Books by Brian Yanksy
Young Adult Novels
My Road Trip to the Pretty Girl Capital of the World is set in 1979.
Simon, our hero, is having problems. He can't get along with his dad, his girlfriend has dumped him, and he's been seeing too much of the police. On top of all this, he's adopted and he can't quite get past the feeling that he doesn't belong anywhere. Not with his adopted parents and not in his small Iowa town. So when he gets suspended from school he steals his dad's car and heads for Texas where he believes his birth parents live. Along the way he meets an Elvis impersonator (who might not be an impersonator at all), a couple of drifters, and a sexy girl named Charlie. Once he arrives at his destination (Austin, Texas) he meets two people he never really expected to meet and they change everything.
Go to chapter 1 of My Road Trip to the Pretty Girl Capital of the World.
Order the book from Amazon.com.
Wonders of the World is about Eric, a 
seventeen-year-old whose father disappeared when he was twelve, and whose mother remarried a moron and took the moron's side every single minute of every single day. When Eric runs away from home, he ends up living on the street. He has only the memories of his father's stories, which he thinks of as wonders, and friends such as Payback, Birdboy and the girl he loves, Catgirl, to keep him going. When he gets noticed by the ruler of the street named Bluebeard, his struggle to survive gets more precarious. Then he discovers acting through involvement with a small theater group and he feels an excitement he's never felt before. Is it enough to get off the street in the face of the powerful and ruthless Bluebeard? You know the answer. You have to read to find out.
