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Set in the eighteenth-century London of notorious thieves and queer subcultures, this daring and genre-bending debut tells a profound story of love, desire, and liberation. Jack Sheppard and his partner in crime Bess captured the imagination of eighteenth-century London with their exploits as thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. R. Voth - a recently jilted transgender scholar - discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox. Dated 1724 and written in bawdy slang, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as "Jack." When P falls dizzyingly in love with Bess, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London's newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of the Plague abound. Soon, P becomes Jack Sheppard, one of the most notorious - and most wanted - thieves in history. As Dr. Voth is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess's tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined - and only a miracle will save them all. Confessions of the Fox is, at once, a work of speculative historical fiction, a soaring love story, a puzzling mystery, an electrifying tale of adventure and suspense, and an unabashed celebration of sex and sexuality. Writing with the narrative mastery of Sarah Waters and the playful imagination of Nabokov's Pale Fire, Jordy Rosenberg is an audacious storyteller of extraordinary talent.Advance praise for Confessions of the Fox "Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg is quite simply extraordinary. Imagine if Maggie Nelson, Daphne du Maurier, and Daniel Defoe collaborated? That." - Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent "With adventure, wit, and a ferocious heart, Confessions of the Fox is an astonishing, bawdy, dazzling triumph of a book." - Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble "A riotous and transporting novel. It's rich in the sound of another time, while thrillingly germane to our own. Jordy Rosenberg is a total original - part scamp, part genius - who has written a rollicking page-turner of a first novel. Hang on for the ride." - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts