With the breeders still gaga for Fifty Shades of Grey, we thought it was time for someone to highlight good erotica for queer folks.
Little did we know managing to come up with a list of books that not only read well, but aroused passions, and maybe even expanded your mind, was so, well, hard.
But we think we’ve found som titles that’ll make your summer scorching in a whole new way.
Got a favorite dirty summer read? Share it in the comments!
Click through for some sexy summer reads!
Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War
Jeff Mann
Bear Bones Books
What It’s About: Don’t call it bearotica, although Mann has certainly contributed to a growing sub-genre devoted to burly men with his beautifully crafted and sensual stories set in rural Appalachia. (Check out his History of Barbed Wire collection and the upcoming Desire & Devour: Stories of Blood & Sweat for more). Purgatory is historical fiction, focusing on a bloody Civil War battle in Virginia’s Shenadoah Valley. Did we mention it’s seen through the eyes of a young man discovering the joys of BDSM through torturous military training?
Just a Taste: “His thighs stiffen, his hands grip the back of my head, he heaves against my face, and my mouth floods with the milk of him, surge after surge I gulp down…”
Every Time I Think of You
Jim Provenzano
CreateSpace Independent Publishing
What It’s About: This a story of first love and self-discovery set in 1979 suburbia was a 2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist, and some may think it’s more romance than erotica. But it starts off with a hot-and-heavy sex scene in the woods and just builds from there.
Just a Taste: “Our prolonged wet kiss didn’t end until he’d clutched both our dicks to near completion. In a moment of inspiration, he tugged me by my erection closer to the tree, where we both spewed onto its trunk.”
History’s Passions: Sex Before Stonewall
Edited by Richard Labonte
Bold Stroke Books
What It’s About: Four authors re-imagine the past, when “gay” wasn’t an identity but men often found comfort in each others arms. In “Heaven on Earth,” Simon Sheppard delivers a vignette about young lovers on a murderous crime spree in the 1930s, while Dale Chase’s “Tender Mercies” sees a failed prospector sell his ass for nuggets.
Just a Taste: “My only stipulation: set your stories in the days before Stonewall. For Simon, that was Depression-era America and sex on the run; for Jeff, the Civil War, where soldiers were more than bunkmates; for Dale, California’s old-timey Gold Rush, where desperate fortune-seekers found release with the camp “boy”; and for David, the very queer era of Sodom and Gomorrah—four worlds the authors never lived in, but which they researched with diligence.
The result? Lots and lots of sex, to be sure, supplemented with an authenticity of settings that reminds us that queers are everywhere—and have been ‘everywhen.'” —From the introduction by Richard Labonte
The Healing & the Dying
L.A. Witt
Samhain Publishing
What It’s About? Tired of Twilight teasing you with its hetero love triangle? This is the second installment of a queer vampire-werewolf fantasy series written in a similar vein (sorry). That means that, though the boys will do stuff Edward and Bella only dreamed of, there’ll be a lot of protracted romance and drama before anyone gets down to fucking.
Fun trivia: L.A. Witt is a pen name the writer uses for gay smut—for bisexual/lesbian erotica, it’s “Lauren Gallagher.” (In reality, the author is a married lady who lives on a military base in the South Pacific.)
Just a Taste: “I fought my pack and my clan for the right to bond with Ian instead of Selena, and now what? Ian and I were no longer bonded. Ian was no longer human.” 
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica
Edited by Tristan Taormino
Cleis Press
What It’s About? This is erotica by, for, and about FTMs, MTFs, genderqueers, two-spirits, the intersexed and gender-variant people. Forget about passing—this is about embracing differences in a sexual context. Contributors include Pat Califia,Kate Bornstein, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Andrea Zanin, who gives us “The Perfect Gentleman,” a story of a baby butch dyke and the trans woman she picks up in a small town.
Just a Taste: “There was something about the way she touched me that made it clear she was touching the body I felt I had rather than the one I actually had. Oh, my god, her hands felt so good.” —from “The Perfect Gentleman”
City of Night
John Rechy
Grove Press
What It’s About? Published in 1963, this groundbreaking book changed the way many gay men thought of literature, allowing for generations to explore their lives in authentic ways. Sometimes called the rent boy’s On the Road, Night explored an urban underworld of drag queens and hustlers—from New York City to New Orleans and beyond. Not altogether anthropological, it does offer a glimpse into a world that feels long gone.
Just a Taste: The book served as an inspiration for Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, where the line “Once you stop going for money, you start growing wings” was directly lifted from Night
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dee-dee
“Breeders” Really? How childish & bitchy.
crash_sublime
Glad to see they recommended City Of Night…great book…also check out Rushes by
John Rechy … and somebody nobody seems to remember now, Gordon Merrick, he wrote
lots of “trash” novels that were pretty damn good .. and if you’ve never read Gaywyck
you need to 🙂
Ron
You don’t need a whole book for arousal, just an archive. the Nifty.org archive, to be exact 🙂
DuckSoup
Call me a nitpicker, but every cover except for “Take Me There” and “City of Night” was terrible.
Elliott Mackle
Yeah, Nifty is great. Check out Solo Touch as well.
Jonny
I, guiltily, read City of Night when I was 16. I was so terrified to be caught with the book I never checked it out from the library and would spend two hours a day, over the course of a week or two, reading in a darkish corner. It completely changed me.
