Poison Shy

A dark debut from a rising literary talent

Brandon Galloway is a 29-year-old nobody, fumbling between dead-end jobs in a town full of drunks and prostitutes. When he lands a position with a pest control company and meets 21-year-old wild-child Melanie Blaxley while fumigating her apartment for bed bugs, Brandon’s life skips from hapless to hectic in no time. He is both attracted to and repelled by Melanie’s vulgar sensuality and reckless promiscuity, but when her world of crazy sex and petty crime starts to take its toll on his sanity, Brandon wonders how much more of her he can stand.

When she disappears, Brandon’s left to put the pieces together. Is it all just a prank, or have Melanie’s wild ways put her in peril? A hair-raising thrill ride through the bars and backstreets of a small college town, Poison Shy is a darkly funny and fast-paced novel about obsession, fear, and the threat of other people.

“A literary Blue Velvet for the millennial age, Stacey Madden’s Poison Shy is gripping neo-noir: a thriller populated by small town characters driven not by the usual genre motivations of money or power, but by the need to feel alive.” — Andrew Pyper, author of The Guardians and The Killing Circle

“This is a gory and troubling literary creeper about a dull small town with dark secrets deeper than the sewers. It moves fast and is amusing throughout — you’re smiling even when you’re grimacing.” — Russell Smith, author of Girl Crazy and How Insensitive