Natasha stalks the quiet streets of dead-end Lunar Bay like doom in a denim jacket. She's a grim reminder that some teenagers can never escape the ever-tightening noose of their lives. Burned out and benumbed by a traumatic past, dogged by scurrilous small-town gossip, she finds solace in drugs, sex and Slayer.

What horrors have her flat eyes witnessed? And how far will she go in pursuit of the one tiny spark of hope that still flickers in her haunted heart?

When a naïve transplant crosses her path, he's drawn into shadow and doubt. With his girlfriend ghosting him, Natasha's fresh introduction to her half-lit world is darkly appealing. Now faced with confusing quandaries—connection or convenience, relationship or exploitation—can he help any of the women in his life? Or is he just helping himself?

The untold tragedies of Natasha's lonely life may be more than he can handle. And in a town whose history is littered with dead girls, there may be no happy ending for anyone.

A black-as-tar coming-of-age story, this gritty psychological thriller from Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author Matthew R. Davis, eloquently chronicles the crushing gravity of small-town hopelessness, the double-edged catharsis of sex, drugs, and heavy metal, and the brutal weight of youth's first lessons in accountability.

Praise for The Dark Matter of Natasha:

"A searing indictment of the selfishness of youth and the injustices of an uncaring world. Bleak, poignant, and dripping with pathos. Powerful stuff." — Alan Baxter, Australian Shadows Award-winning author of Served Cold, The Gulp and the Eli Carver Supernatural Thrillers series

"The Dark Matter of Natasha is a pitch-perfect threnody of small-town despair, a super-collision of sex, Slayer, and the cosmic indifference of infinite space." — J. Ashley-Smith, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of Ariadne, I Love You and The Attic Tragedy

"A haunting coming-of-age story told with confidence and razor-sharp insight. Equal parts tawdry, irreverent and as dark as the space between stars, Matthew R. Davis serves up a soiled platter of sexual awakening guaranteed to leave a mark." — John C. Foster, author of Rooster and The Isle