Stivi Paskoski
Elvis Martini is in deep shit. His dilapidated Detroit apartment building is about to be foreclosed on by the bank; most of his tenants are behind on rent; he's in big debt to bookies and his daughter's school. He finds some ill-gotten cash in an evicted tenant's apartment and it briefly keeps the wolves at bay, but it brings out a bigger wolf, one that wants his stolen money back. When his daughter is kidnapped by the mysterious menace he's accidentally messed with, Elvis has 24 hours to come up with $25K - cash only.
Their relationship on the rocks, a young Brooklyn couple heads to a remote B&B to work things out. But from the moment they arrive at The Happy House it's one disaster after another, and they soon begin to suspect they've wandered into a real life horror movie. Events escalate from weird to terrifying as they contend with the house's batty owner, her imposing son, a moody Swedish lepidopterist, a pedantic English professor, an extraordinarily rare butterfly, the world's best blueberry muffins, a .44 Magnum, a demented serial killer, and one very strict rulebook.
Off Jackson Avenue is an interwoven crime story set in New York City involving a Mexican woman who has been tricked into sex-slavery by an Albanian pimp and must find a way to break out; A Japanese hit man who is in town to do a job for the Chinese mob and must finish his assignment despite the fact that he is haunted by his recently-dead mother's ghost; And a local car-thief who must go on one last stealing spree to raise enough money to buy a tire store and go legit. A smack-bang tale of ambition, survival and fate, Off Jackson Avenue reminds us that there are still some parts of New York City that you won't find on any map.
Nervous high school senior Tom Lawrence visits Port Chester University, where he gets a taste of politically correct college life when he's guided by fraternity wild man Droz and his housemates at The Pit. But Droz and his pals have rivals in nasty preppy Rand McPherson and the school's steely president. With their house threatened with expulsion, Droz and company decide to throw a raging party where the various factions will collide.
Frannie Escobar, a middle-aged working class woman of Cuban-American extraction who decides she's sick and tired of being a second-class citizen at home and at work.
