Erotic Books Available Through Amazon
April 22, 2017 10:17 AM   Subscribe

My prison penpal has sheepishly requested some books with sex scenes, and while I've never been in prison I was a bookish teenager before internet porn existed and I get it. Help me find kinky novels or short story collections that are 1) available in paperback through Amazon and 2) don't scream THIS IS GAY PORN on the cover (though homosexual or bisexual content is a plus!!!)

- They requested Anne Rice but then admitted that that's the only author they knew to ask for - anything else in that vein is great!

- Yes, it has to be paperback. Yes, it has to be available new through Amazon; no Abebooks, third-party sellers, etc. Please don't get distracted by telling me how I need to fight prison regulations, if I had time for that I'd be working on the horrific human rights abuses in there and not trying to ship them hardcovers from Barnes & Noble.

- Various pairings and LGBTQ content is a bonus, but for safety reasons I don't feel comfortable sending "Best Gay Erotica 2017." A fantasy novel with a dragon on the cover and tons of genderfluid kinky queer sex in the pages? Way better.

some previous questions i've asked about sending stuff to prison (note: i am writing to a different person in a totally different facility, though rules are similar. my brother has been out of jail, in recovery & doing relatively decent for a while, hooray): postcards, comics
posted by Juliet Banana to Writing & Language (17 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite

 
Check out Heidi Cullinan's stuff! She's a hoot.
posted by kittyb at 10:36 AM on April 22, 2017


I've only read snippets of a couple of these and not sure which ones are LGBTQ/straight but they're newly published and paperback -- New Lovers series by Badlands publishers. I think they do a lot of weirder storylines but might still be in the vein?
posted by Tamagotchi at 10:42 AM on April 22, 2017


Chrome. A really well written story. Kind of pricey on Amazon but maybe cheaper somewhere else?
posted by Splunge at 10:56 AM on April 22, 2017


The books in C.S. Pacat's terrific Captive Prince trilogy have extremely plain covers. A little pricy for all 3, but it's a great love story and very re-readable.
posted by oh yeah! at 11:08 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've been on a M/M fantasy kick recently, and really liked Ginn Hale's Lord of the White Hell series. If your penpal likes the first two, don't miss the follow-up set in the same universe.
posted by kylej at 11:17 AM on April 22, 2017


An Anne Rice suggestion for you: the Sleeping Beauty trilogy. This may have a cover that's a bit too feminine to not get noticed though?
posted by Night_owl at 11:23 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Anita Blake series is pretty porny. If I remember various combinations of genders.
posted by platypus of the universe at 11:31 AM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


If Anne Rice is good, Poppy Z. Brite is better. High school goth me loved his stuff.
posted by youcancallmeal at 11:40 AM on April 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy has a more romance-y cover, but it's M/M and the sex is fairly explicit. (There's also a sequel.)

Also, Bowen's Understatement of the Year.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:52 AM on April 22, 2017


I want to disrec Captive Prince; I haven't read it myself, but several friends have and they were not happy with the treatment of characters of colour. Plus, the main relationship is between a master and his slave and those are some right ooky power dynamics even for a reader who isn't currently in prison.

Seconding Him, it's very good. Beverly Jenkins is het, and romance rather than erotica, but the stories are excellent and the covers are pretty plain.
posted by Tamanna at 12:19 PM on April 22, 2017


The Anne Rice trilogy was written under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure.
posted by MovableBookLady at 1:04 PM on April 22, 2017


I want to disrec Captive Prince; I haven't read it myself, but several friends have and they were not happy with the treatment of characters of colour. Plus, the main relationship is between a master and his slave and those are some right ooky power dynamics even for a reader who isn't currently in prison.

I don't know, I stand by the recommendation. For the racial aspects, Pacat considers herself the same ethnicity as the enslaved character, Damen, (per this series of her tweets, or this tumblr post I've seen blogged around). I can see the validity of the criticism of Tamanna's friends, but I think there may be an element of 'countries separated by a common language' to it.

As far as the power dynamics, Damen is a prince, thrown into slavery through family betrayal and the usurpation of his throne, so there's an element of "royal character learns how the other half lives & that slavery is bad" to the ookiest stuff, and various reveals about the 'master' character which make scenes different in retrospect. As for whether it might be upsetting a read for someone in prison, I don't know -- it's the story of a wrongfully-enslaved man who fights to regain his kingdom and win true love, which I guess is either going to be great escapism or a depressingly unachievable fantasy.
posted by oh yeah! at 2:00 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Iron & Velvet. Super trashy queer paranormal/urban fantasy with sex scenes, lots of fun an doesn't look suspicious.

As a teenager I checked out Catspaw multiple times specifically for the sex scenes (though they aren't queer sex scenes). It's the second book in a trilogy though, and the first book (Psion) doesn't have any sex scenes, though the third (Dreamfall) does. Still a great sci fi angsty underdog beating up the government series in either case.
posted by brook horse at 2:43 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


K.J. Charles' The Magpie Lord and the rest of the series that goes with it. Romantic melodrama set in a late Victorian world but with magic. M/M. Unfortunately now that I look I see the first book is out of stock on Amazon, but going to leave this anyway in case it comes back.
posted by Wretch729 at 3:58 PM on April 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


You have probably already done this, but just in case, please confirm with your pen-pal's facility that they do accept books through the mail via the method your pen-pal has relayed to you. Some facilities are stricter than others and will accept books from organizations but not from individuals, which means that sometimes books well-meaningfully intended for friends and family are discarded.
posted by donut_princess at 4:26 PM on April 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I second Poppy Z. Brite.
posted by hoodrich at 10:04 PM on April 22, 2017


OMG Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven was the book that got me through the years when I was in the closet and living with the fear of a snooping mom. The erotica element is hot enough that I still occasionally thumb through my paperback copy of it, twenty-ish years later.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 1:05 PM on April 24, 2017


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