Sub-titled 'Scenes From England's Last Literary Salon' the book is a Who's Who of the arts in post-war Britain and a rich, luscious account of a charming, kind and generous group of people. In 1945, Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys purchased Long Crichel House, an old Dorset rectory with no electricity and inadequate water supply. In this improbable place, the last English literary salon began. The Visitors' Book attracted such names as Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, Laurie Lee, Cyril Connelly, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Cecil Beaton, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, who were attracted by the good food, generous quantities of drink and excellent conversation. In later years the house and its inhabitants were to weather the aftershocks of the Crichel Down affair, the Wolfenden Report and the AIDS crisis. The book brings a fine balance between nostalgia and commemorates the privileged world long since vanished and the problems caused by having four neurotic personalities intermittently at large under a single roof. The trio were later joined by the literary critic Raymond Mortimer and members became one another's surrogate family and their companionship became a stimulus for writing. Yet there was more to the place than just a 'prose factory' than what critics variously referred to as a group of 'gentleman-aesthetes'. The book unveils a missing link in English literary and cultural history and we relish the details of the central characters who are of course homosexual or bisexual, but there is nothing here to surprise or disturb apart from croquet on the lawn, music and literary debate. 354pp, paperback, photos.

Rich, beautiful, they are back with a vengeance. Ambitious, young, smart and lethal, whatever the Hollywood wives don't have, they want, and whatever these women want, they get. Meet Lissa Roman, mega movie and singing star, her wild daughter Nicci, Michael Scorsinni, the handsome private investigator with an edge, and Taylor Singer, a sometime actress married to a Hollywood mogul. Into their lives comes Eric Vernon, a dangerous psychopath with kidnapping on his mind. A reprint of the 2001 original with all the mix of erotic, salacious gossip, romance and crime we come to expect from Jackie Collins. Expect some crude language. 490pp, paperback.

Unlucky with her job choices and full of bad language, be prepared for a quick read and plenty of bitching, lying, high salary, office romances and sleezy behaviour. Life as the Personal Assistant to some of the most wealthy and powerful men in the country is a poisoned chalice. As the first line of communication between the big boss and the outside world, a PA also becomes the last frontier of secrecy, confidentiality and trust. Given the right boss, an exhilarating working life can blossom but with the wrong boss it can become a living hell. Surely we know that you get more work out of people if they feel respected and valued? Not here! Victoria Knowles's unique inside perspective as a woman fighting to thrive in a vice-filled world dominated by men is revealing, scandalous and a shocking exposé about the men who have everything and still want more. Beware she cries a lot in this sobbing memoir. The high-flying city boss lifestyle has been scrutinised many times in the press with revelations of sexist bullying, elicit affairs and pornography in the office, and here is a furious memoir about Victoria's decade working in the City of London. 296pp, paperback.

Janet is caught between care work and caring for herself. Her life revolves around Sean, a talented fine art student, living and working with cerebral palsy. Both Janet and Sean are new to London and far from their families and both are finding a means of escape through pushing their bodies to the limit. When Sean is faced with an unexpected and deeply personal tragedy, his carer Janet must let her guard down at last and discover what she's prepared to fight for. The whole concept of Sean's art he is able to produce with Janet's help is deeply moving, drawing attention to his body and disability but on his own terms in his own highly original and powerful ways. Shocking and different, this a raw and rather beautiful and unflinching look inside the life of a disabled person and their relationship with their carer, a novel about dignity and intimacy, tenderness and brutality. 259pp, fairly large print.

Opening our eyes to the beauty of all humans, regardless of their born gender, this outsize publication by the famous erotica photographer includes a CD of all the artistic content. The subject is extraordinary, masterfully executed portraits of unknown people willing to be photographed after contact via social media, who all have something to say about their own sexuality. 20 years after the publication Modern Lovers, a body of work on androgyny and transgender, Bettina Rheims now presents Gender Studies and in the light of current controversial debates on gender theory, her models display remarkable courage by questioning, modifying and celebrating their identities. There are women who have had their breasts removed and nipples re-inserted who truly look like men, beautiful women who still have a penis, hair, makeup, tattoos, and the photographer has asked each model to wear torn bandage-style neutral underwear in some cases, but mostly near nudity against a whitened background. Colour, 76 pages, 25.5 x 33.5cm.

