100 books like The Fires of Lust

Reading this book is like listening to your incredibly knowledgeable historian friend talk about medieval society over drinks. Janega’s turns of phrase and sharp observations make me laugh, and at the same time, I feel my mind soak up knowledge like a sponge.

This book is about what medieval people thought and why, going back to the philosophies and influences of ancient Greece and Rome. It tackles medieval beauty standards, sexual practices, family life, and work life. It addresses fart jokes and eyeliner, as well as ideas about biology and class disparities. We see women farming, ruling, weaving, brewing, and writing.

Janega argues that it is through seeing the past truly that we can "imagine new futures," making the necessary changes for "a more equitable world."

Published by Oxford University Press, Common Women is an academic rather than a popular history of medieval English prostitution, and its author is an expert in medieval sexuality.

I adore the wealth of historical detail founded on original research that Karras presents. It’s a goldmine of inspiration for those of us who write fiction set in medieval England. Where else can you learn about the cross-dressing prostitute John Rykener, the Bishop of Winchester’s brothel empire in Southwark, or discover names like Clarice Clatterballock?

Wine of Violence is Book One in a medieval mystery series set in an English convent.

No, this is not a salacious romp about monks and nuns getting saucy behind monastery walls. However, sexuality does play a major role in the characters’ thoughts and actions, and in a very believable and relatable way.

The young prioress-sleuth battles against her lust for a handsome priest, who in turn was forced into the priesthood for making love to another man. Oh, and the aged murder victim (also a monk) was found with his severed penis in his hand.

A well-researched mystery, and one of the few medieval-set novels I’ve come across to offer a sympathetic depiction of same-sex love.

A medieval murder mystery set in a brothel! Prostitution was one of the few ways in which a woman might earn an independent living in the Middle Ages.

Not that I’m recommending it as a career choice, mind you. Roberta Gellis has created quite the unusual whorehouse under her unfortunately beautiful Madam, Magdalene. Her employees include a blind woman, a mute Saracen, a woman of childlike intelligence, and the brothel’s cook too is deaf. Magdalene herself was accused of murder and has to live in disguise.

This is a wonderfully well-researched historical mystery that illuminates the circumstances that might force a medieval woman into prostitution. 

I was taken down a rabbit hole, exploring other aspects of 19th and 20th-century Irish and British gay culture.

This very comprehensive biography of Ireland’s leading playwright whose many amusing quotes are now part of everyday language deals predominantly with his sexuality, going into considerable detail in parts. Wilde was, as per his name, pretty wild!

His life was a true roller-coaster, from the height of his fame with many books, poetry, and stage productions making him a household name worldwide. Yet he was a troubled soul and the author of the biography has researched his subject intensively and has delivered possibly the ultimate work about this notable gay icon.

Michel Foucault had a variety of interests and wrote about many different topics – ecology and limits to growth were definitely not among them. I have found this book super useful though in thinking about what I call self-limitation, the processes through which individuals and collectives voluntarily craft the limits of their action and their power. Foucault’s book analyses how ancient Greeks perceived sexuality, and how they managed their bodies and desires. For the Greeks mastery over one’s wants was seen as key to personal freedom and development. Sexual freedom was part and parcel of the self-regulation of sexual desire. I can´t say I understand everything Foucault writes, but this is definitely one of his clearest books, with a more American style short prose than his previous labyrythical French writing. Reading about a civilization that was so similar, but also so different from ours, and how it regulated without suppressing… show more.

Clement explores the working class environment that produced what we think of as “normal” relations between young men and women.

The commonly used term at the time, “treating,” has disappeared. But in the early 20th century this practice, which shared some features with prostitution, turned a search for fun, gendered scripts, and wage discrepancies between men and women into the general model of what would become the classic practice of dating.

I originally read this book in my late teens, but I never forgot how much it taught me not just about flappers, but how history can leap off the page. I even cited this book as an influence in my book proposal for Glitter and Concrete.

Flappers were such a vibrant group of women, and Zeitz does them justice bringing them to life. I wanted the drag artists in my book to do the same. 

This is the Granddaddy of earthshattering, perspective-changing books: philosopher Michel Foucault’s nimble dissection of the rise and the role of sexuality in the Western world. Written, and surely meant to be read, more like a Homeric epic poem than an academic treatise, every single sentence in this book quivers with energy and perception. From pithy aphorisms like “The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species”, to heady pronouncements such as ‘”Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective”, this book is a gift that perpetually keeps on giving. Guaranteed to blow your mind.

We often assume that the Romans were in love with love but, actually, they could be very divided over it. Love, for some, was not only destructive, it was practically criminal. The author of this academic book looks at the ethics of love and sex in Rome and considers the surprising appeal of ‘sexual virtue’, abstention, and chastity in ancient society.