NYC, 1999: Street poetry. Beauty. Danger. Survival.
Set in New York City around the turn of the millennium, Skinless follows Charmay, a young singer‑songwriter determined to transform pain into music. A survivor of sexual abuse and teenage homelessness-and now battling alcohol addiction-she builds a split survival: by night she is "Cindy," a poised, high‑earning stripper whose elegance and control open doors to elite clubs and powerful men. Cindy begins as armor-seductive, lucrative, dependable-but soon her confidence and appetites threaten to overwrite the self Charmay is fighting to preserve.
Three forces converge in the city's underground: producer Eddie Cruise hears fire in her voice and pushes her raw; Sam Black, a Miami‑raised son of Cuban-exiles, earns her fragile trust even as a vendettas with a privileged partner draws danger; Rex Raven, a Wall Street financier who wants Cindy-not Charmay-opens glittering doors-and traps. Family ties and flashbacks tug her toward the mask. Hustles collide. Masks switch places. Chaos ricochets: beats, bullets, bedsheets. By the final chorus, Charmay must choose-wear the mask that kept her alive or claim the honest voice that could set her free.
From jazz-blues artist Maggie Moor: Skinless—a voice-driven psychological thriller with the raw, poetic grit of Jim Carroll and the Beat Generation. Second Edition—Expanded & Revised.
Skinless is a literary psychological thriller told entirely in Charmay’s raw first-person voice.
Unflinching yet compassionate, Skinless is a literary psychological thriller-and a portrait of a woman fighting to heal. For readers of The Bell Jar, The Basketball Diaries, Milkman, Just Kids, and literary noir.
"An eloquent crime novel… sentences vacillate between beauty and despair."
- Foreword Reviews
