“Crooked is insightful, suspenseful, and funny.…Fans of either political skulduggery or Lovecraftian terror are likely to relish the novel’s many dark pleasures.”

—Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

“Endlessly compelling.…Grossman out-nuts the nut jobs with a premise that’s as outlandish as it is superbly conceived.…His vision of the secret history of Richard M. Nixon is as eerie and absorbing as it is fantastically ludicrous.…Details of Nixon’s imaginary life—as well as those of his wife, Pat, and other contemporaries such as John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, and Ronald Reagan—are threaded into actual history with an intricate, clever, and startling plausibility.…Crooked isn’t simply a work of simple satire or wonky alt-history; it’s a speculative character study that taps into truths about Nixon that may be more essential than literal. That is, when they’re not deliciously absurd.”

—Jason Sheehan, National Public Radio

“Crooked confirms and details the extremely esoteric and occult presence we always suspected lay at the heart of the Nixon administration. It’s got spies, and political intrigue, and a sitting president spilling his own blood onto a pentagram hidden beneath the Oval Office rug, which is to say there are few of my buttons this book does not push.”

—John Darnielle, author of Wolf in White Van and singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats

“Here, finally, our disgraced thirty-seventh president fills in those eighteen and a half minutes, and much more, to reveal the shocking truth about what he did, what dark forces he fought, and what brave sacrifices he made to preserve the United States of America.…A cantering hodgepodge of American history, black magic, and political satire, Crooked draws us into the whole operatic tragedy of Tricky Dick’s violently oscillating career. We follow him through his unlikely election to the House in 1946, his rabid commie-baiting, his triumphant presidency, and his ignominious resignation in 1974. But those disasters you already know; now flush in cryptobiological weapons and Precambrian demons and you’ve got problems that only supernatural plumbers could solve: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Washington-style.”

—Ron Charles, Washington Post

“A wicked and wickedly funny thriller.…Lots of dark fun!”

—R. L. Stine

“Clever.…In Crooked, Grossman riffs on H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos in all its eldritch glory and creates an antihero as tormented as any Marvel or DC villain: Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh president of the United States.…The most impressive aspect of the novel is how Grossman creates a nuanced, funny, and moving characterization of a man reviled during (and after) his term of office.…Those who love deconstructing the supernatural literary references in series like True Detective and Lost will find much to savor in Crooked, which also carries an important message we should all heed as our presidential candidates hit the campaign trail: ‘If the old gods rise, it will represent a significant realignment of the electoral landscape.’”

—Elizabeth Hand, Los Angeles Times

“The journey on which Grossman dispatches Nixon is a fun one, a Merry Pranksters bus driven by Saruman or Sauron in Lord of the Rings.”

—Ray Locker, USA Today

“A captivating parallel tale.”

—Isabella Biedenharn, Entertainment Weekly

“A funny, intelligent fictional take on Nixon, in which our man has a lot more than dark omens, Dan Rather, and subpoenas to worry about.…Intrigue and irony abound.…Grossman has clearly done his homework on Nixon.”

—Chris Tucker, Dallas Morning News

“At once wildly imaginative and deeply intimate, Crooked is a demonically fun political thriller. The brilliance of Austin Grossman is in making big stories personal, even when the big story is super-powered presidents and intercontinental necromantic missiles.”

—Max Barry, author of Lexicon

“In telling the secret story of Richard Nixon, Austin Grossman draws back the curtain on American history. Senator Joe McCarthy should have been much, much more frightened. Once I started reading Crooked, I couldn’t put it down. But be warned: even as you devour this book, it will devour you.”

—Daniel O’Malley, author of The Rook and Stiletto

“Ingenious.…Crooked works as gleeful satire, as wacky alternate history, and as thriller, but what really shines is the character study at its center.…Grossman succeeds in making his fantastic explanation seem more believable than the truth.”

—Neil Hollands, Library Journal