100 Best 「sexual」 Books of 2024| Books Explorer
- Bad Behavior: Stories
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
- The Kiss Quotient
- Girl Meets Boy (Canons)
- A Sport And a Pastime (Picador Modern Classics)
- Call Me by Your Name (MTI): A Novel
- Written on the Body: Lambda Literary Award (Vintage International)
- Tropic of Cancer (Penguin Modern Classics)
- WEDDING DATE, THE
- It Happened One Summer: A spicy rom-com featuring a wild child socialite, a small-town grumpy fisherman, and the undeniable attraction between them (Bellinger Sisters, 1)
National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human connection.Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “Pinteresque,” saying, “Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real…her reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm…underscores the strength of her debut.”
International Bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — PeopleIn The Unbearable Lightness of Being, acclaimed author Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.This magnificent novel, now available in a beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition with French flaps and deckle edged paper, is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
From the author of The Bride Test comes a romance novel hailed as one of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2018 and one of Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2018!“This is such a fun read and it's also quite original and sexy and sensitive.”—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author“Hoang's writing bursts from the page.”—BuzzfeedA heartwarming and refreshing debut novel that proves one thing: there's not enough data in the world to predict what will make your heart tick.Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases—a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice—with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan—from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but crave all of the other things he's making her feel. Their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic...
Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances?Ali Smith's remix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.
"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price (The New York Times) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years. Set in provincial France in the 1960s, James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime is the intensely carnal story―part shocking reality, part feverish dream ―of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen―and pages that burn with a rare intensity.
Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, and Written by Three-Time Oscar™ Nominee James IvoryThe Basis of the Oscar-Winning Best Adapted ScreenplayA New York Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerA Los Angeles Times BestsellerA Vulture Book Club PickAn Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our TimeAndre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time.Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for FictionA New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Magazine "Future Canon" Selection • A Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times (Michael Upchurch's) Favorite Favorite Book of the Year
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman.“At once a love story and a philosophical meditation.” —New York Times Book Review.
Shocking banned and the subject of obscenity trials Henry Millers first novel Tropic of Cancer is one of the most scandalous and influential books of the twentieth century new to Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by Tracey Emin Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel Set in Paris in the 1930s it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes pimps and artists Banned in the US and the UK for more than thirty years because it was considered pornographic Tropic of Cancer continued to be distributed in France and smuggled into other countries When it was first published in the US in 1961 it led to more than 60 obscenity trials until a historic ruling by the Supreme Court defined it as a work of literature Long hailed as a truly liberating book daring and uncompromising Tropic of Cancer is a cornerstone of modern literature that asks us to reconsider everything we know about art freedom and morality At last an unprintable book that is fit to read Ezra Pound
A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in this fun and flirty multicultural romance debut by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory—author of the Resse Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick The Proposal.THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER#5 LibraryReads Pick“A swoony rom-com brimming with humor and charm.”—Entertainment Weekly (The Must List)“What a charming, warm, sexy gem of a novel....One of the best books I've read in a while.”—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of HungerAgreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn't normally do. But there's something about Drew Nichols that's too hard to resist.On the eve of his ex's wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend....After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she's the mayor's chief of staff. Too bad they can't stop thinking about the other....They're just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long distance dating disaster of the century--or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want....One of...Entertainment Weekly’s “12 Romances for V-Day” • Cosmopolitan’s “2018 Anticipated Reads” • Elle’s “2018 Must Reads” • Harpers Bazaar’s “New January Must Reads” • The Fug Girls’ “Best Books of the Year” • Elle UK’s “Books to Get You Through 2018” • Nylon’s “January Must Reads” • Hello Giggles’ “New Release Recs” • Electric Lit’s “Books by WoC to Read in 2018” • Bitch Media’s “2018 Must Reads” • BookBub’s “2018 Romance Must Reads” • Bookriot’s “Must Read 2018 January Releases” • RetailMeNot’s “2018 Must Reads”
The first in a spicy and unforgettable rom-com duology from #1 New York Times bestseller and tik tok favorite Tessa Bailey, in which a Hollywood “It Girl” is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town... where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong.Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar... in Washington.Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.As seen on E!Online, PopSugar, CNN, EliteDaily, Vulture, Buzzfeed, Bustle, the Nerd Daily, PARADE, LA Magazine, Country Living, USA Today, and more!
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019'Of all the books that I read this summer I think this was my absolute favourite. It really blew me away' DOLLY ALDERTON'Frank, provocative and brilliant' INDEPENDENT'Utterly mesmerising' TATLER'Hilarious, poignant, sexy. A brilliant story about why we crave connection and how to find ourselves' ELLE'Laugh-out-loud funny' iCHOSEN AS A SUMMER READ BY TATLER, THE TIMES, ELLE AND YOU MAGAZINELucy has been writing her dissertation for nine years when she and her boyfriend have a dramatic break up. After she hits rock bottom, her sister in Los Angeles insists that Lucy dog-sit for the summer. Staying in a gorgeous house on Venice Beach, Lucy can find little relief from her anxiety - not in the Greek chorus of women in her love addiction therapy group, not in her frequent Tinder excursions, not even in Dominic the dog's easy affection. Everything changes when she becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer while sitting alone on the beach rocks one night. But when Lucy learns the truth about his identity, their relationship, and Lucy's understanding of what love should look like, take a very unexpected turn.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day comes the first novel in the Crossfire series—a provocative masterstroke of abandon and obsession that redefined the meaning of desire, and became a global phenomenon.Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness...He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily...Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other’s most private wounds...and desires.The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn’t tear us apart...
Twelve years after it was first published, The Joy of Writing Sex remains the classic writer's resource on creating compelling sex scenes. Elizabeth Benedict covers all the issues, from the first time, to married sex and adultery, to sex in the age of AIDS.\nHer instruction, supported with examples from the works of today's most respected writers―among them, Dorothy Allison, Russell Banks, Alan Hollinghurst, Joyce Carol Oates, Carol Shields, and John Updike―focuses on crafting believable sex scenes that hinge on freshness of character, dialogue, mood, and plot.\nIn this revised edition, Benedict addresses the latest sexual revolution, intimacy on the Internet; adds new interviews with Edmund White, Darren Strauss, Stephen McCauley, and other writers; and updates her selections to include examples from the best fiction of the past few years.
Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, and Written by Three-Time Oscar™ Nominee James IvoryThe Basis of the Oscar-Winning Best Adapted ScreenplayA New York Times BestsellerA USA Today BestsellerA Los Angeles Times BestsellerA Vulture Book Club PickAn Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our TimeAndre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time.Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for FictionA New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Magazine "Future Canon" Selection • A Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times (Michael Upchurch's) Favorite Favorite Book of the Year
Mary Robinson’s A Letter to the Women of England (1799) is a radical response to the rampant anti-feminist sentiment of the late 1790s. In this work, Robinson encourages her female contemporaries to throw off the “glittering shackles” of custom and to claim their rightful places as the social and intellectual equals of men. Separately published in the same year, Robinson’s novel The Natural Daughter follows the story of Martha Morley, who defies her husband’s authority, adopts a found infant, is barred from her husband’s estate and is driven to seek work as an actress and author. The novel implicitly links and critiques domestic tyrants in England and Jacobin tyrants in France. This edition also includes: other writings by Mary Robinson (tributes, and an excerpt from The Progress of Liberty); writings by contemporaries on women, society, and revolution; and contemporary reviews of both works.
