BDSM books, a reading list
BDSM books and reading list
This BDSM books list brings together nearly a hundred titles that rarely reach popular media. Handbooks that explain how you build a session safely, novels that have lasted a century and a half, research from sociologists who put years of fieldwork into it, and Dutch books by people who simply do it every day. They are all gathered here, and you can filter by type, language, and theme.
Rather watch than read? The same themes are on the films page: feature films, documentaries, and series, with where to see each one.
Is there an interesting or good book missing? Send me a quick message through contact and I’ll add it.
My favorites
The books I recommend most often. Click through for the full description.
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Pick one or more labels. A book stays on the list as long as it fits every group you choose.
All BDSM books in one place
10 BDSM Verhalen
A book of 10 erotic stories with BDSM sex. Every style, every genre, and plenty of sex!
Flogging
Flogging, working someone over with a whip, is not something you can learn from a book, but good information is always welcome. Here Joseph Bean (1947), seasoned in the American SM scene and author of several books on SM, walks through all the ins and outs of flogging.
Using scenes between a Dom(me) and a sub (m/f), he covers the negotiation that has to come before a scene, clothing and positions during play, and which parts of the body to avoid when you strike. He also looks at how different whips feel and what patterns you can build into the striking, how a Dom(me) can read the sub’s reactions, and what aftercare a whip scene needs. He closes with making, cleaning, and maintaining your own whips.
The Compleat Spanker
Lady Green is the pen name of an author of several BDSM books. Here, in a small space (the book runs only 96 pages), she covers all the ins and outs of spanking.
After trying to answer who spanks and why spanking feels good, Green lays out the basics of a good spanking across three chapters: anatomy, communication and mood, and the warm-up. She describes which parts of the body you can strike and which you had better leave alone. She stresses how much the communication between Dom and sub matters, and explains how a warm-up actually works.
From there she gets into which implements you can use during a spanking and which positions someone can take to receive one. Aftercare once a spanking is over and how to handle any problems that come up are covered too. Green ends the book with a chapter of tips, tricks, and fun things to try.
The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage
Bondage, strictly speaking, means nothing more than tying up or immobilizing someone, and you can use all kinds of materials for it. Still, most people picture rope the moment they hear the word. Elaborate rope bondage can look beautiful. It can also look horribly complicated at the same time. Midori, a Japanese-born American with plenty of experience both tying and teaching others to tie, makes it simpler for you.
After introductory chapters on the history of Japanese bondage, choosing and caring for rope, all sorts of safety points and knots, seven chapters follow that each center on one particular tie, from a simple chest harness to a full-body harness. Every chapter opens with a color photo of the tie as it looks once all the rope is in place. Then, in text and clear black-and-white drawings, it explains exactly how the tie was built and points out which variations are possible. It covers ties on men and on women, and on different body types.
Midori closes with a chapter on aftercare, covering the right way to take the rope off and what the sub feels as it comes loose. For anyone who wants to read more about Japanese bondage, there is a reading list in the back.
Manier van uitleggen van knoppen leggen is duidelijk en makkelijk op te pakken. Wel zo dat de fotographie niet heel erg mooi is. (Niet mijn smaak) waardoor je niet gelijk gemotiveerd raakt om het uit te proberen!
Bibi87, bol.comSafe, Sane, Consensual… And Fun
This BDSM book gives you 15 scenarios for bondage, spanking, and role play, ranging from mild to wild. Ever wanted to stage a kidnapping? John Warren describes in detail how you could go about something like that, drawing on more than 20 years in the BDSM world.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
The Loving Dominant
Before he gets into the many facets of Dominance, Warren covers the basics of BDSM: what are sadism and masochism? Why would someone want to be submissive? Why would someone want to be Dominant? What does ‘consensual’ actually mean? Then he hands the floor to a sub, who talks about different levels of submission and surrender, how submission and surrender feel, and how submission can help with personal growth.
Venus in bont
Out of love, Severin hands himself over to Wanda completely, contract and all. Krafft-Ebing later borrowed the author’s name for his diagnosis, and that is how the word masochism came about. What keeps the book standing after 156 years: Sacher-Masoch shows plainly that the submissive party is the one who invents the game, writes the rules, and pushes the other into a role she does not want at first. Wanda has to be talked into it. Most summaries skip that detail.
bol.com, Dutchbol.com, EnglishAmazon.nl
Severin did get what he wanted. So many people never do. They never dare ask.
PirateSteve, GoodreadsHet verhaal van O
The most famous book on this list, and the most controversial. O is taken by her lover to a country house in Roissy and trained there, step by step, into complete availability. It began as a bet. Dominique Aury, a respected editor at Gallimard, was told no woman could write an erotic novel to match the darkness of De Sade. This was her answer. The power is in the point of view: you spend the whole novel inside O’s head, and the question of whether this is liberation or destruction never gets answered. That is not carelessness on Réage’s part. That is the design.
bol.com, Dutch, pocketbol.com, EnglishAmazon.nl
It is not a how to guide to sadomasochism, but a dark, psychological, sadomasochistic fantasy.
Theo Logos, GoodreadsStory of O Part Two: Return to the Château
The sequel. Shorter, barer, and O goes back to Roissy. For anyone who has finished part one and wants to see how far Réage pushes her own construction.
