Fourth Estate win ‘heated’ auction for Brittany Newell’s ‘manically smart’ novel

Fourth Estate has won a “heated” four-way auction for Brittany Newell’s “brutally funny” novel, Soft Core. 

Kishani Widyaratna, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Devon Mazzone, vice president, subsidiary rights at FSG on behalf of Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency. World English rights were acquired by Milo Walls at FSG, who will publish the book in spring 2025. Fourth Estate will publish Soft Core in March 2025. 

The first chapter of the novel was first published as a short story in N+1 entitled “Baby”. Newell then received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission that enabled her to write Soft Core. 

The novel follows Baby, a dancer at a strip club, who feels adrift and is kept afloat by her cross-dressing ex-boyfriend, Dino. When Dino goes missing, Baby “plunges headfirst into San Francisco’s seedy erotic underground to find him”, but as she discovers cryptic notes in her bag and locker, Baby realises her search is garnering the wrong type of attention and there is a new dancer at the club intent on taking Baby’s place.