'I loved every page' Helen Hoang, USA Today bestselling author of The Kiss Quotient\n'Smart, funny, and sexy' Meg Cabot, author of No Judgments and the Princess Diaries series\\n'Funny, sexy and intensely romantic' Lucy Parker, author of The Austen Playbook\\nTalia Hibbert delivers a witty, hilarious romantic comedy about a woman who's tired of being 'boring' and recruits her mysterious, sexy neighbour to help her get a life - perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Jasmine Guillory and Helen Hoang!\nChloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan and a list. After almost - but not quite - dying, she's come up with a list of directives to help her 'Get a Life':\n- Enjoy a drunken night out\n- Ride a motorbike\n- Go camping\n- Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex\n- Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage\n- And . . . do something bad\nBut it's not easy being bad, even when you've written out step-by-step guidelines. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job: Redford 'Red' Morgan.\nWith tattoos and a motorbike, Red is the perfect helper in her mission to rebel, but as they spend more time together, Chloe realises there's much more to him than his tough exterior implies. Soon she's left wanting more from him than she ever expected . . . maybe there's more to life than her list ever imagined?\n***\nPraise for Get A Life, Chloe Brown:\n'Clever, sweet, sexy and brilliant' Carrie Ann Ryan, New York Times bestselling author\n'So so so so good' Andie J. Christopher, USA Today bestselling author of Not the Girl You Marry\n'A pure exuberant delight. I loved this book' KJ Charles, author of Proper English\n'[An] awesome book, so full of heart and warmth and feels!' Charlotte Stein, author of Never Sweeter\n'Hilarious, heartfelt and hot' Kirkus Reviews (starred review)\n'If you liked Jasmine Guillroy's The Proposal, you'll love Talia Hibbert's Get A Life, Chloe Brown' Marie Claire
An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence.Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale.Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
“Absolutely charming... a flawless balance of humor, heat, sweetness, and depth, and I loved every page.” – Helen Hoang, USA Today bestselling author of The Bride TestA witty, hilarious romantic comedy about a woman who’s tired of being “boring” and recruits her mysterious, sexy neighbor to help her experience new things—perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Jasmine Guillory, and Helen Hoang!Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items? Enjoy a drunken night out. Ride a motorcycle. Go camping. Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex. Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage. And... do something bad.But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…*A Book of the Month, Indie Next, and Library Reads Pick for November**Named a Best Romance of 2019 by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Apple, and Amazon, and Best of November from Essence, Woman's Day, Marie Claire, Buzzfeed, Popsugar, Bustle, Bookish, Bookpage, Entertainment Weekly, and Washington Post*
“As erotic and powerful as the paintings that inspired it.”—Emma Donoghue, author of RoomParis, 1927. One day in July, a young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a coolly dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to support herself, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist, a dispossessed Saint Petersburg aristocrat with a murky past. The two become lovers, and Rafaela inspires Tamara’s most iconic Jazz Age images, among them her most accomplished—and coveted—works of art. A season as the painter’s muse teaches Rafaela some hard lessons: Tamara is a cocktail of raw hunger and glittering artifice. And all the while, their romantic idyll is threatened by history’s darkening tide. A tour de force of historical imagination, The Last Nude is about genius and craft, love and desire, regret and, most of all, hope that can transcend time and circumstance.
In the first novel in the Breathless trilogy—now celebrating its 10th Anniversary—a man is about to have his fantasies come true with a woman who was once forbidden fruit, and is now ripe for the picking...When Gabe Hamilton saw Mia Crestwell walk into the ballroom for his hotel’s grand opening, he knew he was going to hell for what he had planned. After all, Mia is his best friend’s little sister. Except she’s not so little anymore. And Gabe has waited a long time to act on his desires.Gabe has starred in Mia’s fantasies more than once. So what if he’s fourteen years older? Mia knows he’s way out of her league, but her attraction has only grown stronger with time. She’s an adult now, and there’s no reason not to act on her most secret desires.As Gabe pulls her into his provocative world, she realizes there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him or how exacting his demands can be. Their relationship is intense and obsessive, but as they cross the line from secret sexual odyssey to something deeper, their affair runs the risk of being exposed—and vulnerable to a betrayal far more intimate than either expected.
* Instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestseller ** GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER for BEST DEBUT and BEST ROMANCE of 2019 ** BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR* for VOGUE, NPR, VANITY FAIR, and more! *What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic."I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy―this book had everything I crave. I’m jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!" - Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners"Red, White & Royal Blue is outrageously fun. It is romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling. I loved every second." - Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six
A "dreamlike and compelling” tour de force (Chicago Tribune)—an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.Now with a new introduction by the author.In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Alyssa Cole’s second Runaway Royals novel is a queer Anastasia retelling, featuring a long-lost princess who finds love with the female investigator tasked with tracking her down.Makeda Hicks has lost her job and her girlfriend in one fell swoop. The last thing she’s in the mood for is to rehash the story of her grandmother’s infamous summer fling with a runaway prince from Ibarania, or the investigator from the World Federation of Monarchies tasked with searching for Ibarania’s missing heir.Yet when Beznaria Chetchevaliere crashes into her life, the sleek and sexy investigator exudes exactly the kind of chaos that organized and efficient Makeda finds irresistible, even if Bez is determined to drag her into a world of royal duty Makeda wants nothing to do with.When a threat to her grandmother’s livelihood pushes Makeda to agree to return to Ibarania, Bez takes her on a transatlantic adventure with a crew of lovable weirdos, a fake marriage, and one-bed hijinks on the high seas. When they finally make it to Ibarania, they realize there’s more at stake than just cash and crown, and Makeda must learn what it means to fight for what she desires and not what she feels bound to by duty.
This classic book of erotica is, alongside Story of O, the most famous French underground novel of the late twentieth century and a work of seductive literary merit.It begins with nineteen-year-old Emmanuelle’s flight from London to join her husband in Bangkok. On the airplane, she is seduced by the passenger seated next to her. By the time they land, she has indulged her irrepressible and insatiable sexual appetite, embarking on an odyssey of hedonistic sensual discovery that takes her from the arms of her husband to intimate encounters with the wives of his business associates, to further explorations wherein the philosophical and aesthetic facets of eroticism are expoundedand enactedto the fullest degree.Intoxicating and intelligent, Emmanuelle, which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies since its initial clandestine publication in France, follows one woman’s liberation from unconscious to intensely conscious sexuality. It is as pertinent today as it was four decades ago.
