Erotica
Erotica is literature that is designed to arouse the reader and incite passionate feelings. This writing is often shared, read aloud to a lover. As with all fiction, there are masters, journeymen and hack writers. We've chosen here from the masters, and present you with an amazing collection of classic and well-crafted erotica. Enjoy!
Recommended Books on Erotica
100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed
Melissa P.'s avowedly autobiographical novel recounts a Sicilian schoolgirl's erotic adventures. "I want love, Diary," she writes just before her 15th birthday. "I want to feel my heart melt, want to see my icy stalactites shatter and plunge into a river of passion and beauty." Love may be hard to find, but sex waits at every turn, and Melissa seldom says no. In calmly vivid prose, she describes the varieties of experience, beginning with her introduction to oral sex: "I now had it before my eyes, it smelled male, and every vein that crossed it expressed such power that I felt duty-bound to reckon with it." This same sense of duty mandates sex with a woman, sex with an older man, sadomasochistic sex, group sex. Although her mother tells an ill Melissa a fable about a princess, Melissa tells herself no fairy tales--and therein lies the odd, potent purity of these pages. 2004, Grove Press, Black Cat
Amorous Exploits Of A Young Rakehell
Apollinaire's account of a 15-year-old budding libertine's summer on the farm, where he congresses with maids, servants, passersby, an aunt and finally a sister, while outside the manor peasants go for creatures of the four-legged variety, is a classic unparalleled in its content, brevity and wit. 2009, Olympia Press
The Best of Best American Erotica 2008
To mark its fifteenth anniversary, the top-selling erotica series achieves a scorching new climax with a special edition showcasing standout stories from the entire series as well as never before published pieces -- plus interviews with the authors and, for the first time, a hot and edgy piece from Susie Bright herself. Thoroughly electrifying -- and thrillingly eclectic -- the 2008 edition promises to open new doors with its exhilarating, equal-opportunity approach to erotic writing. Straight or gay, dominant or submissive, romantic or sadistic, Bright's selections run the gamut -- and push all the right buttons. 2008, Touchstone, 15th Anniversary Edition
Best Women's Erotica 2009 is erotica by women, for women -- contemporary, realistic, and explicit. Editor and best-selling author Violet Blue knows what women are looking for in an erotic anthology, and she delivers it here, with an amorous abundance of risky, romantic, heart-pounding thrills. Joyful, daring, and authentic, these steamy stories revel in erotic adventure, from the sparks between strangers to the knowing caresses of long-time lovers. Filled with strong characters and clever narratives that show how sexual experience is different for every woman, this seductive anthology is a glorious celebration of the finest and friskiest female erotic fiction today. 2008, Cleis Press
Best Women's Erotica 2008 delivers risky, romantic, heart-pounding thrills. Joyful, daring, and authentic, these 21 steamy stories revel in erotic adventure, from the sparks between strangers to the knowing caresses of long-time lovers. In "Penalty Fare," a Londoner rides train after train without a valid ticket, until, on an early morning journey to Bristol she finds the conductor who knows just how to punish her for trying to skip the fare. In "Winter Heat," a woman finds that each year, the winter's first snowfall reminds her of a cold night when she was 18 and the stranger who taught her that "passion can be found and shared in the most unusual of places." And in "You Can Do Mine," Céline finally gets to try out her purple dildo and leather harness with her new lover Leo, the first man to give the right answer when she tells him "you can do mine if I can do yours." 2007, Cleis Press
Breaking the Girl is a story of white hot sex and submission. Tie me up, tie me down, beat me, switch me, hold me tight, love me forever. Kristine never thought of herself as that kind of girl. Not until she moves in with Frank. At first, they experience the red-hot passion of new lovers, but after an accident, the door to more intense sex opens. It all begins with fantasy role-play, then with domination and submission. Each encounter brings the lovers closer together, so terrifyingly close they become addicted to their games and their next encounter. 2003, New Tradition Books
Anaïs Nin penned a lush, magical world where the characters of her imagination possess the most universal of desires and exceptional of talents. Among these provocative stories, a Hungarian adventurer seduces wealthy women then vanishes with their money; a veiled woman selects strangers from a chic restaurant for private trysts; and a Parisian hatmaker named Mathilde leaves her husband for the opium dens of Peru. Delta of Venus is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from the master of erotic writing. 2004, Harvest Books
The Ecstatic Moment: The Best of Libido
This groundbreaking collection of no-holds-barred writing from the pages of Libido magazine--a favorite source of contemporary erotica--assembles 40 superb stories and poems that will satisfy both the body and the mind. 1997, Delta
Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature
The Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature is a two-volume work that contains some 540 entries on erotic literature on an international scale. The Encyclopedia has an unprecedented scope, the first scholarly reference resource to bring the field together in all its fascinating variety. The entries examine the history of the literature in different countries and languages from classical antiquity to the present day, individual writers from around the world, significant works, genres and critical approaches, and general themes pertinent to erotic literature. 2006, Routledge
Erotica: Women's Writing from Sappho to Margaret Atwood
