Lovers XXX

HEADLINE TK. It's 1982 and eighteen-year-old Pearl steps off the bus onto Hollywood Boulevard, looking for her best friend, Joan. When she finds her at Ladies of the Valley, a strip club known for its connections to the adult film industry, the two embark on an epic adventure through the golden age of pornography, culminating in a disquieting mystery Joan must unravel. Told in the two-part structure of Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies and bearing the nuanced feminism of Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room and the epic romantic scope of Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Ladies of the Valley is a richly layered exploration of life lived inside the shadow cast by adult film stardom, long after that stardom has faded. It's a story of sexual identity forged beyond binaries, feminisms and taboo, a story that takes readers on a journey from film to video to Pornhub, all the while asking: what becomes of the actors who give their bodies to the performance of sex? Above all, Ladies of the Valley is a love story like none other between two ardent, vulnerable and revelatory women.