The Epic Misadventures of Tom Soiled

Once upon a runway in Milan, Tom Soiled was a g.o.d. (gorgeous, outrageous, and delicious) ruined, and impossible to ignore. He was the face of high-fashion disaster, the man who made cigarette burns look like couture and spilled wine look like a deliberate color palette. But the lights faded, the camera shutters stopped clicking, and Tom found himself trading silk cravats for soggy flannel.Now he drifts down the Mississippi on a borrowed, rusted-out pontoon boat that smells faintly of catfish and regrets. He has nothing to his name but a silver flask, a reputation that still haunts the tabloids, and a single, heavy envelope sealed with the wax crest of his Aunt Prudence.But this is New Orleans. Trouble here doesn’t just knock; it wears alligator shoes, drinks absinthe for breakfast, and dances on rooftops under a moon that looks like a jaundiced eye.Within hours of stepping onto the sticky pavement of Bourbon Street, Tom finds himself thrust into a subterranean underworld he never knew existed. He is chased by a vengeful ringmaster who wants him for a sideshow exhibit, mocked by a vaudeville-singing sewer rat with a sharp tongue and a sharper razor, and suddenly shrunk to four inches tall by two delightfully unhinged scientists who mistake him for a discarded specimen.To survive the night, Tom is ferried across the treacherous gutters in a soggy matchbox, escorted by a militaristic colony of ants with a strict code of conduct, and protected by a one-eared street cat who carries the cynical, world-weary moral compass of a late-night cocktail waitress.The stakes? Far higher than his career ever was. He must navigate the city’s labyrinthine plumbing and neon-soaked back alleys to retrieve one tiny piece of paper from one very dirty drain-a scrap of truth that could save his family name or finish his ruin once and for all.Hilarious, gross, gorgeous, and just a little bit doomed, Tom Soiled is a noir picture book misadventure for kids who love their heroes a little bit ruined, their villains a little bit bizarre, and their endings a whole lot unexpected. Grab your umbrella-it’s going to be a messy ride.