100 books like Indian Sex Life

A Marsh Island was nineteenth-century New England writer Sarah Orne Jewett’s favorite novel among her many books, but it has had less acclaim than The Country of Pointed Firs.

A Marsh Island is the story of Dick Dale, who is on vacation from New York City in the Sussex, Massachusetts area (in real life, Essex County). When Dale stays with the rural Owen family following an injury, he develops an interest in the family’s daughter Doris and feels a kinship to her brother Israel Jr., who died in the Civil War.

Don James McLaughlin introduces Jewett as one half of the best-known “Boston marriage” with Annie Adams Fields and reflects on this novel’s themes of queer hiddenness and visibility in post–Civil War New England.

A small number of Scots at the end of the Victorian era and throughout the Edwardian era were eager to live in a world ungoverned by Protestant Christianity and unrestricted by its strict sexual morality.

Cheadle introduces readers to socialists, freethinkers, and writers in Glasgow and Edinburgh who advocated for sexual freedoms grounded in new forms of political, religious, and cultural thought. One example is Jane Hume Clapperton, who was deeply involved in the suffrage movement, described birth control methods in her 1888 novel Margaret Dunmore, and demanded full sexual freedom for women. 

Sexual Progressives brings them to life, showing how they questioned dominant morality and envisioned a way of life in which people could prioritize sexual freedom and pleasure. You won’t forget them.

Interest in the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sexual Science (active 1919–1933 in Berlin) has grown since the television program Transparent included him in its second season in 2015.

Laurie Marhoefer’s new book challenges his status as a queer history hero, highlighting how his views on sexual emancipation, cross-dressing (as drag was then known), and transgenderism were embedded in racism and colonialism. Marhoefer also tells the lesser-known history of Hirschfeld’s companion in later life, Li Shiu Tong, who after Hirschfeld’s death in May 1935 continued his own research on human sexuality. 

Li’s previously unknown manuscript and notes—rescued serendipitously from a waste bin soon after his death in Vancouver in 1993—is a stark reminder of how many histories of sexuality are at risk of being (almost) similarly lost.

While many books on LGBTQ+ history focus on public activism, Vider turns attention to how queer people in the post-World War II era formed homes, partnerships, and community.

For example, groups like the AIDS Action Committee in Boston in the 1980s formed buddy programs for people living with AIDS and volunteer caregivers. Caregivers could live with their buddies or visit them, providing practical assistance as well as companionship, connectedness, and a sense of belonging. 

The Queerness of Home looks at the quieter but no less political and impactful side of queer life from the late 1940s through the 1980s, showing how a sense of place and connection helped queer people feel grounded and safe in a culture in which it was not always possible to live their full truth in public.

Neil Strauss is a master storyteller and his book, The Truth, is a captivating follow-up to his controversial best-seller, The Game. In this candid memoir, Strauss takes readers on an emotional journey as he attempts to answer the question of whether monogamy is really for him.

The book begins with Strauss in rehab for sex addiction, a result of the success of his previous book and the world it threw him into. From there, he embarks on a relationship odyssey that leads him into all kinds of experiences from tantra cults to swinger’s clubs and beyond. His humorous and honest writing style had me laughing out loud at times as I read it at the airport and I deeply admire his vulnerability in bearing all.

The Truth is a fun and insightful exploration into relationships and commitment that will leave readers questioning their own beliefs about love and monogamy.… show more.

The book is a nice combination between being a popular book and still including a lot of interesting, valid scientific data, which make us reconsider what we think we knew about the evolution of human sexuality, and our own daily lives.

Some reviews have suggested it is mostly a popular, superficial book, but actually, it does include very detailed studies, both ethnographic - about humans living in various types of societies - and anthropological - including about the lifestyle of chimpanzees and bonobos. As a first read on the evolution of human sexuality, I do think it is a good start.

Part manifesto, part archive of a fascinating and alluring sub-culture, Geoff Mains's book explores the possibilities of extreme encounters through pain/pleasure, BDSM, and role play in the leather community.

It’s not sensationalist although it examines ideas around sensation. It celebrates performance whilst honoring intimacy. It’s a book that would offer a reader of every sexuality an insight into some of their own fantasies and how to access them safely, and meaningfully.

I read it like I would read an exhaustive and tempting menu – picking out items I might like to taste myself and learning a great deal in the process. 

Esther Perel's exploration of the intricate dance between intimacy and desire resonates with many couples who are in long-term relationships, want it to work so desperately, and yet find themselves stuck. This book builds on the concepts of differentiation and attachment styles while inviting readers to embrace a new paradigm of eroticism within committed relationships.

What resonates deeply is Perel's grounded yet unflinching approach to addressing taboo topics and dismantling societal norms. Through her eloquent prose and compelling case studies, she illuminates the path to unlocking erotic intelligence and reigniting passion in long-term partnerships.

I absolutely love this book. The message within about finding yourself, despite all that is going on around you, or your current circumstances really resonates with me. Where you start doesn’t have to be where you finish. It’s a book that I could read repeatedly.

This novel is like my novel in the fact that her characters also overcome many obstacles to find their way in life. They had to learn to be strong in the face of adversity. If you are someone who likes a book that shows you women finding their way amid chaos it’s a must read.

This is quite possibly the funniest book I have ever read. I recommend it for that reason. It will have you laughing out loud. Brooks gives Chaucer’s larger-than-life, serial monogamist an opportunity to tell her side of the story. And fair enough! Created by Geoffrey Chaucer for The Canterbury Tales in 1392, the Wife of Bath is literature’s first feminist hero. The outspoken and exuberant Alyson (the wife’s real name) suffers immeasurably—physically, emotionally, and financially—at the hands of the men she chooses to marry, yet she never loses her self-respect and humour. Likewise, she is never broken, despite her husbands' best efforts to tame her.