Brittany Newell – författare

‘Drew me in like a whirlpool’ NICOLA DINAN ‘A feverish love story’ ANOTHER ‘Hugely enjoyable … dreamlike and erotic’ THE TIMES ‘Romantic, dangerous and sexy’ STYLIST Highly seductive … and fun as hell!’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE A rollercoaster of a cult love story following a dancer in San Francisco’s erotic underground. 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 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. 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 new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear.Will Baby manage to find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first? A hottest book of 2025 in Sunday Times Style, Dazed, AnOther and Stylist. ‘A beautiful fever dream’ KRISTEN ARNETT, author of With Teeth ‘Exhilarating … full of verve, drama and detail’NEW YORK TIMES ‘Incredible … the best book I’ve read this year’ STYLIST ‘A wide ride through San Francisco's dark underbelly’ DAILY MAIL ‘For the generation whose life is an endless stream of dead-end Hinge dates’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE ‘A profound look at sex work and lives unusually lived’ DAZED

‘It's the kind of book you want to linger in and never leave; the kind of book that DOES things to you . . . I adored it’ Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals OOLA is a very different kind of love story.Oola and Leif meet at a party in East London, two Americans at a loose end. The insouciant music school dropout and aimless young writer fix on one another, grab hands and fall head-first down love’s rabbit hole.Leif’s summer plans soon become Oola’s too and the pair find themselves mansion-sitting their way across the States, drinking the liquor cabinets dry and emptying the walk-in wardrobes to play dress-up. But when they decide to play house in a Big Sur cabin, where the clapboards quiver in the heat, boredom breeds an idea that could extinguish their love and even destroy them both.This is a love story like no other. A savagely brilliant exploration of what it is to adore, own and inhabit your beloved. OOLA takes you to the line and shows you how to cross it.From an electrifying new voice, this astonishing debut is as juicy and provocative as it is beautiful.

‘Drew me in like a whirlpool’ NICOLA DINAN ‘A feverish love story’ ANOTHER ‘Hugely enjoyable … dreamlike and erotic’ THE TIMES ‘Romantic, dangerous and sexy’ STYLIST Highly seductive … and fun as hell!’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE A rollercoaster of a cult love story following a dancer in San Francisco’s erotic underground. 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 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. 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 new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear.Will Baby manage to find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first? A hottest book of 2025 in Sunday Times Style, Dazed, AnOther and Stylist. ‘A beautiful fever dream’ KRISTEN ARNETT, author of With Teeth ‘Exhilarating … full of verve, drama and detail’NEW YORK TIMES ‘Incredible … the best book I’ve read this year’ STYLIST ‘A wide ride through San Francisco's dark underbelly’ DAILY MAIL ‘For the generation whose life is an endless stream of dead-end Hinge dates’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE ‘A profound look at sex work and lives unusually lived’ DAZED

‘Drew me in like a whirlpool’ NICOLA DINAN ‘A feverish love story’ ANOTHER ‘Hugely enjoyable … dreamlike and erotic’ THE TIMES ‘Romantic, dangerous and sexy’ STYLIST Highly seductive … and fun as hell!’ TONY TULATHIMUTTE A rollercoaster of a cult love story following a dancer in San Francisco’s erotic underground. 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 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. 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 new hire who seems to want to steal Baby’s whole identity, starting with her underwear.Will Baby manage to find the only man she’s ever loved? Or might her past catch up with her first? A hottest book of 2025 in Sunday Times Style, Dazed, AnOther and Stylist. ‘A beautiful fever dream’ KRISTEN ARNETT, author of With Teeth ‘Exhilarating … full of verve, drama and detail’NEW YORK TIMES ‘Incredible … the best book I’ve read this year’ STYLIST ‘A wide ride through San Francisco's dark underbelly’ DAILY MAIL ‘For the generation whose life is an endless stream of dead-end Hinge dates’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE ‘A profound look at sex work and lives unusually lived’ DAZED

Ruth is lost. She is living in a drafty Victorian with her ex-boyfriend Dino, a ketamine dealer with a lingerie habit, overdosing on television and regretting her master's degree. When she starts dancing at a strip club, she becomes Baby Blue, seductress of crypto bros, outcasts, and old lovers alike. Plunged into this swirling underworld of beautiful women, fast cash, ungodly hours, and strangers' secrets, Baby's grip on reality begins to loosen. She is sure she can handle it - until one autumn morning when Dino disappears without a trace.Thus begins a nocturnal quest for the one she still loves - through the misty hills of San Francisco; in dive bars and bus depots; at the BDSM dungeon where she takes a part-time gig. Along the way, she meets Simon, a recluse who pays her for increasingly bizarre favours; a philosophising suicide fetishist named Nobody; and Emeline, the beautiful and balletic new hire who reminds Baby of someone . . .A brutally funny, propulsive story of power, fantasy, love, and loss, Brittany Newell's Soft Core is an ode to the heartbroken and unhinged, to those whose appetites lead them astray. It is a hallucinogenic romp about a girl coming undone, whose longing for friendship, romance, and revenge will take her over the edge and back again.