Justine
The book that gave sadism its name. Justine wants to stay virtuous and gets punished for it, over and over, by everyone she meets. It is really philosophy dressed as a novel: De Sade uses his characters to argue that nature cares nothing for morality. Heavy. Repetitive. At moments flat-out repulsive. And without this book the rest of this list makes no sense, so here it is. Read it as a document, not as a manual.
Three by Marquis de Sade
De Sade in one volume, including The 120 Days of Sodom. Handy if you don’t want to hunt down three separate editions.
Het oog / Story of the Eye
Bataille’s notorious novella about two young lovers who tear down every limit they run into. Not a BDSM book in the modern sense, because nothing is negotiated and a safeword does not exist. It is, though, the text that draws the link between eroticism, transgression, and mortality most sharply. Bataille later wrote a whole essay on top of it with L’érotisme, as if he had to explain himself.
Venusdelta
Nin wrote these stories to order for an anonymous collector who paid her a dollar a page and kept telling her to take the poetry out and put more sex in. She refused. What she left behind is a collection where desire weighs more than the act, and where power and surrender wander in casually instead of being announced as a theme. One of the few classics here written by a woman, and it shows.
Emmanuelle
After Story of O, the best-known French underground novel of the last century. Emmanuelle flies to Bangkok and lets herself be swept into a world where every sexual reservation is argued away, step by step. More libertine than strictly BDSM. Belongs here all the same.
9½ weken
Short, cool, autobiographical. Nine and a half weeks in which a woman gives up all her control, bit by bit, to a man she met at the office. Far harder than the film with Kim Basinger. McNeill describes exactly what the handbooks skip: how gradual it is, how good it feels, and the morning it turns.
bol.com, Dutchbol.com, EnglishAmazon.nl
Ik ging dit boek lezen met een niet te hoge verwachting. Het is geschreven in dagboek vorm, korte stukjes dus en ze schrijft ook veel niet toedoende tekst waardoor het soms wat onsamenhangend is en het verwarrend over kan komen. Maar het boek gaat over totale overgaven, grenzen verleggen. En dat heeft ze wel goed beschreven.
Gaia87, bol.comThe Image (L'Image)
Written under a pen name by Catherine Robbe-Grillet, who later became one of the best-known dominatrices in France herself. A triangle in which a woman “shows” her submissive girlfriend to a man. Rare in how sharply it treats watching and being watched as a power game in its own right.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
Belle de Jour
Séverine has a husband who loves her and a life with nothing wrong in it. Even so, every afternoon between two and five she reports to a brothel, where she lets strangers degrade her. Kessel writes about it coolly, without once explaining why. Buñuel made a film of it in 1967 with Catherine Deneuve; the book is harder. The Dutch translation is called Dagvlinder.
Bad Behavior
The story collection that holds “Secretary,” later filmed with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Gaitskill writes about the imbalance of power between people who barely have words for it themselves. Uncomfortable and precise. The opposite of romantic, and that is exactly why plenty of people in the scene name this as the most honest thing ever written on the subject.
De pianiste
Nobel winner Jelinek wrote a novel about a piano teacher who puts her masochistic desires in a letter to her student, and then falls apart when he carries them out to the letter. Erotic this book is not. It is the most merciless thing there is about what goes wrong when desire is acted on with no care, no talk beforehand, and no love. Required counter-reading to everything above. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first book.
Het seksuele leven van Catherine M.
Art critic Millet describes her own sex life in the tone of a museum catalog. Detached, exact, without a single attempt at apology. In France a scandal broke out, precisely because the shame is missing.
bol.com, Dutchbol.com, EnglishAmazon.nl
Haar seksuele keuzes zijn fascinerend en toch niet heel erg ongewoon. De openheid is leuk en het past bij haar werk(verleden). De schrijfstijl is, mede door de vertaling en cultuur,soms wat moeilijk te begrijpen. Heb er van genoten.
Bom73, bol.comThe Sleeping Beauty trilogy
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment, Beauty’s Release. Under a pen name, Anne Rice wrote a retelling of Sleeping Beauty in which the princess is kissed awake and then leaves for the prince’s castle as sexual property. No attempt at realism whatsoever, and that is what makes it useful: this is fantasy spelled out in full, pony play and public humiliation included.
Exit to Eden
Rice’s second erotic novel and by far the warmest. A dominant woman runs a luxurious BDSM island, a photographer arrives as a “slave,” and after that the book is mostly about two people who don’t know how to talk to each other outside their roles.
The Marketplace series
Inside the scene this series often gets named as the best thing written in the genre. The Marketplace is an underground, worldwide organization that trains and places volunteer slaves, and Antoniou gives as much attention to the paperwork, the trainers, and the application process as to the sex. That makes it read like a corporate novel about surrender. Volumes: The Marketplace, The Slave, The Trainer, The Academy, The Reunion, The Inheritor.
bol.com, part 1The SlaveThe TrainerThe AcademyThe ReunionThe InheritorAmazon.nl
I loved this book. For one thing, despite its fantasy premise, it has a realistic, down-to-earth feel. The characters are complex and their interactions nuanced and believable. The Marketplace is the exact opposite of the kinky fairy tale world of the Beauty books – even though they share activities and physical elements.
Lisabet Sarai, GoodreadsCarrie's Story
A Berkeley student lets her lover auction her off. Weatherfield writes smart and dry-witted, and Carrie keeps thinking, all through the novel, about what is happening to her. That makes it a good deal more interesting than the plot would suggest. Sequel: Safe Word.
Kushiel's Dart
Epic fantasy set in an alternate France where “love as thou wilt” is a religious command. The lead, Phèdre, is marked by the gods as someone who feels pain as pleasure, and works as a courtesan and a spy. More than a thousand pages. The only book on this list where masochism is literally a superpower, and you hear from readers again and again that this was the book that showed them their desire is not a defect.
The Submissive series
Started as fan fiction and grew into ten volumes. What lifts this series above most of its kind: Tara Sue Me writes the same story twice, first from the submissive woman (The Submissive) and then from the dominant man (The Dominant). So you see, literally, how differently two people live the same scene. For anyone who wants to understand what happens on the other side of the dynamic, that teaches you more than a handbook.
bol.com, The Submissivebol.com, The Dominantbol.com, The TrainingAmazon.nl
The Original Sinners series
Begins with The Siren: a writer of erotica, her editor, a priest, and a dominant man she shares a past with. Reisz treats Catholic guilt and surrender as if they are one subject. In her books, they are.
bol.com, The Sirenbol.com, bundle 1-4Amazon.nl
I just want to make things clear right off the bat. This is not a traditional romance, and most people would probably say that this is not a romance at all.
Courtney Milan, GoodreadsVijftig tinten grijs (Fifty Shades of Grey)
The book that moved BDSM from the back-room shop to the department store. Not the strongest here on the page, and controversial inside the scene because negotiation and safety are handled sloppily. Even so, this is the reason millions of people ran into words like “contract” and “hard limit” for the first time. Anyone who wants to understand the genre can’t get around it.
bol.com, part 1bol.com, trilogy e-bookbol.com, Grey, told by ChristianAmazon.nl
Na alle commotie over dit boek aangehoord te hebben, heb ik alle 3 de delen aangeschaft. Het eerste deel ging nog wel maar slecht geschreven en veel in herhalingen vallen. Op een gegeven moment wist ik het wel. Ik heb de overige 2 delen wel gelezen omdat ik wilde weten hoe het afliep maar bij het derde deel heb ik alle sexscenes (meer en meer van hetzelfde) overgeslagen en hele stukken geskipt.
Frenchie1968, bol.comThis Man
Interior designer Ava takes a job at a country estate and meets Jesse Ward there, who then takes over her life. More possessive than romantic, and that is exactly what the argument about this book has been about for years. It is here because it is one of the best-selling titles in the genre and because it shows sharply where control stops being attention.
Verborgen Verlangens
Four women meet at a spa. Emma, Patricia, Isabelle, and Gabriella seem to have everything in order, until one of them admits she booked a gigolo. What follows is not a Fifty Shades where a billionaire fixes every problem, but four women working out what they want and refusing to settle. Debut novel by Dahlia Midnight, part one of The Phoenix Society, with humor and no fuss. Obvious why this book is here: it is exactly about the step my clients take.
the-phoenix-society.combol.com, e-bookAmazon.nl, paperback
Eindelijk een boek met niet het geijkte verhaal van rijke macho man die een verlegen meisje domineert. Maar gewoon een rauw en sexy verhaal over vrouwen die zelf over hun leven willen beslissen. Het is niet wat je verwacht dus stap er met een blanco mind in en ga lekker lezen. Ik raad het zeker aan en ben zeer benieuwd naar het volgende deel.
Fransisca, the-phoenix-society.comBared to You (Crossfire 1)
Often named in the same breath as Fifty Shades, but better written, and with two leads who both carry something with them. The power balance here is psychological rather than technical.
Club Shadowlands / Masters of the Shadowlands
The longest-running BDSM romance series there is, and loved inside the scene because the scenes are technically sound and consent is right there on the page. Accountant Jessica ends up in a BDSM club by accident during a storm. Warm, comfortable, and a fine way in if you would rather skip the hard edges.
bol.com, Club Shadowlandsbol.com, Masters of the ShadowlandsAmazon.nl
The Dom Who Loved Me
Thriller and BDSM romance at once, built around a security firm that runs a club. Popular with readers who want plot alongside the relationship.
Wicked Ties
One of the early titles that made the genre commercial. Fast and explicit, with little fuss.
Natural Law
A dominant policewoman and a submissive man, a reversal that stays rare in this genre. Hill is praised inside the scene for how carefully she writes out the inner world of both of them.
The Boss
Written as an explicit answer to Fifty Shades. Same setup, young woman and powerful man, but with conversations, birth control, friends, and a lead who says no when she means no. Cheap to get and often recommended with the line “read this instead.”
Captive in the Dark
Dark romance in the most literal sense. Abduction, no consent, and a readership that chooses it very deliberately. It is here because it defines the genre, with the clear note that this is fantasy and a model for nothing. Check the trigger warnings before you start.
bol.com, paperbackbol.com, special editionAmazon.nl
Anders dan andere boeken. Voldoende diepgang.
Kelly861, bol.comTwist Me
Another title from the hard end of the genre: abduction, captivity, no consent. Zaires writes tight and fast, and the readership knows exactly what it is getting into. Check the trigger warnings. Fantasy, not a model.
Monsters in the Dark (Tears of Tess)
Same category as above. Extreme, popular, and not meant as an example. Later volumes: Quintessentially Q, Twisted Together, Je Suis à Toi.
