Farnsworth's Revenge Is the New Rollo Hemphill Misadventure

LaPuerta Books announces release of the humorous novel Farnsworth's Revenge by Gerald Everett Jones on April Fool's Day.

Boychik-lit satirist Gerald Everett Jones has produced his third novel about geeky genius Rollo Hemphill, a recovering computer hacker whose fate is to fail continuously upward. The new title in the series is Farnsworth's Revenge, released on April 1 in honor of fools everywhere. Rollo once feared the Secret Government was out to get him, now he's on a mission to help them out. "Paranoia is just a heightened state of awareness," Rollo quips bravely, as he caroms around the world in search of the kidnapped life-sized replica of a Hollywood goddess. It's hardly a spoiler to reveal that it's easier for him to uncover secrets to cold fusion and global money laundering than to find the missing doll. Farnsworth's Revenge is now available from booksellers in both softcover and Kindle e-book formats, published by LaPuerta Books and Media.

In the first book in the series, My Inflatable Friend, Rollo devises a screwball scheme with the lookalike doll to make his girlfriend jealous and stumbles into a gig on shock-jock radio. In the second book, Rubber Babes, he thinks he's landed a cushy job heading up a Hollywood charity, but he ends up running from the Feds. Now in Farnsworth's Revenge, he's on the lam in Europe, when he gets recruited for a secret mission that has him chasing clues from Paris, to Istanbul, then to Nairobi. The painful consequences of Rollo's comic misadventures show us all too vividly the perils of pretending to be someone you're not — and the hazards of stroking every male's most vulnerable part — his swelling ego.

Gerald Everett Jones is a freelance writer who lives in Santa Monica, California, with his wife, actress-comedienne Georja Umano. His first book under the LaPuerta imprint was How to Lie with Charts. He expounds on his notions of male-centered humor in his collection of short stories, Boychik Lit, which includes an essay on the genre. His father-son relationship comedy Ballpoint, written for general audiences, tells how an outrageous huckster brought on the "Pen Wars" of 1945. Ballpoint is scheduled for release by LaPuerta in September.

About the Rollo Hemphill series, book critic Paula Berenstein raved, "Woody Allen meets Nick Hornby in this hilarious beach read. Gerald Everett Jones, who is every bit as clever as Larry David (and has more hair!), has created a witty, literate George Costanza for us to savor. NBC, are you paying attention?"

Claiming he's inspired by the humor of P.G. Wodehouse and James Thurber, author Jones blogs on the topic of male-centered comic fiction at Boychik Lit (www.boychiklit.com).