A Carnival of Birds

Title: A Carnival of Birds

Author: Pam Jones

Buy A Carnival of Birds on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, or buy request at your local bookstore

In the summer of 1961, an innocent America eagerly anticipates the opening of a mysterious new theme park-the Ickack Pleasure Gardens. 

This park is rumored to be the dying wish of elusive tycoon Elijah Zallman Ickack: a desire for a place that can restore the joy and wonder of childhood written into his last will and testament. His great-nephew and heir, Freddy, must come forward to claim this fantastic, profitable, and improbable throne. 

Without Freddy, there can be no Ickack Gardens. But Freddy knows that there is more to this will, this park, and this man than the adoring public wants to think…

ISBN: 978-1-951393-29-8
Price: $11.95 (paperback) $3.99 (Kindle ebook)
Release date: 11/23/23

Praise for A Carnival of Birds:

“With A Carnival of Birds, Pam Jones gives us a brilliant impression of humanity, all from within the confines of an amusement park created from the ground up with the belief that appearances matter more than substance. Nothing escapes her masterful, scrutinizing eye: from the minute details of clothing and foliage to the full revelation of what makes machines like capitalism, love and privilege run rampant—the richness of description and wild storytelling are on masterful display. A Carnival of Birds proves no idyll is ever perfect, or really what it seems and gives further evidence that the curious will always lose paradise in the end.”
— Jarrod Campbell, author of The Reason I’m Here

“A Carnival of Birds is like a long-lost Powell and Pressberger movie shot on film stock saturated with that indefinable quality I’m starting to call the “Pam Jones zhuzh.” The writing is like a lazy river, pulling you along effortlessly, each paragraph stacked with sentences that melt like butter on the brain. But the story itself is a tightly-woven drama of characters, both real and engineered, and the ways they inescapably collide through currents that are always gleefully off-center. In the end, you’re left with a Normal Rockwell idea as painted by Hieronymous Bosch — with birds.”
— Tex Gresham, author of Violent Candy and Sunflower

“A Carnival of Birds is a brilliant peek inside a carousel of characters reminiscent of nostalgic American classics of the 50s, but more than this: clever transcends clever, and Jones has proven to be not only an expert in her creation of this town and its people but also a keen insight into the minds of those ‘on the edge of the pit where the beast waited.’ Readers will want to turn these pages just to see what predicaments Jones has in store.”
— Hillary Leftwich, author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock and Aura, a memoir

“In A Carnival of Birds, Pam Jones’s industrious protagonist yearns to build a theme park that will bring glory and wonder into his life. With this premise, Jones plunges readers into the world of mystery and magic that is Ickack Pleasure Gardens. Jones’s distinct voice carries the reader into the dark underbelly of this theme park and its madcap characters. With wit and daring, Jones carries a story that will keep readers guessing as they dive into the heart of ambition and just how far people will go to realize their dreams.”
— Veronica Bane, author of Mara, Miyuki, and Don’t Call It an Invasion