I would highly recommend the book to anyone who has any interest in queer literature. There are harrowing vignettes, liberating characters, and life running throughout every thread. Not to be missed!
Jozef
Hot Head by Damon Suede is great.
Perry Brass
Dear Mike, thanks for this. As a “famous gay author” with all my other queer-writer brother and sisters, I’m happy that Queerty gives some service (lip or otherwise) to something other than Lady GaGa or the latest Christian fundamentalist’s son who gets caught with his pants around his ankles and his legs in the air. I am also happy that my friend Jim Provanzano was included in this list—Jim’s a wonder, and publishs his books under a micropress that does not get as much attention as he deserves. On my list: almost anything my Samuel Delany: Delany is so hot that he curls the pages of a book, that is, if you’re reading him on paper. And of course, being a self-effacing writer, I’d include my latest novel “King of Angels,” which does for 12-year-old boys what Mathew Mitcham does for water. Perry Brass, author of “King of Angels, A Novel About the Genesis of Identity and Belief.”
Ian
At swim two boys is a great read.
So Yo
“Call Me By Your Name” by Andre Aciman. In addition to a few steamy scenes, it is truly a touching and well written book.
Ealan14
The Anthology series “Flesh and The Word”, (especially Volume 1). is a masterpiece of gay erotica. Also, theres a book called “hard”. its all short stories by a single author (can’t remember his name), but it is soooo good!!
Luke
City of Night is VERY dated, boring, and not that erotic at all unless you find a male prostitute being on the receptive end of lots of blowjos and sometimes giving anal sex and vaginal sex to be hot. Like others have posted I’ve read hotter erotica on nifty and other sites.
Jeff Mann’s “erotica” if you want to call it that is very boring and not that exciting at all. His writing is not realistic at all and I have read better erotic fiction online. His essays are full of narcissism and I can see why he has no bisexual or gay male friends at all as he wrote in one of them.
I also think that queerty’s use of the heterophobic term Breeders is silly, and pointless. Heterophobia is just as bad as homophobia and biphobia are. Also many LGBT people have kids now or have in the past so the term is pointless.
Tristan Taramino is bisexual but you didn’t mention this.
Rick
The erotica by Richard Labonte that’s supposedly before Stonewall is pointless since it’s not like Labonte or any of the authors in that book were actually around or active before Stonewall.
I found Rechy’s City of Night to be tedious, very boring, and not erotic at all but I thought that his book “Numbers” had some hot parts in it; but I don’t like how Rechy is highly against consensual BDSM.
mattsy
Im half-way thru my 1st gay erotic novel called 20 something, which is about 20 one night stands Ive had and its pretty graphic. Its a 50 Shades of Gay. Would you read it when it comes out?
Rick
Mattsy-No I would not. The whole tricking/1 night stand genre is boring, it’s been written about before, and a lot of gay and bisexual men have had them and if we want a one night stand we’ll just go hook up and not read about someone else doing it.
Mal Tempo
there actually is a book called 50 Shades of Gay about park cruisers.
karashi
James Lear’s books have just enough plot to make the erotica super hot. They’re widely available in bookstores (though the covers are pretty explicit).
jaded
@Ron:
The Nifty Archive has some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen…but what I will say is, name your kink and you can find it at the Nifty Archive….
abc
what about another country by james baldwin or the line of beauty by allan hollinghurst? the swimming pool library is also a classic of british gay literature.
the other Greg
City of Night was so boring it turned off any curiosity I ever had about hustlers, which I guess was a good thing.
Steven McCarthy
Best gay novel of the past 20 years “How Long Has This Been Going On” by Ethan Morton.
Steve Berman
@Luke:
Luke, you’re obviously not savvy enough to realize or know that Mann’s erotica has been rewarded with a Lammy award — so the gay literate community considers his work worthwhile. Perhaps you are not as literate as you profess?
And his essays are personal ones. I think your claims suggest a vitriol caused by envy. Unless you have sold as many books as Mann, your opinion is about as important to other readers as a horsefly’s buzzing. Annoying and easily disounted as something that will die next season. Whereas Mann’s work will continued to be excerpted in literary journals for many years to come.
Oh, and Mann has many friends. Real friends. I recommend you step out into the light and make a few of your own.
Elliott Mackle
Second the recommendation of “Call Me By Your Name.”
Mark Jenkins
You’ve mentioned my favorites- Gordon Merrick’s Peter and Charlie trilogy- The Lord Won’t Mind, One For the Gods and Forth Into Light- must reads for anyone looking for a smutty love story.And Romantic Gay Fiction, too. Would like to see the first made into a movie some day.
Mark Jenkins
I also love everything written by James Lear, as well- His take-offs on the various novel genres are well written enough to be good fiction, and the erotica is hot!
mikeyfucswell
found a very hot book on amazon and itunes. it’s called “my journey from top to bottom” — it’s about a 25yo virgin trying something new for 40 days. it’s even got a load tally at the back to keep track of how many times you shoot as you read the sex scenes. def worth checking out!
serggoo
No apto para moralistas es una excelente novela!…….
consilyerin
i think best book best gay erotica by paul russel.it includes more erotica
Check this out! my website: http://gaymuz.com