SOFT CORE

A stripper's madcap search for her missing ex-boyfriend takes her over the edge in this whip-smart, wildly funny novel about love, sex, work, and sex work.

Ruth is lost. She's living in a drafty Victorian with her ex-boyfriend Dinoa ketamine dealer with a lingerie habitoverdosing on television and TikTok, and regretting her master's degree. When she starts dancing at a strip club, she transforms into Baby, a confident, conniving dancer whose plainness becomes a kind of signature, seducing tech bros, outcasts, and old lovers alike. Plunged into the swirling, surreal underworld of beautiful women, cold hard cash, ungodly hours, and secret desires, Baby's life finally begins to take shape, if only through the eyes of men who look at her. Until, one morning, Dino disappears without a trace. Brittany Newell is a writer and performer whose work has been published in Granta, n+1, The New York Times, Joyland, Dazed, and Playgirl. She published her debut novel, Oola, at the age of twenty one. She lives in San Francisco, where she works as a professional dominatrix.