Here is the first collection of female erotic writing through the ages, and the first to reveal the form's amazing scope--as multifaceted as the sexuality of women themselves. Erotica reveals the history of women's erotic writing and reexamines the literary expression of female sexuality. Included in this unique anthology are: Kathy Acker, Jane Austen, Anne Boleyn, Kate Copin, H.D., Radclyffe Hall, Edna O'Brien, Vita Sackville-West, Stevie Smith, Marina Tsvetayeva, Virginia Woolf, and many others. 1998, Ballantine Books
Fanny Hill - Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Protagonist Fanny Hill begins as a poor country girl who is forced by poverty to leave her village home and go to town. There, she is tricked into working in a brothel, but before losing her virginity there, escapes with a man named Charles with whom she has fallen in love. After several months of living together, Charles is sent out of the country unexpectedly by his father, and Fanny is forced to take up a succession of new lovers to survive. One of the best-known erotic classics. 2007, NuVision Publications
Herotica 7: New Erotic Fiction by Women
Dip into a melting-pot of sexual pleasure with the latest collection in the Herotica series. The exotic and the erotic meet in journeys of desire as diverse as the cultural backgrounds of the characters. Each short story is an example of the heated passion and the politics of arousal that erupt when people of different cultures come together. The authors explore their fantasies, their prejudices, and the ways in which cultural differences can be at once an attracting force and a seemingly impenetrable barrier. Twenty-six tales of complex relationships draw a multi-hued picture of race, religion, and culture's impact on passion and desire. 2009, Down There Press
Evocative and superbly erotic, Little Birds is a powerful journey into the mysterious world of sex and sensuality. From the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans, these thirteen vignettes introduce us to a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and a host of others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.
"[It is] so distinct an advance in the depiction of female sensuality that I felt, on reading it, enormous gratitude."-Alice Walker
2004, Mariner Books
Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women
This from an enthusiastic reader: "It's all about the lust in this explosive anthology. There are fantasies galore here, all about one central theme: Women getting what they want -- from the men they want -- and when they want. Now that's a delicious fantasy in and of itself!" 2007, Cleis Press
Ooh La La!: Contemporary French Erotica by Women
The hottest erotica currently being written flows from the sexy pens of French women of letters. French literary sex is hot, elegant, gently perverse, quietly shocking, and always arousing -- and these twenty-nine stories will leave no reader indifferent. 2006, Running Press
The Romance of Lust: A Classic Victorian Erotic Novel
Fifteen year old Charlie Roberts manages to witness a recently married houseguest, Mrs. Benson, in the throes of sex with her husband. The little voyeur is soon discovered by the newlywed, and, instead of becoming outraged and immediately telling his parents, Mrs. B swears to Charlie that she will keep 'their secret' and 'reward him' for his silence. Our hero very quickly decides to spread his newfound knowledge with his two younger sisters and, feigning innocence, allows himself to be seduced by two successive live-in governesses. 2010, General Books
Classic French erotica by the extremely prolific Louys. Susan Sontag described this book as "one of the handful of erotic works that achieve true literary status." The She-Devils is the story of a young man who one day finds himself in the company of a family of whores, mother and three daughters, each of the younger ones more decadent than the last. 1958, Ophelia Press
The classic erotic novel, The Story of O relates the love of a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer for Rene. As part of that intense love, she demands debasement and severe sexual and pychological tests. Fairytale, sadomasochistic, beautifully written. As much about female pleasure and desire as male -- if not more so. Graham Greene said it was the only erotic novel worth reading.1981, Ballantine Books, 27th Printing Edition
In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes. A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's own theories of ecstasy, death and transgression which he developed in later work. 2001, City Lights Publishers
Nicole Foster takes erotica to a whole new level in this collection of stories from today's hottest erotica writers. No one will be able to put it down until they have finished. 2009, Alyson Books
Alyson Books has consistently set the bar on gay erotica. This year they have gone over the bar with a sexually charged collection of hot erotica that will leave the reader breathless and wanting more. 2009, Alyson Books
Venus in Furs is novelist and poet von Sacher-Masoch's most sublime text on the devotion of "masochism"-emotional, psychological, and sexual. Its protagonist is an educated and devout man given to whips and ideals. Severin von Kusiemski's is an unusual (and mystical) pedagogy and his Ideal is the cruel woman in furs who will allow him to be her slave; for in his rapturous acquiescence, and in his conscious guidance of both his own and his mistress' will, Severin will have penetrated into the beating heart of a solitary man's deepest and most profound desires: to merge flesh with spirit, birth with death, Heaven with Hell. 2010, CreateSpace
If there's only room for one book on your bedside table, this should be it. The reigning mistress of erotica, Susie Bright, has expertly chosen 40 of the hottest stories ever written: breathtaking new stories as well as the most sought-after stories from The Best American Erotica series. Luminaries like Carol Queen and Robert Olen Butler contribute to the stories about all kinds of lovers: heartbreakers, foxes, maniacs, romanticists, hell-raisers, and utter bandits. This delicious collection is certain to satisfy. 2008, Chronicle Books