Locked / Caged / Chased
Dutch dark romance, translated into Dutch and widely available. Same category as Zaires and Roberts: extreme, popular, and meant as fantasy. Wild is one of the few authors in this genre who serves the Dutch public in its own language, which explains why these titles turn up in every Dutch bookstore.
bol.com, Locked: Opgeslotenbol.com, Caged: Gevangenbol.com, Chased: OpgejaagdAmazon.nl
super goede boeken van clarissa wild ..je blijft aan 1 stuk door lezen
mje53, bol.comComfort Food / The Darkest Ones
Short and psychological, aimed almost entirely at what happens in the captive’s head. Thomas writes deliberately without any romantic softening. The Darkest Ones collects her darkest titles, with Comfort Food among them.
Corrupt (Devil’s Night 1)
Revenge, power, and three boys who have a town in their grip. Douglas is one of the defining names in modern dark romance and Corrupt is her best-known. On bol.com only the German edition is listed, so for the English version you have to go to Amazon.
in the bol.com catalog only in German translation as of August 3, 2026
Best Bondage Erotica
Yearly story collections with a broad range of voices, orientations, and kinds of play. The fastest way to find out which fantasy appeals to you without tying yourself to one author.
Kink
Fifteen stories by serious literary authors, all of them about desire and power. Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, Carmen Maria Machado, and others. It is the collection that showed kink can simply be literature rather than a genre off to the side. If the romance corner of this list does nothing for you, start here.
In Flight (Up in the Air 1)
Flight attendant and billionaire, with a dominant-submissive relationship that runs through the whole series. On bol.com I only found it in French translation, which is a shame.
Macho Sluts
A groundbreaking collection of lesbian SM stories that helped fuel the feminist sex wars at the time. Not found in the bol catalog.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
Diary of a Submissive
A British journalist describes her own path into submission. How she found out, how she explained it to partners, and how she squares it with a feminist sense of herself. Level-headed and relatable. Sequel: No Ordinary Love Story.
Whip Smart
Febos worked four years as a professional dominatrix in New York while she was studying and using. She writes about it as literature. Not about the thrill, but about what it did to her to be the one in control as a job. One of the few books that describes the work from the inside without selling it or condemning it.
Alias Tom
The life story of a Dutch gigolo, set down by Marcia van der Schaaf. Tom strips the glamour off right away: the long evenings, the tiredness nobody sees, and how hard it is to build a relationship of your own when your work is about giving closeness to others. Rare honesty for this genre, and the only book on this list that is about my own line of work. I wrote a detailed review of it.
Vlot en goed geschreven. Dit boek wil je niet wegleggen. Mooi nawoord van Guido/Tom
Anne, bol.comThe Deep Psychology of BDSM and Kink
A Jungian reading of kink. Thomas approaches BDSM through the depth psychology of Jung and James Hillman and treats play as a place where the soul becomes visible. Published by Routledge, so academically packaged, but easy to read. The most recent serious book in this segment.
bol.com, paperbackbol.com, audiobookAmazon.nl
Een must-read voor iedereen met affiniteit voor BDSM en kink, wat mij betreft. En voor professionals (coaches e.d.). Het boek gaat wérkelijk diep en de verschillende gezichtspunten (Jung, Hillman, etc.) schijnen elk hun licht op fenomenen. Zoals de dieptepsychologie betaamt gaat het hier niet zozeer om 'wat' maar om 'hoe'. Het leest niet zozeer makkelijk maar is zo interessant dat een hoofdstuk per dag wel te doen was.
Ingridtb, bol.comThe Erotic Mind
Morin interviewed hundreds of people about their most intense arousing experience and distilled a model from it: arousal appears at the spot where attraction meets an obstacle. His “erotic equation” explains in one stroke why tension, shame, power, and surrender come back so often in fantasies. The best book for understanding where your own fantasy comes from.
Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?
Kahr surveyed more than twenty thousand British and American people about their fantasies and set twenty-five years of his own practice as a psychotherapist alongside it. The numbers are the dullest part. What stays with you are the case studies: someone who rebuilt an ugly childhood experience into something she comes to. His readings are fairly Freudian, so take them with a grain of salt. The raw stories are in there in full.
Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies
Psychoanalyst Bader argues that sexual fantasies are not random quirks but solutions. They switch off exactly the guilt, fear, or worry that gets in the way of arousal. Anyone wondering why they want this will find the most useful answer here.
Talk Dirty to Me
Porn, prostitution, fantasy, and her own arousal, all in one book, and Tisdale consistently refuses to take sides in the porn debates of the nineties. That made it controversial at the time. Now it is mostly just readable. She is sharpest about what goes on in her own head during sex. Beyond that it is dated, and you hear that loudest in the assumptions about women.
Tell Me What You Want
Lehmiller surveyed more than four thousand Americans about their fantasies and published the results. Main takeaway for this list: fantasies about power and surrender are among the most common of all. Numbers instead of anecdotes, and that reads surprisingly reassuring.
Tongue Tied
Harris is a sexologist and runs negotiation training, and this is the best book about the conversation itself. How to open it. What to say when the answer is no, and how to negotiate a scene without letting the tension drain away. She gives you whole sentences instead of principles. If you have a fantasy you have never said out loud, start here.
Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us
Psychologist Bering runs through the whole catalog of “deviant” desires and keeps asking the same question: who is actually harmed here? Sharp, funny, and gentler than you would expect.
