“Karp imaginatively combines absurdism and adventure with snarky teenage sleuthing and a sense of the macabre in this ambitious sophomore effort … A colorful, exuberant romp with an appealing fortune-hunting duo.” - Kirkus Reviews “rollicking from the first, driven by quips and ostentatious characters … Skunks Dance is solid, sarcastic, and bombastic young adult fare” - Foreword Reviews What he offers instead feels like pan-sifted treasure from a genuine teen mind.” - Justin Hickey, Open Letters Monthly Nor does he invest insufferable perspicacity into characters who just got their driver’s license. Order the hardcover, paperback, and ebook on. Inspired by the rickety world of 1960s British-made Westerns, Skunks Dance is a tale of revenge, greed, and men in tutus. Jet vows that he is going to find to Spillane’s gold before Amanda does, but it doesn’t take them long to realize that someone may have come this way already - someone who wants the past to stay buried. Jet and Amanda’s feud comes to a head over an extended incident involving a broken window, an exploded car, and a charge of sexual assault with a candy Batman.

Amanda is obsessed with finding the treasure of her infamous ancestor Spivey Spillane. Meanwhile in the present, seventeen-year-olds Amanda and Jet have rekindled an old childhood rivalry. Despite the indignities Spillane suffers, he chases Sam across Gold-Rush-era California because Sam is the only one who knows the location of a hidden fortune buried somewhere in the hills.

Sam robs a bank under Spillane’s name, casts him in an obscene one-man play wearing only a pink tutu, and starts a betting pool on how many wieners he has. She may have had a hand in winning the Revolutionary War, but even she never met the likes of Alabama Sam. Spivey Spillane’s grandmammy always said there were only two good reasons to kill a man - for cheating on a woman, and for serving drinks to a Yankee.

Skunks Dance by St. John Karp