"Waif. Wastrel. Wraith. Cassy Peerson, the heroine of Maya Merrick's first novel, Sextant, is like some street-busted little match girl--but one with a stiletto blade stashed in her ripped fishnets. Buttonholing you like a bleached and bruised Ancient Mariner, Cassy almost convinces you that she couldn't care less if you paid attention to her curbside pitch--but it's one you,ll find yourself following fascinated to the very end. Provoking acidic laughter in startling places, interlaced with blurts of spleen-filled surrealism, and set in a no body's land populated by a bestiary of transvestites, cast-offs, and skin-shedding mermaids, Merrick's Sextant is a mesmerizing debut." -Taras Grescoe (author of The Devil's Picnic)