Six red-hot reads!

A summer of steamy reading

Opinionated, feisty, funny - GH's Hay Festival debate about erotica was a fascinting chat about why books like Fifty Shades have sold so well. Some of the areas our three panellists Nikki Gemmell, Jojo Moyes and Brooke Magnanti (aka Belle De Jour), chaired by Linda Kelsey, touched on were the difference between porn and erotica, how the sexualisation of society affects teenagers and how the genre has changed in recent years. Listen to the GH debate about erotica now.

We've asked some of our best-loved authors - and contributors to the GH Love and Passion e-book collection - to share their favourite saucy reads...

Nikki Gemmell, author of The Bride Stripped Bare and I Take You

’Marguerite Duras's The Lover is a slim little novel that rings with truth and utterly beautiful prose. She plays with form, as a writer, which is always exciting to read. Duras's rigorous intelligence and fascinating coldness – her watchfulness – shines through every page. I have re-read the book many times and use it as a tuning fork for my own writing, in terms of a ruthless honesty that connects viscerally with the reader. The last lines are devastating.’

Sarah Challis, author of The Lonely Desert

‘Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, published in 1973, was ground-breaking at the time and hugely enjoyable. It has a wonderful protagonist, is clever and wise and sexually extremely frank, but is also hilariously funny. It's one of my all-time favourite books.’

Anna Maxted, author and editor

‘I am very fond of Mills & Boons. I was happily swept away as a teenager by their (fairly restrained) stories of rugged cowboys and willowy heroines. The more recent novels tend to be steamier. Give me a handsome, masterful Italian billionaire like the hero of Diana Hamilton's The Italian's Price and I'm happy. I don't require much!’

Isla Dewar, author of Winter Bride and Keeping Up With Magda

‘Shirley Conran’s Lace was written in the days before we had definitions like chick-lit and bonkbuster. It's a tome (700 pages) but it’s fun and funny, deals with female friendships and tackles issues like juggling career and children. In fact, the first sex doesn’t appear till page 200. You have to wait another 200 pages before anyone gets spanked. The characters are privileged, lead glamorous lives and that’s part of the pleasure of reading the book. It follows the fortunes of Judy, Maxine, Kate and Pagan (my favourite) who met at boarding school and go on to become a war correspondent, fashion designer, interior designer and a PR. It’s a raunchy, lusty page-turner. I’ve read the author delighted at the fuss it caused and knew that every time a schoolgirl was forbidden to read it, it meant one more sale for her. Who could resist a book that has the line, "Which of you bitches is my mother?" And, of course, the infamous goldfish scene? It was written thirty years ago and republished by Cannongate last year.’

Nikki Gemmell, author of The Bride Stripped Bare and I Take You

‘It's hard not to have a visceral response to The Story of O by Pauline Reage. Its boldness, its audacity. You read it with your stomach, your gut; breathless almost. I salute its power and freshness, still, after all these years. Despite all the erotic tomes that have followed it, it retains its potency.’

Amanda Craig, author of A Private Place

‘I don't enjoy most erotic fiction usually because often it isn't erotic and always degenerates into sadism/orgies. I find cruelty and coercion totally repugnant. The exception is John Cleland's Fanny Hill, the first and best "memoir" of an 18th century prostitute which is funny, touching and captures the shameless joyousness of true eroticism. It's a bit like Jane Austen on Viagra, and if no more believable does suggest the underside of Georgian society.’

Good Housekeeping has just launched the Love and Passion collection with stories from Elizabeth Buchan, Sarah Challis, Amanda Craig, Isla Dewar and Anna Maxted - get ready for a summer of racy reading!