Spider Kiss

If you thought the only thing Ellison writes is speculative fiction, craziness about giant cockroaches that attack Detroit or invaders from space who look like pink eggplant and smell like chicken soup, this dynamite novel of the emergent days of rock and roll will turn you around at least three times. No spaceships, no robots, just a nice kid from Louisville with a voice like an angel and an invisible monkey named Success riding him straight to hell... The gritty rockabilly novel that drops the word on Stag Preston in the legendary, formative years of rock & roll, Spider Kiss will suck your socks off. This electrifying novel of the early days of rock & roll takes no prisoners as it runs an eye over the nice kid from Louisville with a voice straight outta heaven...and the demon Success on his back...and follows him down, down, down into a velvet-lined hell where nobody's grass is greener. According to premier rock critic Greil Marcus of Rolling Stone, this is the best rock novel ever written (A copy of the first edition in mint condition holds a place of honor in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.) "Harlan Ellison is the dark prince of American letters, cutting through our corrupted midnight fog with a switchblade prose. He simply must be read." --Pete Hamill "Ellison writes with sensitivity as well as guts--a rare combination." --Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint