![]() | Wake of the Raven by Graham Worthington
Buy used from: £15.50 My own work, Pub. 2007. An intense look at the relationship between a man and a preteen girl in his care. When their bonding becomes sexual, fear drives him towards murder.
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![]() | The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Buy used from: £3.32 "Pub. 2002, the aftermath of a vicious type of sexuality; the brutal rape and murder of a 14-year old girl."
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![]() | Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs
Buy used from: £0.05 Pub. 2002. An account of the author's boyhood in a sexually liberated family of the seventies. Criticised as too fantastical to believe; having seen a few true goings on, I think its accurate.
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![]() | The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Buy used from: £0.01 Pub. 2004, In Afghanistan, the guilt of a homosexual rape reveals ancient themes: the power of friendship, and the clash between good and evil that transcends passing governments such as the Taliban.
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![]() | Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
Buy used from: £0.01 Pub. 1998, This short story formed the nucleus of the film version in 2005."
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![]() | Flowers in the Attic (Dollanger Saga) by V. C. Andrews
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £2.61 Pub. 1979, the first of a wildly popular series about a family of incestuous children. Perhaps a bit tame by todays standards, or perhaps still a shocker?
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![]() | Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
Buy used from: £4.55 Pub. 1978. Anais Nin, described as the greatest female author on sexuality, wrote this collection of short stories as a commission for a private collector."
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![]() | Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Buy used from: £8.74 Pub. 69, a Sci-fi classic years ahead of its time.Aliens changing sexuality in response to potential partners. As usual with Le Guin, people are more important than technology.
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![]() | Travels with My Aunt: Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions) by Graham Greene
Buy used from: £5.70 Pub. 1969. Greene, known for his bitter and melancholy novels, here examined the liberalism and joy of the sixties. A hilarious comedy of an elderly mans discovery of his sexually disreputable aunt.
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![]() | Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Buy used from: £7.18 Pub. 1969. Philip Roth's possibly autobiographical story of a man whose sexual impulses war with his purer feelings
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![]() | Myra Breckinridge; Myron (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Gore Vidal
Buy used from: £16.95 Pub. 1968, Gore Vidal's classic swipe at Western steryotypes of sexuality, revolves around the adventures of a trans-sexual male
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![]() | Alfie by Bill Naughton
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £0.01 Pub. 63, filmed 66 with Michael Caine. Comments on the easy sexuality of the Swinging Sixties. Refilmed 2004, Jude Law, but creating less stir. Different times, different shock values.
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![]() | Strange Relations by Philip Jose Farmer
Buy new: £5.02 / Used from: £1.74 Pub. 1960. Farmer has been known for many decades for his exploration of sexuality through his medium - sci-fi. In these five short stories he produces a family both strange and memorable.
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![]() | A Kind of Loving by Mr Stan Barstow
Buy used from: £50.00 Pub. 1960, filmed 1962, represents the "kitchen sink drama" genre influencing society in the 50s and 60s. Interesting to help understand attitudes then, it deals with a casual sex ending in pregnancy
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![]() | Cider with Rosie (Nonpareil Book) by Laurie Lee
Buy used from: £5.84 Pub. 1959, a masterpiece on England at the end of WWI, a time of endless summers where cars and telephones were a rarity. Also reveals the strange mixture of sexual prudery and laxity of those times
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![]() | Giovanni's Room (Penguin Modern Classics) by James Baldwin
Buy new: £5.00 / Used from: £1.24 Due to its homoerotic content, this second novel by black American author James Baldwin aroused much controversy when published in 1956. Today it seems very mild, but was then considered very candid
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![]() | Lolita (Penguin Classics) by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: £5.37 / Used from: £1.67 Pub. 1955, the classic story of a man's lust for an underage girl. A study in selfishness and delusion, its complex layers of subtlety, have been analysed than any other work of erotic literature
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![]() | The Ginger Man by James Patrick Donleavy
Buy used from: £7.26 Pub. 1955, The story of sexual adventures in Dublin, hailed as one of the greats of last century. Readers seem equally divided as to whether it is genius or trash. I find it leaning more to trash
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![]() | Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Buy used from: £2.49 Pub.53, introduced James Bond, literature's supreme example of the tough, cynical, womanising, action-man hero.
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![]() | The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Buy used from: £4.49 Pub. 1951, when its story of teenage anger and sexuality shocked the USA. It has held cult status ever since. In 1981 it was the most challenged book, yet the second most taught in high schools
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![]() | 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Buy used from: £7.66 Pub. 1949. A future world of fear and oppression. As usual in oppressive societies, sex is taboo, and Winston rebels by the most basic of human rights: he loves a girl, Julia
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![]() | Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Buy used from: £1.54 Pub. 1934, the subject of an obscenity trial in 1961, an extreme example of an author's reaction to censorship. Praised by serious writers - including George Orwell - and damned as trash by others.
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![]() | Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse
Buy used from: £5.30 Pub. 1930, Hesse's novel explores two polar opposites of the human character: Narzis, a disciplined scholar, and Goldmund, his pupil, an adventuring sensualist fascinated by the eternal feminine.
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![]() | Lady Chatterley's Lover (Penguin Classics Deluxe) by D. H. Lawrence
Buy used from: £3.88 Pub. 1928, Lawrence's most notorious novel on sexuality. Pub. in England in 1960, when it was prosecuted under the obscenity act. This failed prosecution did much to confirm the sixties as "Swinging."
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![]() | My Life and Loves (Literary Classics) by Frank Harris
Buy new: £9.60 / Used from: £7.32 Pub. 1922, banned as obscene in 1923. Follows the general pattern of many works read for sexual content: once the sexual part begins to bore, there's not much more in it to hold the reader's interest.
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