Soft Core (A Novel) - Brittany Newell

A hottest book of 2025 in Sunday Times Style, Dazed, AnOther and Stylist. Baby spends her days with her sweet, cross-dressing, drug-dealing ex-boyfriend, Dino, and every night dancing at Paradise Lost, a strip club where she transforms into whatever, or whoever, her clients want her to be. When Dino disappears suddenly, Baby plunges headfirst into San Francisco’s shady erotic underground of dive bars and sex dungeons to find him. In this mirror world, she encounters a surreal cast of characters: Simon, a recluse who pays her for increasingly bizarre favours; a suicide fetishist named Nobody; and Emeline, Paradise’s balletic new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear. With her grip on reality loosening, and the clock ticking, will Baby manage to find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first?