BROWN SUGAR 3: When Opposites Attract—A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction

The third volume in Taylor's successful series of African-American erotica gathers 18 tales highlighting a lusty variety of sexual scenes and appetites, but focuses on titillating liaisons between socially mismatched partners. Third-time contributor Preston L. Allen offers the disturbing "Who I Chose to Love," about the vengeful seduction of a virtuous evangelist by a teenage hoodlum's damaged girlfriend. Husband-and-wife team Denene Miller and Nick Chiles choose a subway platform as the setting for a fetishy tryst between a professional woman and a beggar violinist in "Play It Again," while Michael Datcher pairs a staid librarian and a teenage jock with a bum heart in "Happiest Butterfly in the World." A public prosecutor and a gangster make an unlikely but passionate pair in Sharrif Simmon's edgy "Love and the Game," and the spirit of a comatose teenage boy discovers Eros with the help of a flesh-and-blood older woman in Leone Ross's haunting "The Contract." The sex is hot, and it's not just het: newlyweds grapple with the husband's bisexuality in Patricia Elam's "Scenes from a Marriage," while a gay artist and his new accountant indulge in fantasies in John Keene's "Sums." Refreshingly honest, unflinchingly explorative, wildly erotic and sometimes just dirty, this energetic anthology should find its way to plenty of bedside tables. (Jan.)