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick“A love story like no other, and this one…will have you gripped from page one.” —Vogue“An unabashed ode to living with, and despite, pain and mortality.” —The New York Times Book ReviewA New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and “one of our greatest living writers” (Shondaland) reimagines the love story in this “riveting and emotional exploration of grief and taking a second chance on love” (PopSugar).Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the overwhelming desire Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person who is most definitely off-limits—his father. Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love?“With tenderhearted characters and an immaculate balance of realistic dialogue and lyrical prose” (BuzzFeed), Akwake Emezi’s vivid and passionate writing takes us deep into a world of possibility and healing. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty is a “a love letter to the brave choices we make in the name of love, the costs we pay for it, and the glory of the reward at the end” (Marie Claire).
The Instant New York Times Bestseller and TikTok Sensation!As seen on THE VIEW!A BuzzFeed Best Summer Read of 2021When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs.Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
27 Authors. 27 Stories. No Names Attached.A bold collection of stories about sex that leaves you guessing who wrote what.Bestselling novelists Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan present an elegant, international anthology of erotica that explores the diverse spectrum of desire, written by winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN Awards, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Edgar Award, and more. There are stories of sexual obsession and sexual love, of domination and submission. There’s revenge sex, unrequited sex, funny sex, tortured sex, fairy tale sex, and even sex in the afterlife.While the authors are listed in alphabetical order at the beginning of the book, none of the stories are attributed, providing readers with a glimpse into an uninhibited landscape of sexuality as explored by twenty-seven of today’s finest authors.Featuring Robert Olen Butler, Catherine Chung, Trent Dalton, Heidi W. Durrow, Tony Eprile, Louise Erdrich, Jamie Ford, Julia Glass, Peter Godwin, Hillary Jordan, Rebecca Makkai, Valerie Martin, Dina Nayeri, Chigozie Obioma, Téa Obreht, Helen Oyeyemi, Mary-Louise Parker, Victoria Redel, Jason Reynolds, S.J. Rozan, Meredith Talusan, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Jeet Thayil, Paul Theroux, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Edmund White.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The timeless classic from the acclaimed author of American Psycho about the lost generation of 1980s Los Angeles who experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. • The basis for the cult-classic film "Possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." —The New York TimesThey live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope. When Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college, he re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin.Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.Look for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, The Shards!
A New York Times Notable BookKink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by lauded writers R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, and featuring a roster of all-star contributors including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.A Most-Anticipated book of 2021 as selected by * Marie Claire * O, The Oprah Magazine * Cosmopolitan * Time * The Millions * The Advocate * Autostraddle * Refinery29 * Shape * Town & Country * Book Riot * Literary Hub *Kink is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. The collection includes works by renowned fiction writers such as Callum Angus, Alexander Chee, Vanessa Clark, Melissa Febos, Kim Fu, Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, Zeyn Joukhadar, Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Larissa Pham, and Brandon Taylor, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors.The stories within explore bondage, power-play, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates, therapists’ offices, underground sex clubs, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains, sure, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers.
A clever and steamy queer romantic comedy about taking chances and accepting love—with all its complications—from the author of Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail.Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls—nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. Her life is in New York, with her photography career finally gaining steam and her bed never empty. Sure, it’s a different woman every night, but that’s just fine with her.When Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all.Having raised her eleven-year-old daughter mostly on her own while dealing with her unreliable ex and running a bookstore, Claire Sutherland depends upon a life without surprises. And Delilah Green is an unwelcome surprise…at first. Though they’ve known each other for years, they don’t really know each other—so Claire is unsettled when Delilah figures out exactly what buttons to push. When they’re forced together during a gauntlet of wedding preparations—including a plot to save Astrid from her horrible fiancé—Claire isn’t sure she has the strength to resist Delilah’s charms. Even worse, she’s starting to think she doesn’t want to...
Having turned phone sex into the subject of an astonishing national bestseller in Vox, Baker now outdoes himself with an outrageously arousing, acrobatically stylish "X-rated sci-fi fantasy that leaves Vox seeming more like mere fiber-optic foreplay" (Seattle Times). "Sparkling."--San Francisco Chronicle.
Wetlandsan international sensation with more than a million copies sold worldwidehas been at the center of a heated debate about feminism and sexuality since its publication last spring. Charlotte Roche’s controversial debut novel is the story of Helen Memel, an outspoken, sexually precocious eighteen-year-old lying in a hospital bed as she recovers from an operation. To distract herself, she ruminates on her past sexual and physical adventures in increasingly uncomfortable detail. The result is a funny, shocking, and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the compulsion to obliterate the covenant that keeps girls clean, quiet, and nice.
The lush epic fantasy that inspired a generation with a single precept: Love As Thou WiltThe first book in the Kushiel's Legacy series is a novel of grandeur, luxuriance, sacrifice, betrayal, and deeply laid conspiracies. A world of cunning poets, deadly courtiers, deposed rulers and a besieged Queen, a warrior-priest, the Prince of Travelers, barbarian warlords, heroic traitors, and a truly Machiavellian villainess...all seen through the unflinching eyes of an unforgettable heroine.A nation born of angels, vast and intricate and surrounded by danger... a woman born to servitude, unknowingly given access to the secrets of the realm...Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy...and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d'Ange, she has no choice.Betrayed into captivity in the barbarous northland of Skaldia and accompanied only by a disdainful young warrior-priest, Phédre makes a harrowing escape and an even more harrowing journey to return to her people and deliver a warning of the impending invasion. And that proves only the first step in a quest that will take her to the edge of despair and beyond.Phédre nó Delaunay is the woman who holds the keys to her realm's deadly secrets, and whose courage will decide the very future of her world.
BRAND NEW, Exactly same ISBN as listed, Please double check ISBN carefully before ordering.
In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there's a deadly turf war raging between vampires and their slayers. There exists a secret band of brothers like no other - six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Yet none of them relishes killing more than Wrath, the blind leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, the heartrending story of a brave and tenacious housewife Look for Roddy Doyle’s new novel, Smile, coming in October of 2017Paula Spencer is a thirty-nine-year-old working-class woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and a worsening drinking problem. Paula recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her feeling powerless. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable.
“A delicious escape.” —PeopleLove is in the salty sea air in this smart and steamy ensemble romantic comedy set in a tropical paradise, from the author of the “sparkly and entertaining” (Oprah Daily) It Had to Be You. This is one island you won’t want to be rescued from.The Kellys are messy, loud, loving Australians. The Lees are sophisticated, aloof, buttoned-up Americans. They have nothing in common…except for the fact that their daughters are married. When a nearby volcano erupts during their short vacation to a remote tropical island off the coast of Queensland, the two families find themselves stranded together for six weeks.With only two island employees making up the rest of their party, everyone is forced to question what—or who—they really want. Island Time is a sumptuous summer read that dives deep into queer romance, family secrets, ambition, parenthood, and a bird-chasing bromance. This sexy, sun-soaked paradise of white sandy beaches, crystal-clear waters, and lush rainforest will show you it’s never too late to change your destiny.
The #1 New York Times bestselling author continues her evocative Westmoreland Dynasty Saga with this romance following two defiant hearts clashing over a furious battle of wills in the glorious age of chivalry.Abducted from her convent school, headstrong Scottish beauty Jennifer Merrick does not easily surrender to Royce Westmoreland, Duke of Claymore. Known as “The Wolf,” his very name strikes terror in the hearts of his enemies. But proud Jennifer will have nothing to do with the fierce English warrior who holds her captive, this handsome rogue who taunts her with his blazing arrogance.Boldly she challenges his will—until the night he takes her in his powerful embrace, awakening in her an irresistible hunger. And suddenly Jennifer finds herself ensnared in a bewildering web…a seductive, dangerous trap of pride, passion, loyalty, and overwhelming love.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral delivers his "richest, most rewarding novel" (The New York Times Book Review) about Micky Sabbath, a scandalous hero who embarks on a turbulent journey into his past.One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsOnce an inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath, bereft and grieving and besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.
An artist stumbles upon a naked duke and an unlikely love story begins in this captivating Victorian historical romance.When Royal Academy painting student Lucy Coover trips over a naked man passed out in an East End alley, she does the decent thing. She covers him up and fetches help. Trouble is, she can't banish his muscular form from her dreams as easily. Compelled to capture every detail, she creates a stunning portrait but is forced to sell it when the rent comes due. What could be worse than surrendering the very picture of your desire? Meeting the man himself.Anthony Philby, Duke of Weston, is nobody's muse. Upon discovering the scandalous likeness, he springs into action. His infamous family has been torn apart by shame and secrets, and he can't afford more gossip. Even a whisper may jeopardize his inheritance and his chance at independence. His plan is simple: burn the painting, confront the artist. Or rather, it's simple until he meets Lucy and decides to offer the bewitching young artist a devil's bargain. He'll help save her foreclosed home, if she'll help repair his family’s brutal legacy.An irresistible passion ignites between them, but when danger strikes, Lucy and Anthony must risk everything... for a love that might destroy them both.
She’s a take-charge woman. But he’s a master of control.Skye Manning knows what she wants. Her job as assistant and photographer for a major social media influencer isn’t perfect, but it’s a rung on the ladder to bigger and better things. She’s confident she’ll one day take feature photos for National Geographic.Self-made billionaire Braden Black didn’t get where he is by taking no for an answer. When a chance encounter with the refreshingly innocent and beautiful Skye piques his interest in more ways than one, he’s determined to make her submit.Dating a billionaire soon has Skye in the middle of a Cinderella story…until the clock strikes midnight and Braden reveals his dark side. Heat sizzles between them, and Skye finds herself falling hard.But Braden Black is no Prince Charming, and his dark desires are far from his only secret.Start this amazing series off with Darkly, Follow Me Darkly told from the hero's point of view, or spice up your reading with Braden's story any time while enjoying the Follow Me series.Darkly (Book #1 in the hero's POV) can be read and enjoyed in any order!Reading order of Follow Me trilogy:Book #1: Follow Me DarklyBook #2: Follow Me UnderBook #3: Follow Me Always
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years.This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION“Bold, virtuosic, addictive, erotic – there is nothing like The Pisces. I have no idea how Broder does it, but I loved every dark and sublime page of it.” —Stephanie Danler, author of SweetbitterLucy has been writing her dissertation on Sappho for nine years when she and her boyfriend break up in a dramatic flameout. After she bottoms out in Phoenix, her sister in Los Angeles insists Lucy dog-sit for the summer. Annika's home is a gorgeous glass cube on Venice Beach, but Lucy can find little relief from her anxiety — not in the Greek chorus of women in her love addiction therapy group, not in her frequent Tinder excursions, not even in Dominic the foxhound's easy affection.Everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer while sitting alone on the beach rocks one night. But when Lucy learns the truth about his identity, their relationship, and Lucy’s understanding of what love should look like, take a very unexpected turn. A masterful blend of vivid realism and giddy fantasy, pairing hilarious frankness with pulse-racing eroticism, THE PISCES is a story about falling in obsessive love with a merman: a figure of Sirenic fantasy whose very existence pushes Lucy to question everything she thought she knew about love, lust, and meaning in the one life we have.
From influential feminist artist and essayist Anais Nin, Delta of Venus is one of the most important works of modern female erotica and "a joyous display of the erotic imagination" (The New York Times Book Review).In this story collection, Anais Nin pens 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. This is an extraordinarily rich and exotic collection from a master of erotic writing."Inventive, sophisticated . . . highly elegant naughtiness."—Cosmopolitan
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction • A Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction • A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the James Taite Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • A Finalist for the Green Carnation Prize • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Los Angeles Times BestsellerNamed One of the Best Books of the Year by More Than Fifty Publications, Including: The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times (selected by Dwight Garner), GQ, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, Slate, Vulture, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (London), The Telegraph (London), The Evening Standard (London), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, The Millions, BuzzFeed, The New Republic (Best Debuts of the Year), Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly (One of the Ten Best Books of the Year)"Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You appeared in early 2016, and is a short first novel by a young writer; still, it was not easily surpassed by anything that appeared later in the year....It is not just first novelists who will be envious of Greenwell's achievement."―James Wood, The New YorkerOn an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and want.What Belongs to You is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.
Fifteen short stories by Anaïs Nin published posthumously in 1977 - though largely written in the 1940s as erotica for a private collector.In Delta of Venus 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.Part of the Quality Paperback Book Club series with limited-edition art cover. Cover art painted by Monica Elias.
"A collection of wistful, witty stories." --Esquire "Hilarious, deep and a little bit dirty." --Harper's BazaarA grief-stricken librarian decides to have sex with every man who enters her library. A half-mad, unbearably beautiful heiress follows a strange man home, seeking total sexual abandon: He only wants to watch game shows. A woman falls in love with a hunchback; when his deformity turns out to be a prosthesis, she leaves him. A wife whose husband has just returned from the war struggles with the heartrending question: Can she still love a man who has no lips?Aimee Bender's stories portray a world twisted on its axis, a place of unconvention that resembles nothing so much as real life, in all its grotesque, beautiful glory. From the first line of each tale she lets us know she is telling a story, but the moral is never quite what we expect. Bender's prose is glorious: musical and colloquial, inimitable and heartrending.Here are stories of men and women whose lives are shaped--and sometimes twisted--by the power of extraordinary desires, erotic and otherwise. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is the debut of a major American writer.A 1998 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best works of fiction of 1998.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first book in Diana Gabaldon’s acclaimed Outlander saga, the basis for the Starz original series.One of the top ten best-loved novels in America, as seen on PBS’s The Great American Read!Unrivaled storytelling. Unforgettable characters. Rich historical detail. These are the hallmarks of Diana Gabaldon’s work. Her New York Times bestselling Outlander novels have earned the praise of critics and captured the hearts of millions of fans. Here is the story that started it all, introducing two remarkable characters, Claire Beauchamp Randall and Jamie Fraser, in a spellbinding novel of passion and history that combines exhilarating adventure with a love story for the ages.Scottish Highlands, 1945. Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding clans in the year of Our Lord . . . 1743.Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of a world that threatens her life, and may shatter her heart. Marooned amid danger, passion, and violence, Claire learns her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives.
