Elisabeth Luxferre

Scorpion 12.3 Elisabeth Luxferre

"A powerful tale... really excellent work" - WRITER'S DIGEST Facing financial hardship and seduced by the bright promises of a stunning and successful madam, 24-year-old honor student Elisabeth Luxferre secretly joins an exclusive escort agency. Soon she plunges into a decadent world of easy money and sexual excess, where Elisabeth discovers the unknown depths of her own sensuality.
When the 2008 crisis hits Europe, Elisabeth loses many of her clients and begins to offer her services in clandestine brothels for 50 an hour. After getting accepted into a US graduate school and meeting a promising boyfriend, Elisabeth feels she is leaving all behind -but a rocky road of violence, remembrance of family secrets, and transformation awaits her. Temporally structured as a spiral, Scorpion 12.3 is Luxferre's harrowing journey into womanhood. Elisabeth's strong voice skillfully guides the reader through ever deeper layers of memory, examining the characters she encounters and the places she inhabits -Madrid, California, New York City- with an illuminating, captivating prose. As she confronts ruthless madams, inner demons, and a maddening mystical connection to unseen forces, her unsentimental yet heart-rending narrative takes the reader inside a world as darkly magical as Isabel Allende's. Scorpion 12.3 challenges long-held assumptions about the oldest profession, boldly questioning our concepts of love, sex, and female beauty. This book is intended for mature audiences.