Pulp Fictions: contemporary erotic paperbacks

Hello, everybody. At the risk of lowering the tone, I was wondering if people might like to share their favorites from the shelves Waterstone's used to hide at the back of the shop. I'm talking about the dozens of anonymous or pseudonymous writers for publishers like New English Library and Nexus. There is wealth of material out there, too much to easily pick through. Yes, the quality can be uneven, but I think there is work of imagination and wit to be found here, some of which could hold its head up alongside the established litry greats of the genre.

Particular favorites of mine are Aishling Morgan's series of outrageous parodies and fantasies, and the anonymous series The Black Pearl: Memoirs of a Victorian Sex Magician. I'd be most interested to know about other people's discoveries.

I'm a big fan of Penny Birch's 'Isabelle' series as well as the 'Alice' series by Surreal.

Haven't read much of Penny Birch's work, beyond what is available on her website, which is excellent, though sadly it hasn't been updated for years.

I understand Penny and Aishling are a couple - there was a fun feature on 'Eurotrash' about their 'Birch, Bottom and Lovett' ponygirl club some years back.

Any thoughts on Lindsay Gordon (Author of Corporation of Canes not the evangelist that touchstones seems determined to link!) I'm interested, as he's recently branched into supernatural fiction, another interest of mine, with a couple of well-thought of novels under the name Adam L G Nevill.

Sorry about this but wanted to find others who have read Kathy Andrews' erotic pulp novels?Would enjoy finding where I could buy this series of fetish stories.

Haven't read Kathy Andrews, but always interested in good fetish erotica - any titles?

Let's not forget the better Graphic Novels in this genre. My favorite is the Brian Tarsis work 'City of Dreams, a Tale of Erotic Fantasy' (1994), which beautifully illustrates much of the story related in the A. N. Roquelaure's (Anne Rice) Sleeping Beauty series. The story is different but the illustrations are of the French type and beautifully erotic. I doubt that anyone will be disappointed with this very erotic graphic novel.
For some reason this does not appear in the Amazon catalog. Anyway, the ISBN is 1-56097-224-6. Enjoy.

I think that some of the names included here might not appreciate being lumped together under a 'pulp fiction' title! Penny Birch, Aisling Morgan, and Lindsay Gordon are definitely amongst these, as well-written, quite inventive fiction.

Not wishing to self-aggrandise and suggest seekers of erotic enlightenment should scan through my library, perhaps I should say it may be worth a brief look. Otherwise, approaching the problem via publishers: Nexus, Blue Moon, Star, Chimera, Masquerade, Grove Press, Headline/Delta, (the new) Ophelia Press are good starting points, and the facts that many books are out of print, and that several of the publishers have changed over the years should not discourage the keen.

Anonymity and pseudonymity are rife in this genre, and have been so for 140 years. Different (and variable quality) editions also abound, but for me such enigmas add to the spice.

In my tags (note that I have included 'ordinary' fiction, and sexology-related non-fiction in my collection) I have aimed to categorise into particular tastes.

Always remember that in erotic literature one person's arousal may be another person's nausea.

No offense intended by the term pulp - I'm talking about the way this writing is often marketed, rather than quality of the writing itself.

Your library is indeed an excellent resource for reviews of erotica.

Bumping this just to say that I finally picked up a copy of Apartment 16, a non-erotic horror novel by Adam Nevill who writes erotica as Lindsay Gordon. I suppose he does a reasonable line in downbeat urban horror after the manner of Ramsey Campbell but I'm afraid I'm struggling to get through it.

It's been a while since Aishling Morgan gave us one of his excellent genre parodies, which probably deserve a thread of their own. He seems to be devoting his considerable energies to editing and putting out his back catalogue on kindle for Xcite at the moment, but I was amused to see that he has recently released The Maiden Saga: Role Playing Game, based on his Maiden fantasy series. The preview on Amazon is a lot of fun, particularly if you ever rolled a set of twenty-sided dice in your misspent youth, and looks to be quite well thought out - more dungeons than dragons, though!