Holy F*ck

Stella works miracles. She heals the sick, the dying, the paralysed. The Vatican rejoices—at last, a living saint for the modern age. And in Georgia, of all places: a miracle in the sweltering heart of the American South. But there’s a catch. Stella heals the people she sleeps with. In her motorhome. For money.

A saint who sells sex doesn’t play well in Rome. A saint who dies young, however, pure, tragic, and easily mythologised—that’s a different story. Enter the Bronski twins: the Vatican’s most discreet executioners, sent to clean up the miracle.

Darkly comic and unsettlingly tender, Holy F*ck is a blistering satire of faith, desire, and the machinery of salvation. 

"Swiss author Joseph Incardona’s hybrid chase-thriller-meets-satire is energetically translated from the French by Sam Taylor. Beyond the picaresque storyline, Incardona ensures that Stella has both agency and emotional intelligence. She poignantly records the details of each encounter in her notebook. “Because two bodies merging like that was never nothing, never insignificant, no matter what anyone says or thinks.” Financial Times, Thriller of the Month

"A glorious mash up of Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, centring on Stella- a young hooker who has the power to heal men’s medical afflictions simply by doing the wild thing with them. When the Vatican gets wind of this miracle worker, she doesn’t exactly fit their ideal for being canonised as a saint, so two blundering hitmen are employed to snuff her out. What follows is a madcap road journey as she goes on the run with a Jack Reacher-esque priest, pursued by the inept hitmen and others. It’s all wonderfully bonkers, dark and dirty, and incredibly funny. Brilliant." Raven Crime Reads

Joseph Incardona is a magnificent writer, who deploys an array of rhetorical devices to enliven his prose and keep us longing for more. The text is infused with aphorisms of truly Wodehousean splendour: Meredith “had … a voice like gravel being poured into a plastic jug.” “Old age is like a spring roll: the tender past wrapped in the skin’s crust.” At times, they read like catechisms, though not necessarily ones the Church would subscribe to: “Grace touches only the purest and most corrupt of souls. There are no half measures where God is concerned. He vomits upon the lukewarm.” But be warned: beneath this sparkling and satirical veneer, there lurks something very nasty indeed, an undercurrent of double-speak and pure malice, which will have you on the edge of your seat. For me this is one of the best reads of 2026” Reviewed by Max Easterman. --ELN Riveting Reviews

“Joseph Incardona has written a gonzo noir that asks the big questions: Can sex in a KFC restroom bestow divine grace? Can a righteous rumble between the sheets cure any affliction? And what happens when the Vatican decides working miracles should be left to the church. The answers are waiting in these pages. Holy Fuck is a blasphemous blast.” Mark Haskell Smith, author of Blown

'Tarantino would have loved to write this book' ELLE