The Impossible Fortress
Billy Marvin's first love was a computer. Then he met Mary Zelinsky. Do you remember your first love? The Impossible Fortress begins with a magazine...The year is 1987 and Playboy has just published scandalous photographs of Vanna White, from the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune . For three teenage boys--Billy, Alf, and Clark--who are desperately uneducated in the ways of women, the magazine is somewhat of a Holy Grail: priceless beyond measure and impossible to attain. So, they hatch a plan to steal it. The heist will be fraught with peril: a locked building, intrepid police officers, rusty fire escapes, leaps across rooftops, electronic alarm systems, and a hyperactive Shih Tzu named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Failed attempt after failed attempt leads them to a genius master plan--they'll swipe the security code to Zelinsky's convenience store by seducing the owner's daughter, Mary Zelinsky. It becomes Billy's mission to befriend her and get the information by any means necessary. But Mary isn't your average teenage girl. She's a computer loving, expert coder, already strides ahead of Billy in ability, with a wry sense of humor and a hidden, big heart. But what starts as a game
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In 1987 New Jersey, fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin and two best friends decide to steal the Vanna White issue of Playboy from Zelinsky's stationery store. To copy the alarm code, Billy is sent to befriend the owner's smart, code-writing daughter Mary, and starts to fall for her.
The Impossible Fortress was written by Jason Rekulak and published in 2017. Rekulak later wrote Hidden Pictures (2022), a horror novel that became a bestseller.
The Impossible Fortress is published as adult fiction but works as YA crossover, set in 1987 with 14-year-old protagonists obsessed with computers and a Vanna White poster. The 1980s nostalgia is central.
The Impossible Fortress is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Impossible Fortress takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Impossible Fortress is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
The Impossible Fortress is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.