Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- I Pass Like Night (1989)
- The Extra Man (1998)
- Wake Up, Sir! (2004)
- A Man Named Doll (2021)
Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order
- Bored to Death (2009)
- You Were Never Really Here (2013)
Short Story Collections In Publication Order
- My Less Than Secret Life (2002)
- The Double Life is Twice as Good (2009)
Graphic Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- The Alcoholic (2008)
Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order
- What’s Not to Love? (2000)
- Sexual Metamorphosis (2005)
- I Love You More Than You Know (2005)
Akashic Drug Chronicles Books In Publication Order
- The Cocaine Chronicles (By:Lee Child,Laura Lippman,Ken Bruen,Jervey Tervalon) (2005)
- The Mari*juana Chronicles (By:Jonathan Santlofer) (2013)
- The Nicotine Chronicles (With: Lee Child,Joyce Carol Oates,Hannah Tinti,,Cara Black) (2020)
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers
Short Story Collections Book Covers
Graphic Standalone Novels Book Covers
Non-Fiction Book Covers
Akashic Drug Chronicles Book Covers
Jonathan Ames Books Overview
I Pass Like Night
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.
The Extra Man
‘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.
Wake Up, Sir!
What kind of book has Jonathan Ames written this time? Well, think of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, except that Wake Up, Sir! is not as good. But that’s all right no book is as good as Don Quixote. You might also think of A Confederacy of Dunces, but there again Ames’s book falls short. I think, though, we might be pushing this humility business too far. So how else might we describe this brilliant, comedic, and literary novel? How about brilliant and comedic and literary, which we just used. One could also apply such adjectives as: exuberant, zany, and sexy. God forbid we should give you four adjectives in a row, but you know how it is: The Rule of Three Adjectives! In fairness, I should say that the last adjective mentioned is somewhat misleading. But there is one rather long sex scene in the book, worthy of placement in Krafft Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, so it’s not entirely misleading. I imagine that it’s about time we gave you a plot summary, without giving too much away, which is never an easy task: Alan Blair is a young, loony writer with numerous problems of the mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and physical variety. He’s very good at problems. He’s also quite skilled at getting into trouble. But luckily for Alan, he has a personal valet, a wondrously helpful fellow named Jeeves, who does his best to sort things out for his young master. Our tale begins in Montclair, New Jersey, where Alan gets into a scrape with his uncle Irwin, a gun toting member of the NRA. So Alan and Jeeves flee New Jersey and take refuge at a Hasidic enclave in Sharon Springs, New York. Unfortunately, more trouble ensues involving a woman! so Alan and Jeeves again take flight, this time landing at a famous artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. There Alan encounters a gorgeous femme fatale who is in possession of the most spectacular nose in the history of noses. Such a nose can only lead to a wild disaster for someone like Alan, and Jeeves tries to help him, but…
Happy reading!
My Less Than Secret Life
My Less Than Secret Life is the companion volume to Jonathan Ames’s first memoirish endeavor, ‘the mildly perverted and wildly amusing’ Vanity Fair What’s Not to Love? This collection of the cult author’s fiction and essays includes Ames’s public diary, the bi weekly columns he penned for the New York Press. The entries of this diary are a record of his mad adventures: his ill fated debut as an amateur boxer fighting as The Herring Wonder’, a faltering liaison with a Cuban prostitute, his public outing of George Plimpton as a Jew, his discussion with Eve Ensler about his dear friend The Mangina, a renegade mission as a Jew into the heart of Waspy Maine, and other such harrowing escapades. Whether trying to round up a partner for an orgy, politely assisting in an animal sacrifice, or scamming tickets to the WWF’s Royal Rumble for his son, Jonathan Ames proves himself a ballsier Everyman whose transgressions and compassionate meditations will satisfy the voyeur and encourage the halfhearted. But be warned. As Jonathan says, ‘I don’t like to be a bad influence. It’s bad enough that I have influence over myself.’ ‘…
Ames has always been one of my favorite contemporary writers…
for his…
fearless commitment to the most demanding psychosexual comedies.’ Rick Moody
The Double Life is Twice as Good
Wildly original novelist, essayist, and performance artist Jonathan Aames delivers his best collection yet a hilarious, risqu , and loveable selection of articles, essays, and fiction, including several previously unpublished pieces. With an HBO pilot based on this collection’s centerpiece Bored to Death , his two hilarious novels, The Extra Man and Wake Up, Sir!, in development as films with screenplays by Mr. Ames, a critically acclaimed graphic novel, The Alcoholic, under his belt, and an ongoing series of literary and not so literary stunts, Jonathan Ames has proven himself to be a writer of diverse and stunning talents. In The Double Life is Twice as Good, fans will be treated to a deft and charming compilation of Ames s journalism, personal essays, and short fiction. Featuring illuminating profiles of Marilyn Manson and Lenny Kravitz, his adventures at a goth festival in the Midwest, a story written for Esquire on a napkin, as well as a comic strip collaboration with graphic artist Nick Bertozzi, Ames s unique style and personality driven humor shines throughout this wickedly funny collection. Also included is the aforementioned short story, Bored to Death, a Raymond Chandler esque tale about a struggling writer turned detective who becomes quickly embroiled in the search for a missing college co ed. Described by The Portland Oregonian as an edgier David Sedaris, it s no wonder that this comic mastermind s already fervent and dedicated fanbase is continually growing.
