In X, Davey Davis presses down hard on all of our bruised places until we beg for more. In their taut, electric prose, Davis performs a skillful sleight of hand: keeping our eyes on the noirish tale of a pain slut’s growing obsession, while just out of frame fascism slowly creeps into daily life. X will leave you wet, hard, and implicated. — Morgan M. Page, One From the Vaults podcast

Davis is an astounding writer, seemingly unconstrained by taboos and waist deep down in the maw of life, examining what the rest of us shy away from—never more than here in X, the rare book that can thrill and entertain, while simultaneously causing you to question everything about how you’re living. — Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

A thrilling portrait of post-breakup paralysis and the pursuit of pure pleasure in warehouses, bathrooms, and dungeons across Brooklyn, X is a novel that delves into the psyches of characters usually sidelined and marginalized.

The world is ending, and down-and-out sadist Lee spends their days working at a big corporation and their nights wandering the streets of New York, listening to chipper podcast hosts discuss the lives of serial killers.

Dragged out to a warehouse party by their best friend, Lee is soon walking down a dark hallway and spending the night with the bratty yet seductive X. But when Lee seeks her out again, she’s nowhere to be found. In the midst of the violent purging of migrants and refugees, and the snowballing constriction of civil rights, the U.S. government has recently begun encouraging the semi-voluntary “exporting” of undesirable citizens—the radicalized, the dissident, and the ungovernable. Word has it that X may be among those leaving. If Lee doesn’t track her down soon, she may be gone forever.