Lovers XXX: A Novel

**Set against the neon-lit porn world of 1980s Los Angeles, a raw and evocative portrait of sex, friendship, and the perilous edge of liberation for two young women—from the author of *Aesthetica.*
For fans of Mary Gaitskill, Emma Cline, and Rachel Kushner.**
Los Angeles, 1982. Eighteen-year-old Jude, newly out of reform school, is searching for her best friend, Winnie, when she falls under the spell of an older man with a motorcycle, a needle, and a taste for danger.
What begins as an escape spirals into motel rooms, stickups, and drug binges. Jude eventually finds Winnie, now Velvet, dancing at a Sunset Strip club. Together they imagine a future—bartending, writing, building a life of their own—but the same world that offers glamour and freedom threatens to consume them. Survival means navigating men who promise love, power, and escape—always at a cost.
*Lovers XXX* is a cool-eyed re-creation of the world of ’80s adult filmmaking, and a hypnotic novel of friendship, self-invention, and sexual identity beyond binaries. Above all, it is a singular love story between two vulnerable, defiant women.