Sensuous Magic
Califia wrote this for couples who want to act out a dominance fantasy and have no idea where to begin. Erotic scenes and practical explanation run together throughout. That reads nicely and sometimes feels messy. The chapters on negotiation and on the psychology of being tied up are still useful. The rest overlaps heavily with SM 101 and with the topping and bottoming books by Easton and Hardy.
Ageplay: From Diapers to Diplomas
Rulof is Dutch and wrote the only serious book on age play. He takes the whole range, from baby roles to schoolgirl and strict uncle, and keeps the sexual and the non-sexual version neatly apart. Useful: the scene setups and the quotes from players themselves. Published in English and edited like an amateur. There simply is nothing else.
Exhibitionism for the Shy
Queen treats watching and being watched as something you can practice, not as something you simply are. She works in small steps. Looking at yourself in the mirror, and later taking on a role where you do dare. Part workbook, part her own story. Anyone with an exhibitionist or voyeuristic fantasy who is ashamed to pieces of it will find the most level-headed way in here.
My Secret Garden
The collection with which Friday showed that women have fantasies, and which ones. Revolutionary for 1973. Still striking how many of those fantasies are about surrender, coercion, and loss of control. Later volumes: Forbidden Flowers and Women on Top.
Forbidden Flowers
The sequel to My Secret Garden, put together from the letters women sent Friday after the first volume came out. More explicit. And with more women explaining why they would never actually want to act the fantasy out, which makes it more useful than part one. Friday’s own commentary is by now untenably psychoanalytic. The fantasies themselves read as if they were written down yesterday.
Men in Love
Same method, now with men. That makes it more interesting than the women’s collections. Friday’s subtitle is about anger, and plenty of these fantasies do turn on power, revenge, or humiliation. But there are also strikingly many men in here who mostly want to be used. If you want to understand why men rarely say what gets them off, this is where you begin.
Garden of Desires
Forty years after Friday, Dubberley surveyed women about their fantasies again, this time with a questionnaire and a sample she accounts for. Less raw than Friday, better grounded. She also shows what changed since Fifty Shades of Grey in what women dare to write down. Her own analyses between the stories are on the tame side.
Yes, Please!
The largest study of erotic fantasies in the Netherlands and Flanders, done by a theater maker and a researcher. Hundreds of people tell what plays out in their heads, ordered by theme, with a short justification per category. A striking number of participants thought beforehand that they had no fantasies. The language is sometimes so careful that it turns distant. Beyond that: the Dutch My Secret Garden.
Wow, wat een tof boek is dit! Fijne afwisseling van informatie, ondersteund door wetenschappelijke onderzoeken en de bevindingen van het Yes, please project zelf en fantasieën van verschillende mensen. Het leest heerlijk weg. Soms heel herkenbaar, soms ook totaal niet. Ik vond het heel leuk om te ontdekken waar andere mensen allemaal over fantaseren. En interessant om te lezen dat best veel mensen in de eerste instantie dachten geen fantasieën te hebben, maar dat ze die dan tóch bleken te hebben. Hoewel het allemaal seksuele fantasieën zijn, wordt het nergens plat of ordinair. Soms wel spannend! Echt een aanrader als je geïnteresseerd bent in fantasieën van anderen, of als je meer wilt ontdekken over je eigen fantasieën.
Tessaf1980, bol.comDirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples
A story collection where couples turn a date into a scene, with a blindfold, a corset, handcuffs, or a spanking thrown in. Bussel selects for usefulness, not for literary quality, so the level varies a lot. No objection here. You read this to pick up ideas, and to be able to point at something you can’t put into words yourself.
Come as you are
Not a BDSM book. It is the best book on female arousal there is, though. Nagoski explains how the brake and the accelerator in your sexual response work and why context decides everything. That is exactly why a well-built scene works and a badly built one does not. Available in Dutch.
Mating in Captivity
Perel on the tension between safety and desire: the more you merge, the less there is to want. That explains why distance, role, and ritual, which are the heart of BDSM, can work so well for long-term relationships.
bol.com, Dutch (Erotische intelligentie)bol.comAmazon.nl
Hele veel aan gehad, heeft mijn relatie gered
Bloem123000, bol.comHealing Sex
A body-centered book for survivors of sexual violence who want their sexuality back. Relevant here because some of the people who explore BDSM do so out of a history, and because Haines describes very practically how you handle dissociation, triggers, and limits.
Traumasporen
The standard work on how trauma lodges itself in the body. Not a kink book. Anyone seriously working with intense sensation, transfer of power, and aftercare does benefit from understanding what happens in a nervous system. Translated into Dutch.
bol.com, Dutchbol.com, EnglishAmazon.nl
Helder boek, bevlogen geschreven, om er echt achter te komen hoe het zit met Trauma's
Freek25, bol.comDark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM & the Ordeal Path
For anyone exploring the spiritual side. Kaldera treats intense physical ordeal as a ritual practice with a long tradition in nearly every culture. Not everyone’s thing. It does describe exactly what people mean when they say a session was “more” than sex.
Sacred Kink
Harrington ties the tools of kink to their ritual origins and describes eight routes to an altered state of consciousness. The theoretical counterweight to his practical books.
The New Topping Book & The New Bottoming Book
The pair that sits on nearly every recommendation list as the starting point. Thin, warm, no jargon. Bottoming is about surrender as an active skill: how you ask for what you need, how you steer a scene while you are tied down. Topping is about the responsibility you take on the moment someone gives themselves over to you. If you read only two books, read these.
bol.com, Toppingbol.com, BottomingAmazon.nl
Definitely not a "how-to" book but validating, non-judgmental and delving into some important psychological depths. Loved the feminist perspective. It's a classic.