The instant #1 New York Times Bestselling SeriesGlitter Magazine’s #1 Pick for Best YA of 2020Optioned for Film by UniversalMy whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. Nothing is right about this place or the other students in it. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods…or monsters. I still can’t decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me.Then there’s Jaxon Vega. A vampire with deadly secrets who hasn’t felt anything for a hundred years. But there’s something about him that calls to me, something broken in him that somehow fits with what’s broken in me.Which could spell death for us all.Because Jaxon walled himself off for a reason. And now someone wants to wake a sleeping monster, and I’m wondering if I was brought here intentionally―as the bait.***INCLUDES 3 BONUS SCENES FROM THE HERO’S POV***Don’t miss a single book in the series that spawned a phenomenon! The Crave series is best enjoyed in order:CraveCrushCovetCourtCharmCherish
The sexy, action-packed first book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series from Sarah J. Maas.When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.At least, he's not a beast all the time.As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she's been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin-and his world-forever.From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.
Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War.The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.
· A married woman has a BDSM-tinged encounter at a work conference\n· Two young boys on a sleepover feel the first stirrings of desire\n· In an artificially generated afterlife, anything can be sexual if you want it to be\n· A young widow on a sleeper train shelters a criminal in her carriage\n· A bisexual woman cheats on her wife with a baker\n· Anyone can hire a holographic gigolo in 2098 – but one client gets a lot closer than she’d intended\n· Female friends, sharing a hotel room, give in to long-repressed feelings\n· The Rapunzel myth is rewritten…\nTwenty-seven well-known writers, their imaginations unleashed by anonymity…\n‘Now this is how you write erotica. And it’s delicious to read’ Cosmopolitan\n‘The building tension in “History Lesson” overwhelmed me so much I needed to pause to relieve some tension of my own… The updated variation on “Rapunzel” [is] so horny Anne Rice is weeping with pride in the afterlife… the best part of this book is the anonymity’ New York Times\n‘Gorgeous’ Guardian\n‘Here is sensuality gloriously released from gender, opprobrium, or the constraints of flesh’ TLS\n‘A sizzling assemblage of top-notch literary fiction’ LA Times\n‘An early contender for the steamiest book of the year’ POPSUGAR\nIn this diverse and ground-breaking collection there is something for everyone, from teenage experimentation to sex in the afterlife, from married couples pushing their boundaries to illicit encounters between strangers. Perhaps you will guess which story was written by your favourite author, perhaps you won’t, but the excitement is in the journey.\nTwenty-seven erotic stories, anonymously written by:\nRobert Olen Butler, Catherine Chung, Trent Dalton, Heidi Durrow, Tony Eprile, Louise Erdrich, Jamie Ford, Julia Glass, Peter Godwin, Hillary Jordan, Rebecca Makkai, Valerie Martin, Dina Nayeri, Chigozie Obioma, Téa Obreht, Helen Oyeyemi, Mary-Louise Parker, Victoria Redel, Jason Reynolds, S.J. Rozan, Meredith Talusan, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Jeet Thayil, Paul Theroux, Luis Alberto Urrea, Edmund White\nThis collection hit the bestseller list in Canada on 17/02/2022
Before E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and Sylvia Day's Bared to You, there was Anne Rice’s New York Times best seller The Claiming of Sleeping BeautyIn the traditional folktale of "Sleeping Beauty," the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a Prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. In the first book of the series, Anne Rice (author of Beauty's Kingdom), writing as A.N. Roquelaure, retells the Beauty story and probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the Prince awakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation. His reward for ending the hundred years of enchantment is Beauty's complete and total enslavement to him . . . as Anne Rice explores the world of erotic yearning and fantasy in a classic that becomes, with her skillful pen, a compelling experience. Readers of Fifty Shades of Grey will indulge in Rice’s deft storytelling and imaginative eroticism, a sure-to-be classic for years to come."Articulate, baroque, and fashionably pornographic." —Playboy"Something very special . . . at once so light and yet so haunting." —The Advocate
*** THIS IS A RERELEASE OF A PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BOOK ***Ellie is horrified to discover the pharmaceutical company she works for is doing illegal experiments. Company scientists have spliced human and animal DNA, creating exotic new species. One such “experiment” captures her heart and she’ll do anything to save him—even if he hates her for it.Fury has never known compassion or love. He’s spent his life in a cell, chained and abused by humans. The one woman he allowed himself to trust betrayed him. Now he’s free and set on vengeance. He vows to end her life but when she’s finally in his grasp, harming her is the last thing he wants to do to the sexy little human.Fury can’t resist Ellie—the touch of her hands, her mouth on his skin, her body wrapped around his. He’s obsessed with the scent of his woman. And Ellie wants Fury—always has. She craves his big, powerful body and wants to heal his desolate heart.But loving Fury is one thing…taming him is another.
In his uproarious first novel Martin Amis, author of the bestselling London Fields, gave us one of the most noxiously believable -- and curiously touching -- adolescents ever to sniffle and lust his way through the pages of contemporary fiction. On the brink of twenty, Charles High-way preps desultorily for Oxford, cheerfully loathes his father, and meticulously plots the seduction of a girl named Rachel -- a girl who sorely tests the mettle of his cynicism when he finds himself falling in love with her.
In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an internationally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor.\nA classic work of cutting-edge fiction, Crash explores both the disturbing implications and horrific possibilities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERPerfect for fans of Kristin Cashore and George R.R. Martin, this first book in a sexy and action-packed new series is impossible to put down!When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like creature arrives to demand retribution for it. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin--one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled their world.As she dwells on his estate, her feelings for Tamlin transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie and warning she's been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But an ancient, wicked shadow over the faerie lands is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it . . . or doom Tamlin--and his world--forever.
The author of Monkeys and Evening focuses her observant eye and lyrical voice on the delicate emotional negotiations of young New Yorkers. As in a series of deceptively simple watercolors, these stories uncover small moments that yield larger truths--about the ways in which women and men come together and come apart again, about the disappointments and hopes of lovers who know what they want but don't always know how to keep. A deeply poignant meditation on the nature of desire and loss.
The international publishing phenomenon Ice Planet Barbarians, now in a special print edition!Fall in love with the out-of-this-world romance between Georgie Carruthers, a human woman, and Vektal, an alien from another planet, in this expanded edition with bonus materials and an exclusive epilogue—in print only!You’d think being abducted by aliens would be the worst thing that could happen to me. And you’d be wrong. Because now the aliens are having ship trouble, and they’ve left their cargo of human women—including me—on an ice planet.We’re not equipped for life in this desolate winter wasteland. Since I’m the unofficial leader, I head out into the snow to look for help.I find help all right. A big blue horned alien introduces himself in a rather . . . startling way. Vektal says that I'm his mate, his chosen female—and that the reason his chest is purring is because of my presence. He’ll help me and my people survive, but this poses a new problem.If Vektal helps us survive, I’m not sure he’s going to want to let me go.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day comes the first novel in the Crossfire series—a provocative masterstroke of abandon and obsession that redefined the meaning of desire, and became a global phenomenon.Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness...He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily...Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other’s most private wounds...and desires.The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn’t tear us apart...
