DOLL is no exception. A truly modern L.A. noir that still manages to feel timeless and steeped in the classics that came before.” 
―Alex Segura, Anthony Award-winning author of BLACKOUT\nIn this deliciously noir novel from the creator of HBO's Bored to Death, idiosyncratic private detective Happy Doll embarks on a quest to help a dying friend in a sun-blinded Los Angeles as "quirky, edgy, charming, funny and serious" as its protagonist (Lee Child). 
Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his sixteen-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no."\nDoll gets by

A Man Named Doll: A Novel (The Doll Series, 1)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Ames, Jonathan

Mystery

Mulholland Books

In this second installment of a series characterized by "offbeat humor and unflinching violence" (NTYBR), the eponymous and hapless detective Happy Doll returns with a new philosophy and a new case; "Hard-boiled PI fiction set in the present doesn’t get much better." (Publishers Weekly, STARRED) Although badly scarred and down to his last kidney after the previous caper, Happy Doll is back in business. When a beguiling young woman turns up at his door, it’s Doll’s past that comes knocking. Mary DeAngelo is searching for her estranged mother, Ines Candle—a singular and troubled woman Doll once loved. The last he’d seen her she’d been near-death: arms slit like envelopes. Although she survived the episode, she vanished shortly thereafter. Now, years later, Mary claims Ines is alive and has recently made contact—messaging her on Facebook and calling her from a burner phone—only to disappear once again. Although his psychoanalyst would discourage it, Doll takes the case, desperate to see Ines again. But as the investigation deepens, there are questions he can’t shake. What’s led the flighty Ines to reappear? Is Mary only relaying half the truth? And who is Mary’s strange and mysterious husband?\nIn this wholly original follow-up to A Man Named Doll, Happy travels through L.A., Washington, Oregon and back again—a journey that gets wilder and woolier with each turn. An irreverent and inventive mystery, The Wheel of Doll is not to be missed.

The Wheel of Doll: A Novel (The Doll Series, 2)

Plagued by death on his conscience, Happy Doll has committed himself to a simple, spiritual life; that is, until a tragic and brutal murder forces his hand and sets him back on the bloody path of retribution and justice. After narrowly escaping with his life at the hands of a murderous Hollywood pimp, detective Happy Doll, bullet-ridden but healing, has landed on a remote Mexican beach. In a humble shack and with his dog for company, Doll settles into a peaceful idyll of Buddhist study. But then trouble, as it always does, comes to paradise.&nbsp; Doll is the witness to a murder for which he is framed, and now, with an expired passport and the Mexican authorities on his tail, he must sneak across the border back to L.A. by any means necessary, with the goal of bringing the true murderer to justice. But it's not just trouble that expels Doll from paradise!&nbsp; His dark past reaches for him, like a hand from the grave, old enemies want him dead, including the Jalisco Cartel, and Doll, a reluctant instrument of mayhem, yearns to end this cycle of violence and tip the karmic scales in his favor. But how can he do this without getting blood on his hands? Karma Doll marks the third installment in a madcap, bloody, and impossibly fun series, bringing us back in the good company of Happy Doll: a beloved, introverted anti-hero who has taken more hits to the head than a linebacker, yet still always manages to come out on top.

Karma Doll (The Doll Series, 3)

From the creator of HBO's Bored to Death, a deliciously noir&nbsp;novel about idiosyncratic private detective Happy Doll and his quest to help a dying friend in a sun-blinded Los Angeles as "quirky, edgy, charming, funny and serious" as its protagonist (Lee Child) Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his sixteen-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no." &nbsp; Doll gets by just fine following his two basic rules: bark loudly and act first. But when things get out-of-hand with one particularly violent patron, even he finds himself wildly out of his depth, and then things take an even more dangerous twist when an old friend from his days as a cop shows up at his door with a bullet in his gut. &nbsp; A Man Named Doll&nbsp;is more than just a fascinating introduction to one truly singular character, it is a highly addictive and completely unpredictable joyride through the sensuous and violent streets of LA.

A Man Named Doll (The Doll Series, 1)

What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

Perhaps all of Jonathan Ames’ problems–and the genesis of this hilarious book–can be traced back to the late onset of his puberty. After all it can’t be easy to be sixteen with a hairless “undistinguishable from that of a five year old’s.” This wonderfully entertaining memoir is a touching and humorous look at life in New York City. But this is life for an author who can proclaim “my first sexual experience was rather old-fashioned: it was with a prostitute”–an author who can talk about his desire to be a model for the Hair Club for Men and about meeting his son for the first time. Often insightful, sometimes tender, always witty and self-deprecating, What’s Not to Love? is an engaging memoir from one of our most funny, most daring writers.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

A first novel which follows the life of an alienated young man, Alexander Vine, who slides into self-destruction in New York's erotic underworld. Vine's world of peep-shows, whores and pick-up bars wars daily with his job as a doorman in fashionable Manhattan.