Dani, GoodreadsThe Ethical Slut
The standard work on non-monogamy, and at the same time the best book on jealousy, agreements, and staying honest with yourself. More than 200,000 copies sold. Useful too for people who are monogamous but play with a third.
bol.com, paperbackbol.com, workbookAmazon.nl
Met uitzondering van een paar heiligverklaringen (sommige subculturen worden de hemel in geprezen) een nuchter en praktisch boek.
Olijff, bol.comDomination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook
Almost five hundred pages on D/s as a relationship form. Makai covers dominants, submissives, switches, and primals, and then goes on about protocol, groups, safety, and tools. Broader than deep, so stronger as a reference than as a read, but there is little it does not touch. Thirty-five years of hands-on experience are worked into it.
Playing Well With Others
The etiquette guide for the scene. What a munch is, how to behave at a play party, how to ask someone to play, how to turn someone down without a fuss, what to do when it goes wrong. The only book that handles the social side systematically, and that happens to be exactly the part newcomers trip over.
Master/slave Mastery: Protocols
For people past the basics who want to know how to build a structure that lasts for years. Rubel treats protocol as something practical: which agreements you make, how you keep them alive, and what you do when they start to chafe. Dryly written and not meant as a first book, but there is little else that approaches this subject so systematically.
Ask: Building Consent Culture
The Heart of Dominance
On dominance as a skill rather than a character trait. Fulmen covers how you read what is happening in the other person, how you build a scene, and what you do with the doubt and guilt that many new Doms carry. Practical and strikingly gentle.
Conquer Me
Written for women who are submissive and don’t know how to bring it up. Cunningham writes woman to woman about questions few books touch. How do you tell a partner this? How do you find someone who can handle it? And how do you keep your self-respect intact along the way?
Real Service
For people for whom service is the heart of it and sensation is secondary. Very concrete about what goes wrong in service relationships: expectations that are never spoken, tasks that lose their meaning, and the difference between serving and erasing yourself.
The Ultimate Guide to Kink
The Ultimate Guide to Bondage
Mistress Couple ran the famous kink houses of La Domaine Esemar for years. Her book goes past the knots to why tying works: what it does to a nervous system, how you guide someone into it and how you come back out. Two hundred forty pages, heavily illustrated, and of all the bondage books the most focused on what happens between two people.
Shibari You Can Use
Two Knotty Boys Showing You the Ropes
The most visual rope book there is: every tie is laid out step by step in photos, from the front and the back, with no blocks of text to work your way through while you are holding on to someone. For almost twenty years now the book people recommend to each other when they are just starting with rope.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
SM 101: A Realistic Introduction
For almost thirty years the standard introduction. Wiseman worked on an ambulance and you notice it on every page: he pays incomparable attention to what can physically go wrong and how you prevent it. Dryly written. No other book is this thorough about risk.
bol.com, paperbackbol.com, e-bookAmazon.nl
An awesome book for people who have an interest in trying BDSM with safety in mind. Seems to be written for couples, not pros.
Crystal, GoodreadsDifferent Loving
More than five hundred pages of interviews with people from every corner of D/s. No theory and no instruction: people tell in their own words what they do and why. The best answer to the question “am I the only one who wants this”. Sequel: Different Loving Too.
Come Hither
Brame’s practical counterpart to Different Loving. A complete reference for beginners, from “how do I tell my partner I want to be spanked” to finding a professional.
The Mistress Manual
The classic femdom handbook, for women who want to take the lead and don’t know where to begin. About posture and voice, and about concrete scenes.
The Sexually Dominant Woman
One hundred twenty pages, written for the woman whose partner asks her to take the lead and who has no idea where to begin. Lady Green does not pretend that dominance is a trait you either have or don’t. She treats it as something you practice, and starts with the first conversation instead of the whip.
At Her Feet
Femdom as a long-term relationship form rather than a one-off session. Eckhart gets into the negotiation, the day-to-day upkeep, and the question of how you hold on to authority when ordinary life gets in the way. A revised second edition came out in 2024.
Uniquely Rika / Uniquely Submissive / The Joy of Denial
Down-to-earth, practical books about femdom relationships, written from the dominant woman’s point of view. The Joy of Denial is specifically about orgasm control as a tool inside a relationship rather than as a party trick.
bol.com, Uniquely Rikabol.com, Uniquely Submissivebol.com, The Joy of DenialAmazon.nl
Philosophy in the Dungeon
Rinella wrote columns for the American leather scene for years. This is his reflective book. It is about the unity of sexuality and spirituality, and about why people keep doing this if it were “just” a game. His better-known titles (The Master’s Manual, The Compleat Slave, Partners in Power) are not in the bol catalog.
Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns
One of the most frequently cited classic handbooks, with plenty of attention for the romance and ritual around a scene rather than only the technique. Not found in the bol catalog.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
The Toybag Guide series
Thin little books of around a hundred pages, each about exactly one thing, each written by someone who taught it for years. Hot wax, canes, knives, clamps, foot worship, medical play, age play, and one volume about what you do when something goes wrong in a dungeon. You buy only the subject on your mind right now instead of a fat handbook you read a tenth of. Authors include Janet W. Hardy, Jay Wiseman, Midori, Jack Rinella and Mollena Williams.
bol.com, Canes and Caningbol.com, Hot Wax and Temperature Playbol.com, Dungeon Emergencies and Suppliesbol.com, Erotic Knifeplaybol.com, Clips and Clampsbol.com, Playing with Taboobol.com, Age Playbol.com, Foot and Shoe Worshipbol.com, Medical Playbol.com, High-Tech ToysAmazon.nl
Enough to Make You Blush
The only serious book entirely about humiliation. Why it works, how you figure out which form suits you, and how you keep it from bleeding out beyond the scene. Not found in the bol catalog.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude
Baldwin is a psychotherapist and one of the best-known voices from the old leather scene. He wrote this book together with someone who lived as a slave for years, and it is about the inside of that. Why someone wants this, what it does to your self-image, and where it goes wrong. More uncomfortable and more honest than the handbooks that mostly cover technique.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
Playing on the Edge
Sociologist Newmahr spent four years doing fieldwork in an American SM community, as a participant and not as an onlooker. She describes SM as a form of serious play in which people deliberately seek out risk to reach intimacy, and shows how strongly gender colors the roles. Published by Indiana University Press.
Ahh, an easier and more accessible read than Weiss' 'Techniques of Pleasure'. Less unnecessary stuff, with very interesting anecdotes, mixed in with interviews and observations, all analyzed through with an academic (but not snobbish) eye.
The Sapphic Nerd, GoodreadsTechniques of Pleasure
Anthropologist Weiss followed the pansexual BDSM scene in the San Francisco Bay Area and interviewed more than sixty people. Her argument runs straight against the common view. BDSM is not automatically subversive, and the scene is no bubble where the inequality of the outside world neatly falls away. The sharpest critical book in this segment. Duke University Press.
Leatherfolk
The canonical anthology on the history of the leather scene, from the postwar motorcycle clubs to AIDS and the politics of the eighties. Not found in the bol catalog.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
The Leatherman's Handbook
A historical document. The first book that described the American leather scene from the inside, and for decades the only source there was. Dated in places, indispensable as history. Not found in the bol catalog.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
SM in het echt
The best Dutch-language handbook there is, and by far the most recommended title in the Dutch scene. Vonk is a sexologist, Bouman comes from hands-on practice. They cover every relevant topic in plain language, with examples and stories from people who do it. 229 pages, and readers give it a 4.4. If you buy one Dutch book, make it this one.
Een heldere en goede uiteenzetting. Zeker aan te bevelen voor de startende bdsm-er.
Muis1970, bol.comHandboek voor BDSM-relaties
A short little book about the relational side. Trust, security, freedom and intimacy as the foundation, with attention for the technical, the psychological and the physical.
Wat een aanfluiting voor dit geld!! 16 pagina's open deuren intrappen en dan een checklist die je zo van internet download. Op deze manier ben je al bedonderd voor dat je gaat beginnen over vertrouwen waar dit spel om draait.
vespa121, bol.comThe Mistress Moriah series
The most prolific Dutch-language author in this field, writing from her practice as a Femdom Lady. Separate volumes about the basics, about conditioning, about 24/7 and about commercial BDSM. You pick whatever fits your question.
BDSM in de/jouw praktijk & BDSM: beheers macht en onmacht
Hefty Dutch handbooks for anyone who notices BDSM desires in herself and wants to know what to do with them. Practical and exhaustive.
bol.com, In de/jouw praktijkbol.com, Macht en onmachtAmazon.nl
In dit overzichtelijke naslagwerk heb ik zaken gelezen waar ik als hulpverlener geen zicht op had. Het makkelijk te lezen boek geeft inzage in een beleving die door de ervaringsverhalen steeds meer een gelaagde context geven.
MarcF1, bol.comDutch-language story collections
For those who would rather read than study. Katia Paulaner has a whole series of short Dutch-language collections built around specific themes.
Twisted Love (Twisted series)
The series that made dark romance mainstream in the Netherlands. Four books, all translated, and a signing in Amsterdam that sold out. Huang writes power exchange in its softest form. Possessive men, women who choose that with their eyes open. If you have never read anything in this genre before, this is where almost everyone starts.
Haunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse Duet)
The title that kicked off the TikTok conversation about consensual non-consent. A stalker, a woman who knows she is being watched, and a book that never pretends this is healthy. Readers move from it in droves to the question of how you arrange something like this safely. Check the trigger warnings, they are there for a reason.
Lights Out
The breakout of 2024. A masked man, a woman who came up with the scenario herself, and a striking amount of attention for what gets agreed beforehand. Of all the CNC novels this is the one that comes closest to real practice, because the limits are spelled out in it instead of written away.
The Sweetest Oblivion (Made series)
Mafia romance, which means dominance without any real danger in play. The pull sits in the arranged match. She has no choice, except that she does. Popular with readers who find the hard CNC titles go too far.
God of Malice (Legacy of Gods)
Kent publishes at a pace most authors cannot touch, and has built a loyal Dutch readership with it. Explicit D/s, a campus setting, and characters who are honest about what they want. Start with book one, the series keeps going.
Hooked (Never After)
Peter Pan, but from Captain Hook’s side and with an adults-only rating. McIntire retells fairy tales as dark romances, and it works better than it sounds. The characters are familiar, so you need no pages to get to know them and go straight into the darkness.
