Sex and the City

Allie Rowbottom’s second novel, Lovers XXX, begins with a disappearance. Or, better yet, a pair of them. First, there is Jude, “eighteen, only just,” arriving in Los Angeles after a stint in reform school. Then, there is Jude’s best friend, Winnie, who ran away from their hometown of Newhall, in the Santa Clarita Valley, at age 16, after the death of her mother left her at the mercy of a “stepfather, Mitch, who was, simply put, a predator and a pervert.” The year is 1982, and Winnie has found a job dancing at a strip club called Ladies of the Valley.