Los Angeles - January 22, 2008

Lost Vegas

“Beautiful Children,” by Charles Bock

Between the blaring neon lights, powder-caked showgirls, and Celine Dion, you thought you’d seen the most terrifying side of Vegas.

Not even close.

In his debut novel, Beautiful Children, author Charles Bock exposes an even seedier underworld of decrepit pawn shops, low-rent strip joints, and drug-addled desert raves. Somewhere there, among the amateur porn players and subterranean casino dwellers, 12-year-old Newell Ewing has mysteriously vanished.

Retracing Ewing’s steps on that fateful Saturday night, Bock explores the desperate debauchery of other runaways (the ghoulish Lestat and his cough syrup-chugging pal Danger Prone Daphney) and lost souls (the sex-frenzied Ponyboy) in Newell’s path while exposing the boy’s parents’ inability to cope.

Once you follow, good luck tearing yourself away from dark pulp fiction.

Hey, they don’t call it Sin City for nothing.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.