A slyly constructed semi-autobiographical story about a young woman skirting the edge of the '90s, dealing with relationships, her less-than-perfect past, and artistic angst, Diary of an Emotional Idiot is edgy and entertaining--a mesmerizing story of the more surreal aspects of day-to-day living on country back roads and Manhattan's East Village. 192 pp. Author tour. National media &amp; online publicity. 30,000 print.

Diary of an Emotional Idiot: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Estep, Maggie

Genre Fiction

Harmony

Maggie Estep’s critically praised heroine, Ruby Murphy, is back! Back in Coney Island with a bunch of endearing misfits, back at the racetrack ogling thoroughbreds, and back learning that, on the seamy side of the sport of kings, survival can be a long shot. Ruby’s life is nothing if not complicated: she’s spending a lot of her time worrying about a jockey named Attila Johnson; a good-hearted Teamster with a bad back; a neighbor who is suspicious of anything that moves; one very fat cat who craves raw meat; a missing FBI agent; an underused piano; a few fine horses—and the sure knowledge that somehow, somewhere, there is a killer among them.

Gargantuan: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Broadway Books

A series of linked stories by the author of Diary of an Emotional Idiot follows the adventures of Jody, a kooky psychiatrist, and Katie, a lion tamer's daughter, as seen through the eyes of the men in their lives.

Soft Maniacs: Stories

Humor & Satire

Simon&Schuster

Sensitive Skin Number 11 contains writing by Arthur Nersesian, Sparrow, Deborah Pintonelli, Alan Kaufman, Joshua Mohr, Celia Farber, Lynn McGee, Rebecca Weiner Tompkins, Marc Olmsted, D. Scot Miller, Marian St. Laurent, Edward S. Robinson (interviewing Díre McCain), Margarita Shalina, Anonymous, Steve Dalachinsky and Maggie Estep, along with a painting portolio by Stephen Lack, photographs by Gretchen Faust, Dennis Gordon and Evelyn Bencicova, and more!

Sensitive Skin Number 11

Nersesian, Arthur

Farber, Celia

Pintonelli, Deborah

Olmsted, Marc

Kaufman, Alan.

Literary

Sensitive Skin Books

“Maggie Estep is the bastard daughter of Raymond Chandler and Anaïs Nin. Her prose is hard-boiled and sexy; she turns a good phrase and shows some leg. Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals is one hell of a great book! By the way, when Chandler and Nin left her at the orphanage, she was adopted by Charles Bukowski and Dick Francis.” —Jonathan Ames, author of What’s Not to Love? Charting Life at Its Most Bizarre . . . is an obsession for Maggie Estep, and in Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals this obsession reaches a fever pitch that is as readable and as entertaining as it is strange. Here is your chance to experience the world according to one of our most original and honest voices. Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals showcases some of the best of what Maggie Estep has to offer. Here, gathered together for the first time, are Maggie’s infamous spoken word pieces—including “Sex Goddess of the Western Hemisphere,” “Hey Baby,” and “I’m an Emotional Idiot,”—that landed her on MTV and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. This varied collection also brings together a myriad of writing styles, such as diary-style magazine columns, articles highlighting Estep’s friends and heroes—from punk godfather Iggy Pop to Permanent Midnight author Jerry Stahl—and short stories that feature Maggie’s own brand of original fiction. From her many smoking relapses, to her obsession with horses and horse racing, to her manic love life, to her motley assortment of friends, to her battles with an onslaught of killer attack “biker” fleas, to an epistolary short story that is a collaboration with Rick Moody, Maggie Estep offers a humorous if twisted view of reality in Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals.

Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals: Confessions, Highly Subjective Journalism, Old Rants and New Stories

United States

Three Rivers Press

Having drifted through thirty-three years of life, Ruby Murphy has put down roots in a rootless place: Coney Island. A recovering alcoholic who is fanatical in her love for animals and her misanthropic friends, Ruby lives above a furniture store and works at the musty Coney Island Museum. One day, Ruby is on the subway heading into Manhattan when the train stalls between stations. An elegant blond woman with a scarred face strikes up a conversation, and a misunderstanding between the two women leads to an offer Ruby decides she can’t refuse. The woman needs her boyfriend followed, and she thinks Ruby is the woman to do it—and do it right. Ruby’s life has been flat and painful lately. The Coney Island Museum isn’t doing much business, Ruby’s live-in boyfriend has moved out, and her best friend Oliver is battling cancer. Ruby agrees to follow the woman’s boyfriend, Frank, a man who works at Belmont Racetrack and seems to hang out in odd places with bad company. Ruby soon finds herself pushed headfirst into horse racing’s seamy underbelly. This is a dangerous world where nothing is as it appears, and people and horses seem to have limited life spans. When Ruby finds herself staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, she begins to have second thoughts. Only now it’s far too late.

Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

In the newest Ruby Murphy mystery, New York’s inadvertent sleuth discovers more about her shrink than she could have ever imagined as the doctor turns the tables, enlisting her help in the hunt for a one-legged man who’s been kidnapped and hidden in the Rockaways. Life gets even stranger when Ruby is inexplicably fired from her job at the Coney Island Museum, her friend Violet’s best racehorse is suddenly put up for sale, and a blue Honda begins shadowing Ruby’s every move as she journeys into the wilds of Pennsylvania in search of the woman she always thought had all the answers. Between her apartment that is spitting distance from the Cyclone rollercoaster, the barn deep in a no-man’s-land where she stables her horse, and the racetrack that is consuming her boyfriend, Ruby already knows her share of eccentric New York misfits. But in Flamethrower, she may have finally met her dangerous match.

Flamethrower

From Maggie Estep, heralded author of Diary of an Emotional Idiot, comes this darkly funny collection of inter-connected stories. Jody Ray, a young psychiatrist, conceals her own nymphomania -- and a penchant for stiletto boots -- behind a conservative navy work suit. After Jody meets Rob and moves into his apartment, life for this nice, normal Jewish boy from Chicago will never be the same. Even without the speed she shoots to get through medical school, Jody's sexual and emotional demands would have pushed poor Rob to the suicide attempt that eventually turns him into one of her patients. Like Rob, the other men she meets cannot help but be caught and destroyed in the vortex she creates. Some flee to the relative safety of Jody's old acquaintance, Katie Murphy. Though a foul-mouthed former sex-phone operator, this lion tamer's daughter has come through life hopeful and intact. Soft Maniacs traces the interwoven lives of these two women as they struggle to make their way in an erratic world they can't quite get a grasp on. Through sharp, vigorous prose, underlaid with a piercing wit, Maggie Estep leads us on a roller coaster tour of the underbelly of their psyches, surprising and delighting us at every turn. At once frightening and hilarious, heartbreaking and hopeful, Soft Maniacs is an unforgettable exploration of how people find one another in an accelerated world.

Contemporary

The novel tells the story of Zoey, a smut writer and receptionist at a dungeon in New York City. She is a self-described "emotional idiot." The chapters alternate between her life as a child, growing up with a father who was shattered in a parachuting accident turned horse trainer, and her life as an adult, where she writes smut and answers the phone for dominatrixes because she only possesses "a touch of sadism." The book cycles between different examples of sex and addiction. Zoey relates her representations of sex as a Catholic school-girl to her career as a pornographer. Her first kiss at age twelve, sweaty and struggling on the floor of a school bus on the return trip from summer camp, is a precursor to her messy, chaotic relationships with men as an adult. The novel never dips into the saccharine realm of compassion or redemption. Instead Estep portrays "emotional idiots" with deadpan honesty. Estep strips her characters of all defenses, so that by the end of the novel, the reader finds that they have been stripped as well.

Soft Skull

"The storytelling has vitality and a spirit of rebellion, giving us hope for the future of all those bad girls with dirty faces and bad boys on bikes."The New York Times "There is about Maggie Estep's work a directness, a clear determinationa drive to cut through, to break through, to claw throughthat is impressive."A.M. Homes, author of The Mistress’s Daughter "Maggie Estep is the bastard daughter of Raymond Chandler and Anaïs Nin. Her prose is hard-boiled and sexy; she turns a good phrase and shows some leg."Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! Alice Hunter is a thirty-six-year-old professional gambler living in Queens, New York. She is modestly successful as a horseplayer and enjoys her work. Though avidly pursued by her lover, Clayton, who she refers to as The Big Oaf, Alice's closest companion is Candy, a small spotted dog, and Alice likes it that way. When Clayton's overzealousness leads Alice to ask one of her racetrack cronies to intimidate Clayton into leaving her, a few things go wrong and Alice turns to her half-sister Eloise, a toy maker, whose own lover has just been killed in a freak accident. There is fierce love between Alice, Eloise, and Kimberly (their unconventional mother), but it takes Alice's accidental discovery of an awful secret Kimberly has been keeping to truly bring three eccentric women, seventeen dogs, and assorted lovers together. Maggie Estep has published six books, including Hex, a New York Times Notable Book of 2003. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies including: Brooklyn Noir, Queens Noir, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Best American Erotica, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. She has performed her work in a wide variety of venues ranging from Lincoln Center to Lollapalooza, Charlie Rose, and HBO's Def Poetry Jam. She lives in Woodstock, New York.

Alice Fantastic

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

Akashic Books Ltd

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Estep, Maggie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Estep, Maggie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Estep, Maggie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Diary of an Emotional Idiot: A Novel

Gargantuan: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

Soft Maniacs: Stories

Sensitive Skin Number 11

Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals: Confessions, Highly Subjective Journalism, Old Rants and New Stories

Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

Flamethrower

Soft Maniacs: Stories

Diary of an Emotional Idiot: A Novel

Alice Fantastic