Do you ever feel horny and want to see real sex, real guys with real girls? The website bigsister.net features a one-time now closed real brothel in Prague and asks its first-time visitors these questions. A play on Big Brother, many people paid weekly or monthly fees to watch live webcasts and have access to thousands of digital clips. This Internet brothel was a unique concept that combined prostitution with elements of social media. Clients have sex for free after they sign a contract agreeing to be filmed. Since 2007, special swingers and couples' nights were introduced to enliven the mix. Hana Jakrlova, a Czech-born, New York based photographer, began documenting what goes on in front of the cameras and behind the scenes at Big Sister. She quickly became fascinated by the complex mix of sexual, psychological and cultural dynamics she witnessed, as well as the place itself with 58 video cameras dangling from ceilings or hidden under props, and at mattress-level in kitschy theme rooms and the out-of-sight technicians monitoring activities, calling the shots and zooming in and out as needed. Jakrlova's work provides a cool and critical perspective on the 'hot' activity in striking and often remarkably beautiful photographs and of voyeurism at its best. There is kissing and groping and fumbling in front of the busy bar, semi clad women smoking, enjoying the sauna, kissing feet, playing in an ice room or relaxing in a warm bath; two men and a woman chatting naked, the image taken through the transparent side panel. There are more grainy stills from some of the webcams, a brilliant strip tease sequence in tiny polaroid sized colour shots right through to her finger licking and clitoral self-stimulation; the face of a happy client smiling, legs akimbo with just the feet showing, a man clearly on the job looks backwards over his shoulder to a TV screen projecting the activities on the bed beneath; women caress each other on a bed, others are dressed and ready but sitting around looking very bored at the bar; another swings a corset and another still is naked, peering out of the window waiting; high heel boots lie tossed aside like props in the various scenes. In today?s world, virtual reality and various degrees of voyeurism have become an alternative. It is rare to find a photographic erotica book to sell on the bargain market these days and this one has a beautiful dark pink soft velvet cover with silver tooling. 30 x 22cm, text in both English and French, 156pp.

12 Medieval French plays rendered into modern English by the translator of 'The Farce of the Fart', scurrilous, sexy, stupid, satirical, scatological, side splitting.' Enders is unafraid to reference modern comedy in her translations as she assesses these comedies from half a millennium ago. Did you hear about the newlywed who rushes off for legal advice before the honeymoon is over? Or the husbands who arrange for an enormous tub in which to cure their sugary wives with a pinch of salt? How about a participatory processional toward marriage so sacrilegious that it puts Chaucer's pilgrimage to shame? And who could have imagined a medieval series of plays devoted to spouse-swapping? Jody Enders has heard and seen all this and more and shares it in her volume of performance-friendly translations of Medieval French farces. Carefully culled from more than 200 extant plays and crafted with a wit and contemporary sensibility to make them playable today, these dozen bawdy plays take on the hilariously depressing and depressingly hilarious state of holy wedlock. In 15th and 16th century comedy, love and marriage had everything to do with arranged marriages of child brides to doddering old men, frustration, fear, anxiety, jealousy, disappointment and despair matched only by the eagerness with which everybody sings, dances and cavorts in pursuit of deception, trickery and adultery. Easily recognisable stock characters come vividly to life, struggling to negotiate the limits of power, class and gender, each embodying the distinctive blend of wit, social critique and breathless boisterousness that is farce. There are notes on stage directions, grammar and style, music and choreography and brief plot summaries and the 12 plays include The Newlywed Game, The Shithouse, Holy Deadlock, Bitches and Pussycats, Wife Swap and Extreme Husband Makeover among them. There are four to six actors in The Shithouse - Wily Willy, the valet who manages to make out like a bandit assisting in the assignation between his mistress Kitty and her Lover, the dandyish Sir Allcock. Allcock arrives with a picnic but when the Husband arrives home at an inopportune moment, the poor Lover has nowhere to hide but the Latrine. He is forced to shove his head and more into the privy hole, literally shitfaced after an interrupted feast. 536pp.

An intimate of the 1960s fashion scene and Fleet Street, Felicity Green never knew who she might be interviewing next - politicians, film stars, the latest pop stars, fashion designers. She was thrilled to be working for the Daily Mirror and she brought a new and original voice and look to the fashion pages of the newspaper. For the first time in newspaper history, she created fashion pages to appeal to both sexes, and the circulation soared to more than five million copies a day. And with all those magical names, which journalist could fail to shine? There was the inimitable Mary Quant, the sheer style genius of Barbara Hulanicki of BIBA fame, the irresistible Twiggy, Kiki Byrne, Foale and Tuffin, Jean Muir, John Bates and Ossie Clark. Felicity sailed happily through all the excitement and her role expanded. Long before her famous Dear Marje column was born, Marje Proops, columnist and agony aunt, had been beloved of the multimillion readers for six years before Felicity came on board as associate editor. Two powerful women, and together they represented the voice of women for The Mirror and got on famously, enjoying being women in a man's newspaper world under the guidance of the brilliant Editorial Director Hugh Cudlipp. There are fantastic cartoons of Felicity by cartoonist Moira Hodell picturing her from the back, and page after page of newsprint features reproduced in facsimile to take us right back to the 60s. Pictured are Her Majesty the Queen, Jackie Kennedy and Liz Taylor all wearing real leopard skin, full length coats, the rarest and best skins of which was the Somali leopard which could cost up to £3,000. 'Cheaper ones cost much less - a few hundred pounds - but who wants a CHEAP status symbol?' And then there are the most famous photographers of the time and their remarkable, classy pictures - David Bailey, Terry Donovan, John Cowan, Brian Duffy, Lewis Morley, John Adriaan and of course Terry O'Neill creating striking, saucy and stylish images bringing visual excitement to The Mirror pages. Here is all the glamour and style capturing the stellar time when London fashion conquered the world, with discussion on bikinis that let the sun shine through, tights to wear with miniskirts, new shapes in bras, the Paris catwalk fashions, a comparison of corset adverts, trouser suits and some crazy fashion statements. It is all fun, entertaining and informative in a big glamorous glossy 192 page history of beauty and fashion. 24.6 x 30.8cm published by the Antique Collectors Club.
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'The libidinal, erotic and romantic need not come together in one lover. We can fuck without devotion, adore without horniness, gape without love - this has been the stuff of literature and song for millennia.' Yet sex talk is oddly superficial and much of daily life is certainly sexualised, typically while trying to sell us something. In 'The Secret Life of Catherine M'. Catherine remembers the beautiful anonymity of orgies, the free abandonment of herself to men. Similarly, theorist David Halperin describes gay bathhouses as opportunities for sex without elaborate straight courting rites. European philosophers and theologians have been at the forefront of this campaign against carnal joy and have deemed lust ignoble. Plato was writing in the 4th century before Christ and raised without any Christian shame. In his Symposium he portrays flirting with wit and charm and has no qualms about describing an erect penis. The generation after Plato, the early Stoics were not prudish about sex - statesman Seneca called desire a 'secret destruction'. The philosopher and commune leader Epicurus believed that sex was natural but superfluous and that sex was often healthier to relieve lust than not, especially if longing and love led to pain. Here is figurative fucking, achieving oneness, and sexual intercourse while being 'ashamed of being in the body'. For Augustine our genitals are wilful and capricious, and procreation without orgasm is the ideal. In his Paradise, men ejaculate like they might reach for a fruit - calmly, with no shudder. Aristotle rarely discussed sex and sexuality; 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas married Augustine's fear of lust to Aristotle's virtue theory, and idea of a purposeful universe. For Aquinas, we were not made by God ...to wank or suck one another. These are all sins and the only allowable fucking is between a married man and woman to make babies.... In the 15th century, philosopher Marsilio Ficino was clearly in love with the younger Giovanni Cavalcanti, but was wary of 'the filths of the body' as he put it in De Amore. To many, screwing was safer as an intellectual or poetic trope than as an actual part of philosophical life. On sex, the most radical departure from medieval and Renaissance ideas came in the 18th century with philosophers like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. The Marquis de Sade took this brazen materialism and turned it against his era's gentile rationality and the aristocratic aesthete used his position to rape and torture the poor, eventually being jailed then committed for his crimes. He was typical of another powerful man abusing women and another thinker who made sense of sex only by stripping it of everything but pure physicality. Inspired by philosophy, literature and private life, Damon Young explores the paradoxes of the bedroom in a book which more than teases your mind. 278pp.

Sub-titled 'Laying Bare and Learning to Repair Our Love Lives', here is a book to achieve better sex in ten steps by a renowned sex therapist. Think about the last time you had sex. Who initiated it? When and where did it happen? What was off-limits and why? Did you lose yourself in pleasure and connection, or did you come away feeling disappointed or even ashamed? Ian Kerner shows you how to create a sex life that works for you and helps you figure out what's working and what's not, where you might be missing some elements. He also discusses many common sexual problems such as low desire, issues with climaxing, and erectile unpredictability - and how to resolve them. He begins with desire and the call to sexual action, touch, psychological stimulation side by side and face to face, exploring erotic themes, expressing your inner kinks, deep arousal for male and female, that orgasm is a journey not a destination, entering a state of revery and getting your glow on. Create sex scripts that confirm meaning or might delay ejaculation, and he touches on porn, trauma and pain and gender dysphoria. For adults of all sexual persuasions, this is a very popular psychologist, and the sensitivity with which he writes about such personal and potentially embarrassing situations is extraordinary. For example Ella, who still had a penis and as a trans woman was taking medication which made her need to pee a lot and how her newish girlfriend Gemma suggested she wears an adult diaper, and how eventually Gemma was able to give Ella pleasure and move in a more sexual direction below the waist. There are fantastic sentences such as 'Think of G-spot stimulation as adding some serious bass to the treble of clitoral stimulation.' And 'Speaking of vibrators, we're living in a Golden Age of sex toys' (now better designed and produced). 354pp, large softback.