The Alcoholic
Acclaimed novelist and creator of HBO’s new series ‘Bored to Death’ Jonathan Ames writes his first comics work with the original graphic novel The Alcoholic, illustrated by THE QUITTER artist Dean Haspiel. This touching, compassionate, ultimately humorous story explores the heart of a failing writer who’s coming off a doomed romance and searching for hope. Unfortunately, the first place his search takes him is the bottom of a bottle as he careens from one off kilter encounter to another in search of himself.
What’s Not to Love?
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.
Sexual Metamorphosis
But who could describe my fright when, on the next morning, I awoke and found myself feeling as if completely changed into a woman. Case 129, Autobiography, from Psychopathia Sexualis, a Medico Forensic Study by Richard Von Krafft Ebing At the time the passage above was written, people who felt trapped in the wrong gender automatically became case studies. Today they become the men and women they always felt they were. Transsexuals test our notions of what it is to be male or female and, more provocatively, what it means to be one self as opposed to another. Their stories, says Jonathan Ames, hold the appeal of an adventurer’s tale. In Sexual Metamorphosis, Ames presents the personal narratives of seventeen gender pioneers. Here is Christine Jorgensen, the first celebrity transsexual, greeting thousands of well wishers from the stage of Madison Square Garden. Here is Caroline Cossey, former model and Bond as in James girl, being outed in the tabloid press. Here is novelist and English professor Jennifer Finney Boylan discussing her impending transformation with her heartbroken spouse and supportive yet confused colleagues. The result is a fascinating and compulsively readable book, filled with anguish, introspection and courage.
I Love You More Than You Know
Jonathan Ames has drawn comparisons across the literary spectrum, from David Sedaris to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Woody Allen to P.G. Wodehouse, and his books, as well as his abilities as a performer, have made him a favorite on the Late Show with David Letterman. Whether he’s chasing deranged cockroaches around his apartment, kissing a beautiful actress on the set of an avant garde film, finding himself stuck perilously on top of a fence in Memphis in the middle of the night, or provoking fights with huge German men, Jonathan Ames has an uncanny knack for getting himself into outlandish situations. In his latest collection, I Love You More Than You Know, Ames proves once again his immense talent for turning his own adventures, neuroses, joys, heartaches, and insights into profound and hilarious tales. Alive with love and tenderness for his son, his parents, his great aunt and even strangers in bars late at night in I Love You More Than You Know Ames looks beneath the surface of our world to find the beauty in the perverse, the sweetness in loneliness, and the humor in pain.
The Cocaine Chronicles (By:Lee Child,Laura Lippman,Ken Bruen,Jervey Tervalon)
‘The best stories in The Cocaine Chronicles…
are equal to the best fiction being written today.’ New York Journal of Books’The perfect stocking stuffer for your uncle in AA.’ New York Observer’The Cocaine Chronicles is a pure, jangled hit of urban, gritty, and raw noir. Caution: these stories are addicting.’ Harlan Coben, award winning author of Just One Look’Every story is A . All contributors are top notch…
. Should be required reading for writers who want to master the craft of the short story.’ Cherry BleedsOriginal stories by Susan Straight, Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Ken Bruen, Jerry Stahl, Nina Revoyr, Bill Moody, Donnell Alexander, Deborah Vankin, Robert Ward, Manuel Ramos, and others. Gary Phillips writes for several mediums from novels to screenplays to comic books, and lives in Los Angeles, California. Jervey Tervalon is the author of All the Trouble You Need, Understand This, and the Los Angeles Times bestseller Dead Above Ground. He lives in Altadena, California.
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