A New York Times besteller!It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?Hey. Who wants to know?The Washington Post“Brilliantly written… a joy to read… Bleeding Edge is totally gonzo, totally wonderful. It really is good to have Thomas Pynchon around, doing what he does best.” (Michael Dirda)Slate.com"If not here at the end of history, when? If not Pynchon, who? Reading Bleeding Edge, tearing up at the beauty of its sadness or the punches of its hilarity, you may realize it as the 9/11 novel you never knew you needed… a necessary novel and one that literary history has been waiting for."The New York Times Book ReviewExemplary… dazzling and ludicrous... Our reward for surrendering expectations that a novel should gather in clarity, rather than disperse into molecules, isn’t anomie but delight.” (Jonathan Lethem)Wired magazine“The book’s real accomplishment is to claim the last decade as Pynchon territory, a continuation of the same tensions — between freedom and captivity, momentum and entropy, meaning and chaos — through which he has framed the last half-century."
The acclaimed trilogy that comprises Lilith's Brood is Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best.Presented for the first time in one volume with an introduction by Joan Slonczewski, Ph.D., Lilith's Brood is a profoundly evocative, sensual -- and disturbing -- epic of human transformation.Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected -- by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind. But Lilith and all humanity must now share the world with uncanny, unimaginably alien creatures: their own children. This is their story...
The Amphibious Cult Classic: A Magical Tale Of A Suburban Housewife's Affair With A Frogman ... 'still Outpaces, Out-weirds, And Out-romances Anything Today.' Marlon James ''genius ... A Broadcast From A Stranger And More Dazzling Dimension.' Patricia Lockwood 'so Curiously Right, So Romantically Obverse, That It Creates Its Own Terrible, Brilliant Reality.' Sarah Hall 'a Feminist Masterpiece: Tender, Erotic, Singular.' Carmen Maria Machado 'a Devastating Fable Of Mythic Proportions ... Wondrously Peculiar.' Irenosen Okojie (foreword) Dorothy Is A Grieving Housewife In The Californian Suburbs; Her Husband Is Unfaithful, But They Are Too Unhappy To Get A Divorce. One Day, She Is Doing Chores When She Hears Strange Voices On The Radio Announcing That A Green-skinned Sea Monster Has Escaped From The Institute For Oceanographic Research - But Little Does She Expect Him To Arrive In Her Kitchen. Muscular, Vegetarian, Sexually Magnetic, Larry The Frogman Is A Revelation - And Their Passionate Affair Takes Them On A Journey Beyond Their Wildest Dreams ... Rachel Ingalls's Mrs Caliban Is A Bittersweet Fable, A Subversive Fairy Tale, As Magical Today As It Was Four Decades Ago 'a Miracle . A Perfect Novel.' New Yorker 'every One Of Its 125 Pages Is Perfect ... Clear A Saturday, Please, And Read It In A Single Sitting.' Harper's What Readers Are Saying: 'maybe The Most Gorgeous, Lyrical Book Ever Written'***** 'a Fantastic Wee Novel, Strange And Brilliant, And Absolutely The Inspiration For The Shape Of Water.'***** 'wonderful, Sharp Minimal Prose Offers Big Truths. Superb - Brilliant, In Fact.'***** 'absolutely Incredible. It's Weird, Funny, And Heartbreaking, Like A Richard Yates Novel Except With Lizardman Sex.'***** 'one Of The Best Tongue-in-cheek Social Satires That I've Ever Read. It Delves Into Gender Politics. It Takes A Long, Hard Look At Mental Health. It Addresses Female Sexual Freedom And Agency. It Asks The Reader To Examine What It Means To Be Human ... Genius.'***** 'really Brilliant: A Deconstruction Of Suburbia By Way Of Monster Movies That Examines Sad Realities With Hilarious Verve ... Sometimes You Need A Sexy Frog Person To Break You Out Of The Ties That Bind. '***** 'hooked Me So Deeply I Picked It Up And Finished It The Same Night ... Beautiful ... Will Stay With Me.'***** 'what The Hell Just Happened?'*****
In this luminous novel -- winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize -- John Berger relates the story of "G.," a young man forging an energetic sexual career in Europe during the early years of this century. With profound compassion, Berger explores the hearts and minds of both men and women, and what happens during sex, to reveal the conditions of the Don Juan's success: his essential loneliness, the quiet cumulation in each of his sexual experiences of all of those that precede it, the tenderness that infuses even the briefest of his encounters, and the way women experience their own extraordinariness through their moments with him. All of this Berger sets against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898, the Boer War, and the first flight across the Alps, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history's private moments.
The notorious novel of dark obsessionHow far will a woman go to express her love? In this exquisite novel of passion and desire, the answer emerges through a daring exploration of the deepest bonds of sensual domination. “O” is a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer, determined to understand and prove her consuming devotion to her lover, René, through complete submission to his every whim, his every desire.It is a journey of forbidden, dangerous choices that sweeps her through the secret gardens of the sexual underground. From the inner sanctum of a private club where willing women are schooled in the art of subjugation to the excruciating embraces of René’s friend Sir Stephen, O tests the outermost limits of pleasure. For as O discovers, true freedom lies in her pure and complete willingness to do anything for love.
THE 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THE FIRST NOVEL IN J. D. ROBB’S #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING IN DEATH SERIES—INCLUDES A NEW NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR!In the year 2058, technology completely rules the world. But for New York City Detective Eve Dallas, one irresistible impulse still rules the heart: passion…Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant hunting for a ruthless killer. In over ten years on the force, she's seen it all—and knows her survival depends on her instincts. And she's going against every warning telling her not to get involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire—and a suspect in Eve's murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rules of their own, and it's up to Eve to take a chance in the arms of a man she knows nothing about—except the addictive hunger of needing his touch.
Bristling with intelligence and shimmering with romance, this novel tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s and earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario. In the course of his adventures, Patrick's life intersects with those of characters who reappear in Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning The English Patient. 256 pp.
Now back in print, Mrs. Caliban is “totally unforgettable” (The New York Times Book Review) and “something of a miracle” (The New Yorker) In the quiet suburbs, while Dorothy is doing chores and waiting for her husband to come home from work, not in the least anticipating romance, she hears a strange radio announcement about a monster who has just escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research… Reviewers have compared Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban to King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’s domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter―how such a short novel could contain all of these disparate elements is a testament to its startling and singular charm.
Wetlandsan international sensation with more than a million copies sold worldwidehas been at the center of a heated debate about feminism and sexuality since its publication last spring. Charlotte Roche’s controversial debut novel is the story of Helen Memel, an outspoken, sexually precocious eighteen-year-old lying in a hospital bed as she recovers from an operation. To distract herself, she ruminates on her past sexual and physical adventures in increasingly uncomfortable detail. The result is a funny, shocking, and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the compulsion to obliterate the covenant that keeps girls clean, quiet, and nice.
“Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”—TimeOne of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsOne of the signature novels of the American 1960s, Couples is a book that, when it debuted, scandalized the public with prose pictures of the way people live, and that today provides an engrossing epitaph to the short, happy life of the “post-Pill paradise.” It chronicles the interactions of ten young married couples in a seaside New England community who make a cult of sex and of themselves. The group of acquaintances form a magical circle, complete with ritualistic games, religious substitutions, a priest (Freddy Thorne), and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). As with most American utopias, this one’s existence is brief and unsustainable, but the “imaginative quest” that inspires its creation is eternal.Praise for Couples“Couples [is] John Updike’s tour de force of extramarital wanderlust.”—The New York Times Book Review“Ingenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”—Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review
“Beautiful….Compelling entertainment.” —New York TimesOne of the most beloved novels of all time, The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough’s sweeping family saga of dreams, titanic struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian Outback, returns to enthrall a new generation.The Thorn Birds is a chronicle of three generations of Clearys—an indomitable clan of ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family. It is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Clearys' only daughter, Meggie, and the haunted priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart—and the intense joining of two hearts and souls over a lifetime, a relationship that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.“A heart-rending epic…truly marvelous.” —Chicago Tribune
*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER**INSTANT #1 INDIE BESTSELLER*From the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks...For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time."A dazzling romance, filled with plenty of humor and heart." - Time Magazine, "The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2021""Dreamy, other worldly, smart, swoony, thoughtful, hilarious - all in all, exactly what you'd expect from Casey McQuiston!" - Jasmine Guillory, New York Times bestselling author of The Proposal and Party for Two
“Scott Spencer writes about love’s tenacity with passionate intensity….From his remarkable opening sentence he had me in thrall.”—NewsweekFirst published three decades ago, and hailed as “one of the best books of the year” by the New York Times, here is the classic novel that first established Scott Spencer as “the contemporary American master of the love story”(Publishers Weekly). With more than 2,000,000 copies sold worldwide and translated into more than 20 languages, Spencer’s Endless Love is a breathtaking story of teenage passion and obsession. The Washington Post called this unforgettable reading experience, “akin to the legendary thrill of riding a roller-coaster.” Endless Love is eternal—and as moving and satisfying as ever before.
‘A beautiful read / a perfect primer for an explosive lesbian affair / an essential truth’ Lena Dunham\n‘I have meditated repeatedly on what it was about Finn that had me so dismantled.'\nA young woman moves from the countryside to the city.Inexplicably, inexorably and immediately, she falls in love with another woman for the first time in her life.Finn is nineteen years older than her, wears men’s clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile – and a long-term girlfriend.With precision, wit and tenderness, Women charts the frenzy and the fall out of love.
By the author of A Wrinkle in Time, the conclusion to the Polly O'Keefe stories finds Polly taking an unforgettable trip to Europe, all by herself.“Exquisite.” ―Publishers Weekly\nSixteen-year-old Polly is on her way to the island of Cyprus, where she will work as a gofer. The trip was arranged by Maximiliana Horne, a rich, brilliant artist who, with her longtime companion, Dr. Ursula Heschel, recently became the O'Keefe family's neighbor on Benne Seed Island. Max and Polly formed an instant friendship and Max took over Polly's education, giving her the encouragement and confidence that her isolated upbringing had not. Polly adored Max, even idolized her, until Max betrayed her. In Greece, Polly finds romance, danger, and unique friendships. But can she ever forgive Max?\nPraise for A House Like a Lotus:\n“While on a working trip to Greece and Cyprus, previously arranged by Max, Polly learns what forgiveness and love really are. Polly is a remarkable heroine.” ―Children's Book Review Service\n“Compelling . . . An eminently caring book by an obviously caring writer.” ―Booklist, starred review\n“Exquisite.” ―Publishers Weekly\nBooks by Madeleine L'EngleA Wrinkle in Time QuintetA Wrinkle in TimeA Wind in the DoorA Swiftly Tilting PlanetMany WatersAn Acceptable Time\nA Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Madeleine L'Engle; adapted & illustrated by Hope Larson\nIntergalactic P.S. 3 by Madeleine L'Engle; illustrated by Hope Larson: A standalone story set in the world of A Wrinkle in Time.\nThe Austin Family ChroniclesMeet the Austins (Volume 1) The Moon by Night (Volume 2) The Young Unicorns (Volume 3)A Ring of Endless Light (Volume 4) A Newbery Honor book!Troubling a Star (Volume 5)\nThe Polly O'Keefe booksThe Arm of the StarfishDragons in the WatersA House Like a LotusAnd Both Were YoungCamillaThe Joys of Love
In the New York Times bestseller House of Holes, Nicholson Baker, “one of the most beautiful, original, and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades” (The New York Times Magazine), returns to the terrain that made him famous with a gleefully provocative, off-the-charts erotic novel that is unlike anything you’ve read—“a filthy tour de force” (Time).Shandee finds a friendly arm at a granite quarry. Ned drops down a hole in a golf course. So begins Nicholson Baker’s fuse-blowing sexual escapade—a modern-day Hieronymus Boschian bacchanal set in a pleasure resort where normal rules don’t apply. House of Holes, one of the most talked-about books in recent memory, is a gleefully provocative novel sure to surprise, amuse, and arouse.
A national best-seller that was featured on such lists as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, and Publishers Weekly, The Sexual Life of Catherine M. was the controversial sleeper hit of the year. Since her youth, Catherine Millet, the eminent editor of Art Press, has led an extraordinarily active and free sexual life -- from al fresco encounters in Italy to a gang bang on the edge of the Bois du Boulogne to a high-class orgy at a chichi Parisian restaurant. A graphic account of sex stripped of sentiment, of a life of physical gratification and a relentlessly honest look at the consequences -- both liberating and otherwise -- have created this candid, powerful, and deeply intelligent depiction of unfettered sexuality.
Can the road to the top take you on a path to love?After ten years abroad, Alexandra ‘Ali’ Lennox's father asks her to move back to Los Angeles to head the family company, Lennox Breweries.The company’s COO, Jill Gold, has dedicated twenty years of her life to Lennox Breweries and is not amused when she’s asked to mentor Ali, who she considers to be nothing more than a privileged trust-fund brat.Even though they don’t see eye to eye, Ali and Jill will have to learn to trust each other for the sake of the company—and each other.Can Jill change her mind about Ali’s smug entitlement? And will Ali be able to come to terms with the past hurt that drove her away from L.A. in the first place?Find out in this brand-new lesbian age-gap romance from best-selling author Harper Bliss.
A new translation of one of the most notorious novels of all timePublished just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, he is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. Eventually their human pawns respond, and the consequences prove to be more serious—and deadly—than the players could have ever predicted.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An affluent Indian family is forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness“[The God of Small Things] offers such magic, mystery, and sadness that, literally, this reader turned the last page and decided to reread it. Immediately. It’s that haunting.”—USA TodayCompared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest.Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.
