Sex Noir: Stories of Sex, Death, and Loss

These touching, well-formed stories are a rare combination of the erotic and the tragic that have the satisfying complexity of the literary without spilling over into melodrama. With so much erotica based on pure fantasy, it is refreshing and almost startling to see some that has its wellspring in real-life tragedy, making it a powerful form of fiction. My obsession with sex and death began as a child, after viewing Franco Zefferelli's Romeo & Juliet. I have never let it go. As an adult, I discovered there is no ache, no intensity, quite so exquisite as the pain associated with longing: the yearning for that which has been lost, for those who we lust after.