Love Machine

Discover the real underbelly of the golden mile, Kings Cross, in Love Machine by Clint Caward. Kings Cross is a circus of desire, and Spencer has a ringside seat. In an underground sex shop he sees it all: the buck's parties and streetwalkers, the drunks and the judges, the trannies, the junkies, the chokers. All types come through the doors and it's Spencer's poorly paid job to sell them what they want. What Spencer wants is less straightforward. He makes figurines of Jesus with tentacles, writes revenge poetry and plans a film about the Immaculate Conception starring the blow-up dolls he lives with. Drifting between his dysfunctional family, the shop with its seedy cast of muscle-boys and amateur criminals, and the misfits who populate his apartment block, Spencer doesn't really know what he's looking for. All that changes when Livia walks down the stairs. But can a daughter of the Cross provide salvation? A love story set in a sex shop, Love Machine is a candid, confronting but also very funny first novel about the strange and familiar business of desire.