Horse Girl Fever is a hilariously weird collection, part autofiction, part outlandish daydream, that celebrates the horse girl within all of us.

From cult author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Kevin Maloney delivers a vision of the world that is hysterical, terrifying, and true. A cuckolded husband finds a new identity as a ghost. A homeowner has a nervous breakdown while building a pergola. An angst-ridden teenager finds his spiritual equal in the mosh pit of an Alice in Chains concert.

In fourteen brutally funny stories, Horse Girl Fever plunges the reader into a world of misfits-inept drug smugglers, tattooed office workers, and philosophical strip club bouncers--who fumble toward the light but often end up flailing. Maloney's writing conjures a dazzling spectrum of pain, joy, and humanity, peeking into the darkest corners of reality while high on Whippets.

* Most Anticipated Books of 2023 -- LitHub
* Page One feature at Poets & Writers
* 12 Must-Read Books of January 2023 -- Chicago Review of Books
* Must-Read Paperbacks to Kick Off 2023 -- Book Riot
* 30 Indie Books to Look Out for in 2023 --Independent Book Review

Provocative, poignant, and resoundingly hilarious, The Red-Headed Pilgrim is the tragicomic tale of an anxious red-head and his sordid pursuit of enlightenment and pleasure (not necessarily in that order).

On a sunny day in a business park near Portland, Oregon, 42-year-old web developer Kevin Maloney is in the throes of an existential crisis that finds him shoeless in a field of Queen Anne's lace, reflecting on the tumultuous events that brought him to this moment. Growing up in the suburbs, young Kevin suffered a psychological break that ripped me from my humdrum existence mainlining high fructose corn syrup and episodes of The Golden Girls. Thus begins a journey of hard-earned insights and sexual awakening that takes Kevin from angst-ridden Beaverton to the beaches of San Diego, a frontier-themed roadside attraction in Helena, Montana, and a hermetic shack on an organic lettuce farm.

Everything changes when Kevin falls in love with Wendy. After a chance tarot reading lands them on the frigid coast of Maine, their lives are unsettled by the birth of their daughter, Zoë, whose sudden presence is oftentimes terrifying, frequently disturbing, and yet--miraculously--always wondrous.

The Red-Headed Pilgrim is an irresistible novel of misadventure and new beginnings, of wanderlust and bad decisions, of parenthood and divorce, and of the heartfelt truths we unearth when we least expect it.

READ AN EXCERPT:
Hansel & Gretel excerpted from The Red-Headed Pilgrim, on Fence.

I haven't read a book this great, this funny, this original, this emotional, this bonkers in quite some time. It's a little like Bukowski and Sam Lipsyte and the drug scene in Beavis and Butthead Do America all smashed together, but also completely and totally Kevin Maloney. -Aaron Burch, author of Backswing