A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceFor eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utt...

Hurt people hurt people.Say there was a novel in which Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer's assistant and, somehow, they met in Bright Lights, Big City. He's blinded by love. She by ambition. Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an honest, hilarious, and heartrending novel, but above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other and what we allow to have done to us.

This file includes three anonymous Victorian erotic novels (Forbidden Fruit, Laura Middleton, and The Power of Mesmerism), plus Venus in Furs by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch.

Vintage erotica, first published in 1898.

When a wealthy English man about town attempts to make advances on the beautiful 20-year-old debutante Caroline Martin, she haughtily refuses him, thus assuring a remorseless series of punishments. As revenge, the wealthy man orders Caroline's abduction by members of a white slavery ring who cater to the perverted desires of the aristocracy. Sequestered in a remote Moroccan mountain prison, her new mistress and a sinister assistant begin Caroline's tutelage--an education in sexual submissi...

In only the last two years in America has a marketplace developed for the interchange of ideas, experiences, and fantasies in the sexual area. Consequently, much literary material, previously hidden and or suppressed, has come to light. In particular, Victorian fiction has been uncovered that shows those people were human after all (how, we might have wondered, did they ever manage to make babies in all that stuffiness!) A Ravished Maid, recently gotten from a private collection in London....

The ancient Sumerian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest written stories in existence, translated with an introduction by Andrew George in Penguin Classics.Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in que...

This deliciously decadent once-banned classic of vintage erotica, written anonymously in 1890, tells the wild and sordid story of a head-strong and fiercely confident young woman as she navigates the kinky and the morally loose corners, boudoirs, and parties of Victorian high-society.In the great tradition of 'Fanny Hill', Arabella, in her own words describes her remarkable life seeking all manner of erotic diversions.Her journey begins at a very exclusive party of the era;...

Written anonymously in 1908 this four volume work must be one of the most uncompromising pieces to emerge from the Victorian erotic underground. If the writer was attempting to emulate De Sade, then the author has succeeded.'The Way of a Man with a Maid', as told by its main protagonist, Jack, recounts in graphic detail the 'training' and eventual sexual liberation of a number of young women who had previously spurned his advances. In the 'snuggery', Jack's well equipped room of de...

If you associate the Victorian era with prim and proper prudery, you're going to have to adjust your opinion after spending some time with The Oyster. Excerpted from one of the most titillating publications of the period, this collection of top-notch Victorian erotica will delight discerning connoisseurs.

With 97 illustrations by Gustave Dore. According to Wikipedia: "The Douay-Rheims Bible, also known as the Rheims-Douai Bible or Douai Bible and abbreviated as D-R, is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English. The New Testament was published in one volume with extensive commentary and notes in 1582. The Old Testament followed in 160910 in two volumes, also extensively annotated. The notes took up the bulk of the volumes and had a strong polemical and patristic characte...

An elegant school mansion is turned into a "school" where Muriel and other young English aristocrats receive unusual instruction in the byways of love. Shy and timorous at first, Muriel and her friends soon learn to take sensual delight in their strict curriculum.