(Hi)Stories of Desire


Book Description

Draws upon multi-disciplinary frameworks of analysis to provide an account of the making of sexual cultures in modern India.




Objects of Desire


Book Description

“A debut story collection of the rarest kind ... you wish that every single entry could be an entire novel." —Entertainment Weekly Fresh, intimate stories of women’s lives from an extraordinary new literary voice, laying bare the unexpected beauty and irony in contemporary life A college freshman, traveling home, strikesup an odd, ephemeral friendship with the couple next to her on the plane. A mother prepares for her son’s wedding, her own life unraveling as his comes together. A long-lost stepbrother’s visit to New York prompts a family’s reckoning with its old taboos. A wife considers the secrets her marriage once contained. An office worker, exhausted by the ambitions of the men around her, emerges into a gridlocked city one afternoon to make a decision. In these eleven powerful stories, thrilling desire and melancholic yearning animate women’s lives, from the brink of adulthood to the labyrinthine path between twenty and thirty, to middle age, when certain possibilities quietly elapse. Tender, lucid, and piercingly funny, Objects of Desire is a collection pulsing with subtle drama, rich with unforgettable scenes, and alive with moments of recognition each more startling than the last—a spellbinding debut that announces a major talent.




The Ascetic of Desire


Book Description

The time is the fourth century AD, the golden age of Indian history. The locale: an ashram in the woods a little outside Varanasi. Every morning, Vatsyayana, author of the Kamasutra, recounts stories from his childhood and youth to a young pupil who plans to write the great sage's biography. Little is known of Vatsyayana's life, and the young scholar puts the pieces together in his mind along with relevant slokas of erotic wisdom from the Kamasutra, which he has learnt by heart. The story that unfolds is fascinating. Vatsyayana's mother Avantika and her sister Chandrika are famous courtesans in a brothel at Kausambi. From them and their various lovers Vatsyayana gains his first indelible impressions of sexual artifice. With characteristic insight, Kakar plumbs the psychological depths of a plethora of characters who are at various stages of discovering their sexual identities. What emerges is a powerful narrative of lust and sensuality imbued with an old-world charm and a surprising sense of irony.




Desire


Book Description

100 of literature's sexiest stories, chosen by Mariella Frostrup and the Erotic Review. Strict mistresses, naughty maids, handsome gardeners and disarming strangers; literature is awash with love, sex and desire. This collection brings together 100 of the best examples, hand-picked by Mariella Frostrup and the Erotic Review. From romance and seduction to downright dirty deeds, here are prize-winners, bestsellers and rising stars, each of whom prove that when it comes to the bedroom, a little fiction goes a long way. So whether you're looking for love, lust or something in between, this gorgeous anthology is the perfect gift... or bedside companion. Reviews for Desire: 'A veritable Milk Tray of titillating tales' The Times 'Frostrup has brought a fresh eye to amorous fiction' Telegraph 'The perfect bedside companion' Best Magazine




Fields of Desire


Book Description

In this important new book, High argues that poverty reduction policies are formulated and implemented in fields of desire. Drawing on psychoanalytic understandings of desire, she shows that such programs circulate around the question of what is lacking. Far from rational responses to measures of need, then, the politics of poverty are unconscious, culturally expressed, mutually contradictory, and sometimes contrary to self-interest. Based on long-term fieldwork in a Lao village that has been the subject of multiple poverty reduction and development programs, High's account looks at implementation on the ground. While these efforts were laudable in their aims of reducing poverty, they often failed to achieve their objectives. Local people received them with suspicion and disillusionment. Nevertheless, poverty reduction policies continued to be renewed by planners and even desired locally. High relates this to the force of aspirations among rural Lao, ambivalent understandings of power and the "post-rebellious" moment in contemporary Laos.




