So begins this mesmerizing tale by a gifted young writer: Su Orwell. Her unique style, laced with edgy humor, makes ESCAPE ARTISTS a memorable work of contemporary erotic fiction. It is the story of a married woman, Susann, who encounters the charismatic Arjan online. What begins as an internet flirtation soon evolves into an unusual affair — a fantasy escape becomes a reality of intense pleasure, taking Susann far from her suburban comfort zone.
Su Orwell’s debut novel, Edge of Sundown, was published by Darkstroke Books in 2020. Her short prose and essays have appeared in Write City Magazine, Writing Disorder, Raconteur, and The New Urge Reader 4, among others. She lives in Chicago.
Did the notorious author of Justine and The 120 Days of Sodom have a sense of humor?
Indeed he did, and this short story shows a side of the author few have seen. Here is a witty, libertine tale, free of flagellation and sexual perversion. Instead, it reveals a husband’s adultery and a wife’s clever “retaliation.”
This is a decidedly feminist text and it punctures the double standard still infecting relations between men and women.
“Now if you are bold enough to get one I’m sure it will afford a considerable amount of excitement and pleasure, and cannot have any danger; and whoever obtains it can, after trying it, tell the others how she likes it; and as it can be mutually used it may afford all of us pleasure. I confess I should have got one before now if I had known how to go about it. So girls, who’ll bell the cat?”
The latest title in the Pocket Erotica series has been adapted by Lawrence Hamilton from a Victorian underground novel. A Good Girl’s Home Companion recounts the adventures of three inquisitive young women who discover the joys of friendship and sharing.
We’re pleased to present the 14th title in our Pocket Erotica series — a must-have edition for fans of Oulipo and innovative literature.
Oulipo’s interactive concept of “tree literature” was first implemented by Raymond Queneau in his short story “Un conte à votre façon” (A Story as You Like It). In this wickedly clever (and very funny) variation, Kim Vodicka follows in Queneau’s hallowed footsteps with a do-it-yourself text that’s guaranteed to satisfy all-comers.
In A Dirty Story as You Like It, the reader chooses from multiple plots, navigates the course to a satisfying climax, or changes direction whenever the urge strikes. Do all roads lead to ecstasy? Who knows, who cares, because getting there is half the fun.
Kim Vodicka is the spokesbitch of a degeneration, “a softer-spoken, more genteel Lydia Lunch,” according to The Houston Press. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections—most recently, The Elvis Machine (CLASH Books, 2020) and Dear Ted (Really Serious Literature, forthcoming 2022). She is also the author of several chapbooks, including a poetic comic book, a 7” vinyl EP of sound poems, and a book of poetry illustrated by various artists local to Memphis. Additionally, she is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recipient of artist grants from PEN America, Poets & Writers, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Authors League Fund. Her poems, prose, and visual art have been featured in The Thought Erotic, The New Urge Reader 4, SPREAD, Harbinger Asylum, Forbidden Futures, Best American Experimental Writing, and many others. For the past decade, she has toured the nation performing spoken word with rock’n’roll accompaniment in venues both illustrious and disreputable, including the legendary Sun Studio. Originally from South Louisiana, she lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her beloved cat, Lula.
This fourth volume in our sizzling international anthology series makes delicious bedside reading. Featuring 17 gifted writers whose intimate stories excite, unsettle, amuse and transport. Here is innovative feminist fiction that explores the boundaries of female sexuality in all its myriad forms.
THE NEW URGE READER 4includes fiction byJeanette Bradley, Karina Bush, Debra Di Blasi, Dana Duren, Eurydice, Petra Anne Hawk, Elna Holst, E. E. King, Amy Kurman, Hélène Lavelle, Lilianne Milgrom, Grace Murray, Su Orwell, Giorgia Pavlidou, Marina Rubin, Kim Vodicka, andE. H. Warrington.
THE NEW URGE READER 4 Erotic Fiction by New Women Writers Edited by Grace Murray New Urge / Black Scat Books Paperback, 131 pp., $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-7356159-5-0
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“…These stories run the gamut, they are confessional, confided, whispered, shouted, and sung. Some are delightful, some disruptive and some disturbing, yet they are connected not for the simple fact that they excite our sexuality, but in the way that they address so many of our senses. Psychologically and physically, we are moved by sex in multitudinous ways, and these tales will engage the heart, body, and mind by the same breathtaking and heartrending measure.” —from the introduction by Grace Murray
“…In Behn’s novels, women too can embrace the previously masculinized pleasures of power. In The Fair Jilt, the heroine Miranda pursues the most extreme forms of libertinism as she seduces a series of men, twice attempts to have murdered the sister who inconveniently limits her financial power, and demonstrates the conflation of sexual and religious subversion typical of both French and English Restoration libertinism as she tries to rape a priest.” —Tiffany Potter, Genre and Cultural Disruption: Libertinism and the Early English Novel
Aphra Behn (1640 – 1689) was an English playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer from the Restoration era. The Fair Jilt is the first English novel ever written by a woman. A trailblazer, Behn broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. This edition is a must-have literary classic.
The Fair Jilt: The Amours of Prince Tarquin & Miranda Aphra Behn New Urge Editions paper; 100 pp., $12.95 ISBN: 979-8565118872
It’s back to school with #7 in our Pocket Erotica series…another extended excerpt (over 170 pages!) from Nicolas Chorier‘s libertine novel, L’Academie des dames, translated from the French by Amandine Lévêque. This sublime edition includes the continuing dialogue between Tullie and her innocent cousin, Octavie, whom she has been charged with initiating into the world of sexual pleasure. It seems Octavie has more to learn about the Facts of Life, and Tullie is a most inspiring teacher. “Think about this, my dear Octavie: that if you want to live happily & content in the state of marriage, as you currently do, you must believe that there is nothing that is not permitted, & that all things are forbidden.”
Further Studies: The School of Women Nicolas Chorier Translated from the French by Amandine Lévêque Pocket Erotica[№ 7 ]; $12 ISBN: 978-1-7356159-7-4 SOLD OUT
“This modern classic deserves to be ranked alongside the great French erotic masterpieces,Story of OandThe Image, and very few others. Not for the faint-hearted or the narrow-minded, this story of love, excess, degradation, cruelty, tenderness and beauty is for all women whose fantasies and desires embrace the intensely erotic.” —Dawn Avril Fitzroy
In the tradition of Decadent literature, spiced with Gothic, this provocative contemporary novel takes the reader on a voyage through dream, reverie, fantasy, memory and imagination – recounting the raptures and tortures in the initiation of a young woman, Gabrielle, by the Vicomtesse, the Comte and their entourage in The Domain.
THE RITES OF ECSTASY
Hélène Lavelle
Translated from the French by Valéry Soers
New Urge Editions
Trade paperback original; 240 pp., $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-7356159-0-5
P R I A P E I A Upstanding Epigrams on Priapus
Selected by Lawrence Hamilton
Notes by Sir Richard Burton
Translated by Leonard C. Smithers
Pocket Erotica[№ 4 ]
ISBN 13978-1-7348166-9-3
70 pages; Illustrated; perfect bound; 4 x 6 inches; $10
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