Fruit Fly
A Novel
CROOKED LANE BOOKS · Print & ebook · August 4, 2026
A BBC must-read book of 2026—"Sharp, dark and humorous, it's a real nail-biter." Go gay.
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- Who it’s for
- Readers drawn to satirical thrillers about story appropriation
- Themes
- Story appropriation, Career ambition, Addiction and vulnerability
- Pacing
- Fast
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Start with this bookAbout this book
A BBC must-read book of 2026—"Sharp, dark and humorous, it's a real nail-biter." Go gay. Go sad. Go dark. A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story. Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast. Enter Leo.
Continue reading
He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for. Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story. A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.
Where it sits
| Suspense | 55% |
|---|---|
| Gay Fiction | 54% |
| Psychological Fiction | 38% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Gay Fiction
- Suspense
- Psychological Thrillers
- Authors
- Josh Silver
- Publisher
- CROOKED LANE BOOKS
- Published
- August 4, 2026
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Story appropriation · Career ambition · Addiction and vulnerability
- Reading lane
- Gay Fiction