Best sex books for advice and inspiration

Groundbreaking erotica anthology Anonymous Sex, edited by Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan brings together 27 acclaimed authors for an unforgettable collection of literary erotica, including tales of a married woman who has a BDSM experience at a work conference, a young widow who has a whirlwind encounter on a train, and a re-writing of Rapunzel. You can read an excerpt from the collection here.

We love Ruby Rare, the sex expert who is on a mission to get people talking more confidently and inclusively about sex, drawing on her experiences as a queer, non-monogamous woman. The sex ed you didn't get in school, her book Sex Ed: A Guide for Adults can help you communicate what you want in bed as well as giving practical tips for everything from blow jobs and cunnilingus to kegels and kissing.

Written on the Body by lesbian novelist Jeanette Winterson is as racy as they come, exploring an unnamed and ungendered first-person narrator and their all-consuming passion for a married woman. With its obsession with the body, it's erotic af.

A huge part of the sex positive movement is advocating for people who work in the sex and adult entertainment industries and listening to their stories. Wanting You to Want Me is a collection of anonymous first-hand accounts from women working in strip clubs in London: from conversations behind the scenes to interactions with clients.

Writer and illustrator Flo Perry's book How to Have Feminist Sex unpacks internalised shame and body image struggles, exploring everything from consent and kink to the construct of virginity - Perry argues that "losing your virginity" isn't so different to eating your first chocolate croissant. Intrigued? You should read it.

This one's a bit less sexy and a bit more cerebral, but bear with us. This book by Amia Srinivasan aims to evolve discussions of sex into the political realm and explore the role that ethics has to play across phenomena like pornography, sexual preference and more.

This novel, written by journalist, activist and sex worker Frankie Miren, unfolds in an imaginary future where a change to laws around sex work lead to large-scale brothel raids and puts more and more sex workers in danger. The story is told through the eyes of three women - two of whom work in the sex industry and one of whom is a staunchly anti-sex work journalist - and examines a range of different experiences and perspectives in a wider look at power dynamics, gender and capitalism.

Has your sex life been going stale? Try Bliss Club on for size. This guide from Jüne Plā encourages you to through out the preconceived scripts of sexuality and let your body and desire guide you to a new way of loving and living in your skin. From an explainer on pleasure zones to plenty of sex tips, it's a winner.

Another work exploring sex worker's rights, Revolting Prostitutes is a must-read which places sex work within the labour rights movement and debunks common media stereotypes and popular misconceptions about the industry while outlining future political measures to make sex work safer for all involved.

Edited by Lucy-Anne Holmes, this book brings together 51 first-person testimonies by 51 women from around the globe, from all ages and from all walks of life, about what they really think about when they're having sex. At moments tender and at others tongue-in-cheek, these revealing accounts have been paired with stunning illustrations.

If you're into erotica (who isn't?) then this will certainly beat your Wattpad deep-dives. Writing sexual tales for an anonymous collector when she was cash-strapped in the 1940s, Cuban writer Anaïs Nin was one of the first women to make their mark within the world of erotica. Known for the literary quality of her tales and the female perspective from which they're told, Delta of Venus is one of her most famous collections.

Kink is an anthology of literary short stories involving BDSM and fetish from well-known and critically-acclaimed authors like Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, Chris Kraus and Carmen Maria Machado. It's saucy, but it's also classy.

This isn't just a guide to sex, it's an exhaustive guide to pleasure activism: a way of life that seeks out the fullest of human fulfilment and seeks to make social justice a pleasurable experience. While this book has a clear political slant, it also has chapters on sexuality: from non-monogamy to the erotic, healing from sexual trauma and queer sex.