Determined to seduce her coldly indifferent husband, Elizabeth Petre - a perfect Victorian lady who is a stranger to the sensual arts - implores Arab sheik Ramiel Devington to instruct her in the erotic secrets of love, but the lessons soon become a temptation that forces her to choose between duty and passion. Reprint.
Middlesex is the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl."I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license...records my first name simply as Cal."So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.
The first in a scandalous duet of Dukes by Julia Quinn, the bestselling author of Bridgerton, now a series created for Netflix by ShondalandJack Audley has been a highwayman, a soldier, and he has always been a rogue. What he is not, and never wanted to be, is a peer of the realm. But when he is recognised as the long-lost son of the House of Wyndham, his carefree life is over. And if his birth proves to be legitimate, then he will find himself with the one title he never wanted: Duke of Wyndham.Grace Eversleigh has spent the last five years toiling as the companion to the dowager Duchess of Wyndham. It is a thankless job, with very little break from the routine . . . until Jack Audley lands in her life, all rakish smiles and debonair charm. He is not a man who takes no for an answer, and when she is in his arms, she's not a woman who wants to say no. But if he is the true duke, then he is the one man she can never have . . .'A veritable treat' Daily Mail'Quinn is a master of Historical romance' Entertainment Weekly
He calls me perfect.His flawless pet.His good girl.Broken down and wounded by my emotionally neglectful ex, I wanted someone to tell me I was good enough.Then, I stumbled into a new job with a boss who brings me to my knees—literally. He has me do things a real secretary would never do.Emerson Grant tells me I’m more than just good enough.I’m worthy of his praise.There are a million reasons why I should stay away. The owner of the Salacious Players’ Club is not just my new boss, he’s twice my age.And my ex-boyfriend’s father.With him, I am treasured. I am adored. I am his.I’m a good girl, but I’m falling for the wrong man.Emerson Grant knows what he wants—And he wants me.So how far will I go to hear his approval?
A finalist for the National Book Award, Don DeLillo’s most powerful and riveting novel—“a great American novel, a masterpiece, a thrilling page-turner” (San Francisco Chronicle)—Underworld is about the second half of the twentieth century in America and about two people, an artist and an executive, whose lives intertwine in New York in the fifties and again in the nineties.With cameo appearances by Lenny Bruce, J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Thompson, Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor, “this is DeLillo’s most affecting novel…a dazzling, phosphorescent work of art” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).
NYT and USA TODAY BESTSELLER An ambitious intern. A perfectionist executive. And a whole lot of name calling.Whip-smart, hardworking, and on her way to an MBA, Chloe Mills has only one problem: her boss, Bennett Ryan. He's exacting, blunt, inconsiderate--and completely irresistible. A Beautiful Bastard.Bennett has returned to Chicago from France to take a vital role in his family's massive media business. He never expected that the assistant who'd been helping him from abroad was the gorgeous, innocently provocative--completely infuriating--creature he now has to see every day. Despite the rumors, he's never been one for a workplace hookup. But Chloe's so tempting he's willing to bend the rules--or outright smash them--if it means he can have her. All over the office.As their appetites for one another increase to a breaking point, Bennett and Chloe must decide exactly what they're willing to lose in order to win each other.Originally only available online as The Office by tby789--and garnering over 2 million reads on fanfiction sites--Beautiful Bastard has been extensively updated for re-release.
Bolano’s radical first novel makes its paperback debut as a New Directions Pearl.\nWritten when he was only twenty-seven, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolano’s fictional universe. This novel presents the genesis of Bolano’s enterprise in prose; all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment when his talent explodes. From this springboard―which Bolano chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he’d written it (“and even that I can’t be certain of”)―as if testing out a high dive, he would plunge into the unexplored depths of the modern novel.\nVoices speak from a dream, from a nightmare, from passersby, from an omniscient narrator, from “Roberto Bolano.” Antwerp’s fractured narration in fifty-four sections moves in multiple directions and cuts to the bone.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Saoirse RonanThe bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement brilliantly illuminates the collision of sexual longing, deep-seated fears, and romantic fantasy on a young couple’s wedding night. It is 1962, and Florence and Edward are celebrating their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties become overwhelming. Unbeknownst to them both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.
Once bitten, twice shy? When her first love walks back into her life, Harriet Locke is thrown - because Sally McCall still looks as gorgeous as ever. The trouble is, Sally doesn’t trust Harriet, and with good reason: she hasn’t forgotten the past. Sally loved her once, but 17 years later, is that still the case? And if it is, there’s just the small matter of living in different states, as well as convincing Sally she’s worth taking a chance on again. Will Harriet and Sally be lucky enough to find love twice in a lifetime? From the best-selling author of London Calling and Nothing To Lose comes a witty & wondrous story of second-chance romance!
One of America’s most acclaimed novelists boldly re-imagines one of America’s most enduring icons in Blonde—the National Book Award-nominated bestseller by Joyce Carol Oates. The legend of Marilyn Monroe—aka Norma Jeane Baker—comes provocatively alive in this powerful tale of Hollywood myth and heartbreaking reality. Marilyn Monroe lives—reborn to tell her untold history; her story of a star created to shine brightest in the Hollywood firmament before her fall to earth. Blonde is a dazzling fictional portrait of the intricate inner life of the idolized and desired movie star as only the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates could paint it.
This is the entire series put into one book. Paperback edition.They took too much.Left too little.I had nothing to lose...until him.*****************~Lana~I didn't expect him.I didn't want to fall in love.But I can't let him go.Logan Bennett makes the world a safer place.He's brilliant.He's a hero.He locks away the sick and depraved.But while he's saving lives, I'm taking them. Collecting the debts that are owed to me.Ten years ago, they took from me. They left me for dead.They should have made sure I stayed dead.Now I'm taking from them.One name at a time.I've trained for too long.I've been patient.I can't stop now.Revenge is best served cold...They never see me coming, until I paint their walls red.Logan doesn't know how they hurt me. He doesn't know about the screams they ignored. He doesn't know how twisted that town really is.He just knows people are dying.He doesn't know he's in love with their killer.No one suspects a dead girl.And Logan doesn't suspect the girl in his bed.They're looking for a monster.Not a girl who loves red.Not a girl in love.I'm a faceless nightmare.At least until I tell them the story they've pretended never happened.But in the end, will Logan choose them? Or will we watch them burn together?**Graphic**Adult language**Some triggers could be too much for the easily disturbed reader**Sexual content**Fucked up moral compass; read at your own risk.
New York Times Bestseller"Timeless and vast... The raw beauty of Ms. Groff’s prose is one of the best things about Arcadia. But it is by no means this book’s only kind of splendor." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times"Even the most incidental details vibrate with life � Arcadia wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in." --Ron Charles, The Washington PostIn the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday. Arcadia’s inhabitants include Handy, the charismatic leader; his wife, Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah’s only child, Bit. While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. He falls in love with Helle, Handy’s lovely, troubled daughter. And eventually he must face the world beyond Arcadia. In Arcadia, Groff displays her literary gifts to stunning effect."Fascinating." --People (****)"It’s not possible to write any better without showing off." --Richard Russo, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls"Dazzling." --Vogue