Pick the Lock

From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King, a weird and insightful new novel about a girl intent on picking the lock of her toxic family.

Jane Vandermaker-Cook would like her mother back. As Jane’s mother tours the world to support the family, Jane lives and goes to school in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their mendacious father who confines Jane’s mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she’s at home. And then there’s weirdly ever-present Aunt Finch, Milorad the gardener, and his rat, Brutus. For Jane, this all seems normal until she suddenly gains access to the files for a lifetime of security-camera videos--her lifetime.

A.S. King’s latest surrealist masterpiece follows Jane’s bizarre and brilliant journey to reconnect with her mother by breaking out of her shell and composing a punk opera.

A.S. King is the award-winning author of many acclaimed books for young readers. Her novel Dig won the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award, and Ask The Passengers won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times called her ＂one of the best YA writers working today.＂ In 2022, she was awarded the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant contribution to YA literature. King lives with her family in Pennsylvania, where she returned after living on a farm and teaching adult literacy in Ireland for more than a decade. www.as-king.com