I Pass Like Night

Random House Value Publishing

Now a major motion picture starring Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here is a gritty, harrowing story of corruption and one man's violent quest for vengeance. Joe has witnessed things that cannot be erased. A former FBI agent and Marine, his abusive childhood has left him damaged beyond repair. He has completely withdrawn from the world and earns his living rescuing girls who have been kidnapped into the sex trade. When he's hired to save the daughter of a corrupt New York senator held captive at a Manhattan brothel, he stumbles into a dangerous web of conspiracy, and he pays the price. As Joe's small web of associates are picked off one by one, he realizes that he has no choice but to take the fight to the men who want him dead. Brutal and redemptive in equal measure, You Were Never Really Here is a toxic shot of a thriller, laced with corruption, revenge and the darkest of inner demons.

You Were Never Really Here (Movie Tie-In)

Literature & Fiction

United States

Vintage

"Jonathan Ames is one of the funniest writers in America," so says Jonathan Ames, who is actually writing this flap copy, which is the publishing industry term for the boastful fluff you read on the inner portion of most hardcover book jackets. So let the truth be known: Most writers write or at least rewrite their flap copy. And why not? They are writers after all. For the flap copy on my last novel, I had the audacity to pronounce that I was one of America's most talented young writers. My mother read that and was very proud, pointing it out to me. I then said to her, "I wrote that." But she was still proud; she probably didn't believe that I wrote it. In fact, she doesn't believe most of what I tell her, but that's probably because she couldn't take it if she did believe me. Which is a good way to describe this book, this comic autobiography: It's the kind of book one's mother shouldn't read, though there are several passages where I profess my great Oedipal love and desire for my mother, which she might find flattering. What else recommends this book, or, rather, what recommends me, since this book is about me. Well, I'm bald and ribald, I'm like Rabelais and Danny Kaye, sometimes I'm straight and sometimes I'm gay. Well, not really. I'm almost never gay, but it rhymed nicely with Kaye, and also I tend to be depressed rather than gay. But I do like to make others laugh, so if you're standing in a bookstore, I hope you'll find this book funny and I hope that you'll move on to my introduction, where I'll further implore you to keep reading, with the idea that you'll eventually purchase the book, which is the point, by the way, of flap copy.

Crown

“A storyteller of refreshing inventiveness and subtlety” (San Francisco Chronicle), Jonathan Ames has won critical raves for this delightful “comedy of impeccable manners with a debauched '90s spin” (Elle). Meet Louis Ives: well-groomed, romantic, and as captivating as an F. Scott Fitzgerald hero. Only this hero has a penchant for ladies clothes, and he's lost his teaching post at Princeton’s Pretty Brook Day School after an unfortunate incident involving a colleague’s brassiere. Meet Henry Harrison: former actor, failed but brilliant playwright, and a well-seasoned escort for New York City’s women of means. He dances alone to Ethel Merman records, second-acts operas, and performs his scrappy life with the dignity befitting a self-styled man of the world. What can this ageless Don Quixote of the Upper East Side have to offer a young gentleman such as Louis? What, indeed. Well, the answer lies somewhere between the needs of an irascible mentor and the education of his eager apprentice...between cocktails on the Upper East Side and an even more intoxicating treat along the secret fringes of Times Square...and between friendship and longing.

The Extra Man (Contemporary Classics (Washington Square Press))

Humor & Satire

Scribner

When Alexander Vine finishes his work day, he leaves his post as a doorman at Manhattan's exclusive Four Seasons restaurant - and enters a nighttime landscape of chance and danger, excitement and reinvention in the city's erotic underworld. Walking a tightrope between sexual desire and self-extinction, Alexander Vine charts his destructive course - and his struggle for redemption - with startling, unadorned clarity.

I Pass Like Night (Contemporary Classics (Washington Square Press))

Contemporary

Washington Square Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ames, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ames, Jonathan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ames, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Man Named Doll: A Novel (The Doll Series, 1)

The Wheel of Doll: A Novel (The Doll Series, 2)

Karma Doll (The Doll Series, 3)

A Man Named Doll (The Doll Series, 1)

What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

I Pass Like Night

You Were Never Really Here (Movie Tie-In)

What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

The Extra Man (Contemporary Classics (Washington Square Press))

I Pass Like Night (Contemporary Classics (Washington Square Press))