The Night Gwen Stacy Died

" Part tangled love story and part love affair with comics . . . centers on that tenuous bit of time between childhood and adulthood, when anything seems possible." — Library Journal
Sheila Gower will do anything to get away from small-town nowhere Iowa and her dead-end swing-shift job at a gas station. Right now, all she has is her dreams. So does the cute young stranger who calls himself Peter Parker—a daredevil cabdriver with an immersive Spider-Man obsession, a gun, and a plan: They'll fake a kidnapping, empty the register, and head for Chicago to complete a mysterious mission. Sheila thinks it's a marvel of an idea. Until the colorful rush of their fantasy getaway collides with reality.

"The literary equivalent of a pop music mashup . . . Inspired by 'Spider-Man,' Westerns, coming-of-age novels and Bonnie and Clyde" ( Chicago Tribune), The Night Gwen Stacy Died is both "superbly suspenseful" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) and "sweetly eccentric" ( The New York Times)—a love story about loss, mutual rescue, and finding our real identities.