Available Formats
Soft Core
By (Author) Brittany Newell
HarperCollins Publishers
Fourth Estate Ltd
4th June 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Narrative theme: Social issues
Narrative theme: Diversity, equality, inclusion
Narrative theme: Love and relationships
Erotic fiction
813.6
Paperback
352
Width 135mm, Height 216mm, Spine 30mm
360g
'A beautiful fever dream, a slippery, captivating pleasure' KRISTEN ARNETT, author of With Teeth
Drew me in like a whirlpool a wild spin into loneliness and desire Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies
'Brittany Newell is truly one to watch!' EMMA JANE UNSWORTH, author of Animals
A blazing novel following a young woman on a wild, hallucinogenic quest for love and selfhood in San Franciscos seedy underground.
Baby is a dancer at a strip club and at the age of 27, shes feeling lost. It seems that only Dino, her sweet, cross-dressing, drug-dealing ex-boyfriend can keep her afloat. So, when Dino disappears without so much as a kiss goodbye, she plunges headfirst into San Franciscos shady erotic underground to find him.
Baby searches through dive bars and old haunts, at the club and at the sex dungeon where she has a part-time dominatrix gig. She encounters clients like Simon, a recluse paying her for increasingly bizarre favours and a philosophizing suicide fetishist named Nobody, as well as coworkers like Emeline, the balletic new hire who seems to want to steal Babys whole identity, starting with her underwear.
Its not long before she starts to find cryptic notes hidden in her belongings and realises her search is attracting the wrong kind of attention. With her grip on reality loosening and the clock ticking, will Baby manage to put together the pieces and find the only man shes ever loved Or might her past catch up with her first
Manically smart, brutally funny and deeply sexy, Soft Core is a book about desire, fantasy, and true love like no other.
Praise for Soft Core:
'Soft Core is a beautiful fever dream, a slippery, captivating pleasure, a love story stuffed inside a wadded nylon stocking. Its a novel that wants to get close to you. It wants to bite your neck; its the actual promise of a hickey. I cant remember the last book I read that was even half as tender. I ate it up' Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth
Drew me in like a whirlpool a wild spin into loneliness and desire Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies
I was consumed by Soft Core. Baby feels familiar yet perfectly strange, like a kid sister and a seasoned old soul mixed into one voice of undeniable allure. Newell portrays a San Francisco of dark beauty with an endless revolving door of characters sketched out with great wit, tenderness and generosity. Funny, sexy and surprising, I loved it Pip Finkemeyer, author of Sad Girl Novel
'Brittany Newells prose is too elegant to be called raw, but the oomph, the heart, makes everything feel so real. I love this world and this narrator, the risks she takes, the story she tells, simple yet so seductive and just teeming with aliveness.' Michelle Tea
Praise for Oola:
'Newell nails the lure, intoxication, and fallout of obsessive love' Elle
'Stunning compelling the experience of reading Oola is one which will leave the reader pondering questions about love, desire, and possession long after the last page has been turned' NYLON
'Electrifying' Harpers Bazaar
'Oola is so good' New York Observer
'A dreamy and provocative exploration of sex, privilege, and self-discovery' Kirkus
'Her searching high beams on privileges victims and beneficiaries, the fluidity of gender, the lonely writers life, and loves desire to possess reflect Newells obvious talent for observation and care with words' Booklist
Brittany Newell lives in your walls. She scrabbles while you sleep. She is a Californian and a creep. OOLA is her debut novel.