“Imagine a story by Ben Mezrich (The Accidental Billionaires, 21) of staggering financial improprieties infused with Tim Dorsey’s (Hurricane Punch, Gator A-Go-Go) zany, over-the-top pure insanity, and you might have something somewhat resembling Cash Out, the rollicking debut novel by Greg Bardsley. This is nonstop, mercilessly hilarious, no-holds-barred fiction for fans of The Hangover and Office Space—an outrageous tall tale that follows one desperate, disgruntled Silicon Valley exec through a surreal three-day scramble to cash out his stock options and leave behind his hated high-tech job before outrageous villains (and even crazier friends) completely destroy him. Do you like the wildly satirical work of Tom Perrotta, Sam Lipsyte, and Gary Shteyngart? Do the ingenious comic caper novels of Elmore Leonard leave you breathless and exhilarated? Then get ready to Cash Out.” – Harper Perennial
Praise for Cash Out:
“Flat-out funny prose that doesn’t resort to parody is a rarity. Bardsley’s clarity and eccentricity should be treasured.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
“Succeeds grandly in making Silicon Valley a place of intrigue and dangerous head cases and hard cases.” – Booklist
“A wild romp of a book … In this world where making quick money is all the rage, it’s quite dead-on.” – Bookreporter.com
“The valley is so weird that it would be tough to come up with fiction that is more outrageous than the valley’s reality. Bardsley … gets that, and he’s artfully turned the weirdness to his advantage in his debut novel, Cash Out.” – Mike Cassidy, San Jose Mercury News
“A satirical romp. … A crazy ride through the corporate pressure cooker, filled with lust, ego, greed and dreams of escaping to a simpler, more balanced life.”– Metro
“A funny expose of life on the darker side of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial world.” – West Coast Live
“Smart about Silicon Valley culture.” – Publishers Weekly
“It’s really rare for me to read a novel that has me laughing so hard that I almost fall out of my chair. It’s even rarer for that novel to also reads like a non-stop action movie … I’m highly recommending Cash Out.” – Popcorn Reads
“Cash Out is one of those novels that begs for more adjectives: relentless, madcap, polished, lean, vivid, warped, original, horrifying and hilarious in equal measure. It’s like the spawn of mad monkey sex between Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski. Which is a good thing.” – Marcus Sakey, author of The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes and The Amateurs
“Wow and wow again. CASH OUT gets the 3-E merit: Excellent, enthralling and with a wicked elegance. I loved it.” – Ken Bruen, best-selling author of The Devil and other books
“When looking for quirk, you just can’t beat Greg Bardsley. … When you read Cash Out this fall, you’ll be looking at that lawn outside your window, that garage across the street, the eccentric neighbor down the block with a social blind-spot – the awkward self-possession, the public peccadillo, the… quirk – and you’ll have to admit – Bardsley took your cake, ate it too, and then did untoward things with it.” – Jedidiah Ayres, Ransom Notes: The Barnes & Noble Mystery Blog
“A tense, satirical black comedy that will leave you with paper cuts from anticipating what’s on the next page and an aching gut from the laughter.” – Frank Bill, author of Donnybrook
Kind words:
“Greg Bardsley’s fiction is tight, serrated, brutal, nine kinds of twisted, and funny as hell. Brace yourselves.” — Doug Dorst, award-winning author of Alive in Necropolis and The Surf Guru
“Greg Bardsley’s writing walks on the wild side, with street swagger and a switch-blade in the sock. His short stories are an internet sensation, there’s style and there’s substance and a great big dollop of skill. Utterly unique and head-and-shoulders above his peers.” – Tony Black, author of Truth Lies Bleeding
“A cold heart is beating in [Greg Bardsley's] prose, one that suspects there’s nothing much good to say about people. Still, you can say it with a sly wink that lets everyone know we’re all in on the same grim joke. Bardsley gives us the wink and delivers the black punchline.” – Charlie Huston, best-selling author of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and The Shotgun Rule
“Nobody has more fun with his characters than Mr. Bardsley does.” – Al Riske, author of Precarious and Sabrina’s Window
“Irreverent, surreal, utterly original. Bardsley is a genre unto himself.” - Keith Rawson, editor of Crimefactory magazine
“Greg Bardsley is one of the funniest writers, period. Someone once asked me to describe Greg’s writing and all I could come up with was it’s like being stuffed into a gag bag full of razor blades and getting tossed into the gibbons cage at the zoo.” – Kieran Shea, author of Koko Takes a Holiday
