The Escape Artist: UBU Adventure Series, #1

Two legends. One Saturday night. Thirty ways your life could go.

It is mid-century small-town Ohio, and Lester Honeycutt wants one thing: to be the greatest magician who ever lived. Then the morning paper changes everything. Oudini, the greatest escape artist alive, is performing at the Delaware Park Square Rink tomorrow night at eight. The same night, at the Harlowe Hounde Hall Theatre, Heinrich the knife-thrower takes the stage, and rumor has it his volunteers do not always come back.

You cannot see both. You choose.

Every choice after that belongs to you. Raise your hand to volunteer, or nudge your best friend Niles to go up instead. Tell Becky the truth, or don't. Chase the fame, or chase the girl. Make the promise you are not sure you can keep. Forty-two decision points and thirty endings later, you find out what your choices cost. Only four of those endings are a complete life cycle, and finding all four is the game.

Book One of the UBU Adventure Series, with twenty-two original illustrations by Annabelle Tarter. Written for readers fourteen to seventeen, and for every grown-up who once kept two fingers in the book so a bad ending would not count.