Eric Madeen

Massage World: The Novel: (Softcover: $20, 266p, 6X9”: ISBN: 978-1-68114-469-6; Hardcover: $35: ISBN: 978-1-68114-470-2; EBook: $2.99: ISBN: 978-1-68114-471-9; LCCN: 2018954819; Fiction—Thrillers—Crime; Edited by: Danielle Willett; Release: December 3, 2018; Purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble): The body is in pain. So around the world the massage industry is booming, from ubiquitous airport massage bars and upscale spas to risqué outcall and down-market parlors. Enter into these pages massage therapist Ingrid Swanson’s mission to open a grandiose health spa, Massage World, against the wishes of a wild parlor lord. The all-too cunning antagonist Jack Cobb dispatches a corrupt undercover vice detective to solicit unlawful massages transcribed in delirious police reports. Cobb goes on to manipulate zany media coverage, which incites a rollicking raid of the premises and neighborhood organizations to picket and protest so he can take over Massage World. Until the cavalry comes in the form of a lesbian biker gang… The war of the sexes writ large.

“Intricate erotic massage, precisely detailed, is at the center of Eric Madeen’s novel, which circles from Asia to the US and back again, and is spiced with a difficult-to-define gangsterism. The book is disturbing, engaging, and decisively original.” —Harold Jaffe, Editor of Fiction International

“Eric Madeen’s Massage World moves from Japan to SoCal’s Border City in a madcap romp through an underworld of sleazy massage parlors that offer sexual favors along with back rubs and wage war with one another for control of the trade. It’s a story observed from a massage table, peopled by wacky masseuses, grifters, lowlifes and corrupt cops, and bursting with eccentric energy.” —William Luvaas, author of Ashes Rain Down, the Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year

A spicy WOCA The Source Radio interview about erotic massage, research and writing, “Eric Madeen Interview: Massage World”

Eric Madeen’s writings have appeared in such diverse publications as Time, Asia Week, The East, Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo Journal, Kyoto Journal, Mississippi Review, Japanophile and All Nippon Airways’ WINGSPAN, to which he contributed several feature stories. His first novel, Tanga, was inspired by a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Gabon, Africa and garnered nominations for AWP and L.A. Arts Council awards. He is currently associate professor of modern American literature at Tokyo City University and adjunct professor at Keio University. His website is at ericmadeen.com.