Broke and discontented, amateur sadist Lee spends their days working for a big corporation and their nights searching the warehouses and dungeons of Brooklyn looking for the mysterious, seductive, and bloodthirsty X. In a sly purging of migrants, refugees, sex workers and queers - any citizens they claim to be undesirable - the US government has started exporting people, and Lee has heard X might be among those about to disappear.

As their obsession with X grows, Lee becomes further enmeshed in the crimes and dramas of the city's queer community, following ex-lovers, playmates, clients, best friends, and accidental accomplices through damp and shining bars and parties looking for any lead that might bring them closer to X, before she vanishes for good.

An LGBTQ Reads Most Anticipated Book
The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Davey Davis’s X is an especially hot ticket this season." —Paul Gallant, Xtra

"Davis’ enticing debut is a Winterson-reminiscent tale of love and lust on the margins, a bewitching mix of kink and dystopian thrills." —Michelle Hart, Electric Literature

"A sexy and dangerous ride." —Mikaella Clements, The White Review

"Davis delivers an astonishing speculative tale of sex, power, and gender . . . Vivid and witty, Davis’s prose hurtles between moments of beauty and darkness, often in the same breath . . . This one hits hard." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"OH OH OH I FINISHED IT AND THREW MYSELF DOWN THE STAIRS" —Leigh Cowart, author of Hurts So Good

“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

"Hardboiled style meets dyke drama in the clubs and play parties of queer Brooklyn. In an atmosphere of creeping fascism, Davey Davis gives us a fascinating protagonist. When not making a mess of their life or wasting it on true crime podcasts, Lee is an amateur sadist obsessed with finding the mysterious X, mistress of the craft to which they aspire. X is both a delight to read and a penetrating study on the intimacy of violence and the violence of intimacy." —McKenzie Wark, author of Reverse Cowgirl

"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, writer and host of One from the Vaults podcast