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WINNER OF THE 2024 THOMAS E. KENNEDY NOVEL AWARD

Destroy Me Gently, Please

Robert Day
BOOKSHOP
BARNES & NOBLE
AMAZON
POWELLS

Go for a swim in the restless sea of Max Talley‘s mind in these sixteen stories about men and women reeling from broken marriages or lost jobs, desperate to start over again, tales of ’70s rock stars fighting to remain relevant and regain lost fame, about teenagers eager to grow up and escape stifling towns. Troubled drifters, middle-aged dreamers, unreliable narrators, and reliable procrastinators all hoping for a last shot at glory. Talley traverses the mental landscapes from big cities on the East and West Coast to small towns in the Southwest. Destroy Me Gently, Please collects Talley‘s best stories from 2017 to 2024.

Author: Max Talley
Paperback, 240 pages, 2025
ISBN-13: 9781947175877

Talley’s previous collections are My Secret Place and When The Night Breathes Electric. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, and he’s been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. He lives somewhere along I-40, on the long, lonely road between New Mexico and Southern California. www.maxtalley.com

“In this captivating collection, Talley depicts the dark beauty of America in all its most passionate desperation: characters wishing for betterment, for youth, for money, for opportunity, or letting their happiness hinge on some unknown moment of existential bliss. Many laugh-out-loud moments will keep you reading and you’ll finish with the eye-opening realization that truly, you already have everything you need.”

—M. M. De Voe, author of A Flash of Darkness and Book & Baby

“Each story in this wild, exuberant collection has the effect of Max Talley belting a walk-off home run, bases loaded with rascally characters, crisp dialogue, and compelling situations.”
—Shelly Lowenkopf, author of Struts and Frets and Love Will Make You Drink & Gamble
“Max Talley writes true grit and grime with a zest for its hot pleasures the reader will appreciate and enjoy.” 
 
— Tama Janowitz 
“Talley makes good on a tacit promise to gently destroy his readers with the unvarnished candor once reserved solely for Dostoyevsky. With each story in this delightfully scathing collection, Talley builds toward some inevitable hard truth about, well, the way it is. Life, cruel destiny, ironic fate—whatever you want to call it. Whether it’s characters “forever leaving destruction in [their] wake” in “Ruby of Hesperia” or those about to go feral like Susan in “Dishevel Me”, these eclectic tales are united by Talley’s sardonic humor.”
 
-Genna Rivieccio, editor-in-chief of The Opiate
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