Desire In His Eyes


Book Description

A debutante ditches the dull social scene to stow away on the ship of a sexy sea captain in this Victorian romance from the author of The Irish Heiress. She longed for adventure… For many, the London season is a whirlwind of sparkling ballrooms, fashionable gowns, and stolen glances. For Juliette Hamilton, the second of five sisters, it is nothing but scandal. Unable to contain her wild streak, Juliette is desperate for an escape from the watchful eyes of society. And then the perfect opportunity presents itself, in the form of dashing sea captain Harrison Fleming. But he could give her so much more… When Harrison finds Juliette stowed away on his ship, he'd like nothing more than to return the infuriating, intoxicating woman to her family and get back to the business of amassing his fortune. But it's too late to change course, so he gives her the next best punishment: the job of his personal servant! Now, Juliette's at his beck and call, day and night. And both begin to realize that that in such very close quarters, her penance may be much more of a pleasure… Praise for the Novels of Kaitlin O'Riley “O'Riley's believable, charismatic characters and fast-paced plotline set this novel well apart from the usual romance fare.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) on When His Kiss Is Wicked “A talented author…O'Riley's plot twists add…freshness to the genre.”—Romantic Times on Secrets of a Duchess




Tales of Desire (New Directions Pearls)


Book Description

"I yearned for a bad influence and boy, was Tennessee one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny."—John Waters “I cannot write any sort of story,” said Tennessee [to Gore Vidal] “unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire.” These transgressive Tales of Desire, including “One Arm,” “Desire and the Black Masseur,” “Hard Candy,” and “The Killer Chicken and the Closet Queen,” show the iconic playwright at his outrageous best.




A Taste of Desire


Book Description

Thomas Armstrong vows only the loss of his faculties could ever convince him to take Amelia Bertram under his care during her father’s absence from England. Sadly, that loss does occur… the moment Lady Amelia publicly states that rumors of his exalted sexual prowess are more fable than fact. Responding like any man with an ounce of pride would, he picks up the gauntlet she threw down on the ballroom floor. After the death of her mother, Amelia Bertram is further devastated by the withdrawal of her father’s love. To survive the double heartbreak, she walls off her emotions. Now, her social faux pas finds her sharing a roof with the very man who took her place in her father’s affections…the man her father hopes one day to call son. In the seclusion of his country estate, Thomas glimpses in Amelia a vulnerability buried beneath a mountain of jealousy and pain. In turn, she discovers the ton’s ‘golden Greek god’ is more than the sum of rumor and innuendo. Soon a fire ignites between them not even a deluge from the Thames can extinguish. Can they set aside their plans—his for revenge, hers to escape—to forge a love powerful enough to surmount his pride and crumble the walls surrounding her heart? *Reissue. Originally published by Kensington Publishing in 2011




The Other Side of Desire


Book Description

Jacob is a man with an overwhelming attraction to female feet. The Baroness is a clothing designer and evangelical sadist. Roy is a wedding band singer entranced by his step daughter. Ron and Laura are simply in love - only Laura lost both her legs in a car accident, and Ron is beguiled by a beauty many would be blind to. How do we deal with desire? Our own, and the desires of others? How do we comprehend desires that are extreme, or unacceptable? And how do those who have them, live with them? In A Map of Desire Daniel Bergner takes us on a journey into human passion suffered, endured, and celebrated. Desire is a sometimes anarchic, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes destructive, sometimes redeeming, and always powerful force.Immersing himself in it through the people whose lives he follows and the scientists he spends time with who are trying to understand it, slowly he exposes and illuminates layers of our humanity.




Engines of Desire


Book Description

Death and pleasure. Freud's Todestrieb, his statement that "libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous, and it fulfills the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards.... The instinct is then called the destructive instinct, the instinct for mastery, or the will to power." Few authors have spun stories of Thanatos and Eros as skillfully and powerfully as Livia Llewellyn. In his introduction to this volume, Laird Barron writes, "Scant difference exists between exquisite pleasure and pain." An orphan girl with a mind for anthracite falls into the hands of a cult worshipping an entombed god. In the Pacific Northwest, evergreens lull prepubescent girls into their trunks to serve as wombs. A suburban housewife troubled by her present encounters the sixteen-year-old girl she ached to touch in her dreams. These ten stories promise to indulge a reader's sensibilities, fears, and desires. A finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award in two categories: Best Novella and Best Collection!