Poppycock Press Release

Poppycock Enterprises is proud to announce the upcoming trilogy of completely unrelated novels by an exciting, avant-garde, as-yet-to-be-named debut novelist. The trilogy starts with a bang with the fast-paced crime thriller, A Doge Alone. Museum guard Isabella Guardalaluna takes her job as second-in-command of security at the Doge’s Palace in Venice very seriously. So when a famous relic (the golden pointer belonging to disgraced and beheaded doge Marino Faliero) goes missing, she’s on the case. Unfortunately, her hypervigilance comes under suspicion when her notes on the laziness of certain security team members are discovered. To clear her name, Isabella must turn detective and ferret out the secrets that are hiding in the darkest, dankest chambers of the palace, and she finds that the doges aren’t the only ones with something to hide.

The second book in the trilogy is a psychological exploration of loneliness, A Fish Called Stray. Morton Capgras works from home stuffing envelopes for a mail-order dandelion company. He has his groceries delivered and orders all other necessities online. He keeps phone calls to a minimum, rarely speaking to anyone other than his elderly mother. His constant, faithful companion is a goldfish named Stray. Morton has gotten the routine of his life down to perfection; there are no surprises and no questions, and that’s just the way Morton likes it. Until one Wednesday. He rises at 7 o’clock as usual, fixes his Wednesday breakfast of orange marmalade on 7-grain toast, puts on a Mozart cd and goes to feed Stray. But this is no ordinary Wednesday, and Morton is blind-sided by the realization that Stray has been replaced with an impostor. He looks like Stray, he swims like Stray, but Stray he most certainly is not. And what began as an ordinary Wednesday descends into an existential hell.

The series finishes with a novel destined to become a future classic, Everybody Thinks I’m Pretty. The unnamed protagonist of this mind-bending work has a serious problem: she’s starving to death. Every day she looks into the mirror with trepidation, for what she sees are bones about to poke through her skin, dull hair falling to the floor around her, eyes surrounded by shadows. The reader is drawn into a world of panic as she eats to excess, trying desperately to gain weight. But suddenly we are introduced to a view from the other side of the mirror, revealing that the woman we think we know is actually morbidly obese, suffering from reverse Body Dismorphic Disorder. Will she seek help in time, or will she erroneously gorge herself to death?

These are just a few of the ground-breaking new works to be introduced by Poppycock Enterprises in the coming year. They can be purchased at discerning bookstores everywhere, or just try the doorbell at Poppycock and see if Mr. Periwinkle answers!