The Never King
Another dark Peter Pan, and one of the best-known why-choose novels. One woman, several men, nobody has to choose. If you wonder how a dynamic with more than two people feels, this is the gentle introduction.
Credence
A girl loses her parents and ends up with three men in the mountains of Colorado. Taboo, isolation, and several partners at once. Same author as Corrupt, same reader, and of her work the book people think about the longest.
Neon Gods (Dark Olympus)
Priest
A Catholic priest and the woman sitting in his confessional. It is about guilt, and about what happens when desire collides with everything you were taught about yourself. Exactly the shame problem most of my clients wrestle with, only in novel form.
The Pawn (Endgame)
A woman offers herself to pay off her father’s debt. Barter as an erotic premise. She gives control away as a transaction, and discovers the transaction gives her something back. Short, tight, and the first of four.
Comfort Object (Comfort series)
Classic club BDSM romance from the time before the BookTok wave. Joseph writes the scenes in more detail than is usual in the genre, so you actually see how a session is built up instead of the story jumping to the next morning.
Crash Into You (Loving on the Edge)
The whole series turns on scenes that get negotiated beforehand, which makes it one of the few romances where the conversation gets as much room as the act. Close to how it goes in real life, and useful for anyone who wants to know what she will need to talk through later.
Release Me (Stark-trilogie)
From the wave that got going after Fifty Shades, and one of the better-written examples of it. Billionaire, damaged woman, a lot of control. Popular with readers who only dared to go looking after 2012.
Rush (Breathless-trilogie)
Banks writes submission warmer than most authors in this segment, with plenty of attention for aftercare. Read heavily by women over 35 who find the harder titles too cold.
Fixed on You (Fixed-trilogie)
Obsession as the engine. No BDSM in the technical sense, but a relationship in which one person constantly decides how things go. For readers who flirt with the idea of a power difference without any rope involved.
The Professional
Mafia, explicit D/s, and an author who comes from fantasy and therefore knows how to build tension. Widely known and widely read, including by people who otherwise read little in this genre.
Versplinterd verlangen / Versplinterd vertrouwen
Dutch-language dark romance, written in Dutch rather than translated. That helps. The dialogue does not sound like it came out of English. Published by Dutch Venture Publishing, which put this genre on the map in the Netherlands almost single-handedly.
The work of Rosemary Hart
One of the few Dutch authors who writes dark romance and romantasy in her own language. A small body of work, a loyal readership, and one of the few places where you can read in Dutch without waiting for a translation.
All Fours
A woman in her forties sets off on a road trip, ends up in a motel twenty minutes down the road and stays there for three weeks. July writes about midlife desire without prettying it up, and that is exactly why the book hit home. If there is one novel that describes the woman who calls me, it is this one.
Genoten
Suus, bol.comDrie vrouwen
Taddeo followed three American women for eight years and wrote down what they wanted, got and missed out on. No fiction, no theory, only what actually happened. It reads like a novel and it hurts, especially in the places where you recognize yourself.
Drie vrouwen is een baanbrekend boek waarin de vrouwelijke begeerte in al haar heftigheid en schoonheid wordt neergezet.
Els04, bol.comThe Surrender
Former ballet dancer Bentley wrote a memoir about anal sex as almost religious surrender. Hard to sum up without making it sound ridiculous, and yet it is one of the most honest books about what total surrender does to a person.
Normale mensen
Marianne asks Connell to hurt her and he refuses, and that is really what the book is about. Rooney treats a need to submit as something that can simply live in a person, without explanation and without judgment. Many readers recognized their own pattern here for the first time.
Acts of Service
A young woman ends up in a relationship with a couple, and discovers that watching and being watched is at least as exciting as being touched. Written with literary care, raw in its content, and sharp about the gap between what you say you want and what you really want.
Vochtige streken
Eighteen-year-old Helen is in the hospital and tells you everything about her body you did not want to know. Roche caused an uproar with it all over Europe, precisely because she refuses the shame. Not exactly erotic, but freeing.
Het ritsloze nummer
Jong coined the term for sex without consequences, without guilt and without anyone owing anything afterward. Fifty years old and still the best answer to the question of why a woman would want such a thing. One of the first novels that treated female lust as something self-evident.
De minnaar
A fifteen-year-old girl in French Indochina and a much older, wealthy man. Duras wrote it in her late sixties about her own life, in short sentences that leave everything open. Uncomfortable as a relationship, and one of the most beautiful books on this list in literary terms.
Lady Chatterley's minnaar
A woman with a paralyzed husband and a gamekeeper who does take her body seriously. The book was banned for decades and the trial over it changed British censorship law. Literally the scenario many of my clients are in, only set in 1928.
Kleine vogels
The second collection Nin wrote for her anonymous collector, published after her death. Shorter and looser than Venusdelta, with the same refusal to leave out the desire in favor of the act.
Boy Parts
A photographer from Newcastle who picks men off the street to photograph them, and keeps pushing further. A woman as predator, without the book condemning or glorifying her. Interesting for anyone exploring the dominant side.
De leeftijden van Lulu
A Spanish novel about a woman who, from the age of fifteen, keeps going further in what she dares, until she reaches a point where she cannot turn back. It won the most important Spanish prize for erotic literature at the time.
The Butcher
A student works a summer in a butcher shop and becomes captivated by the butcher. Barely a hundred pages, almost nothing but body and heat, and a classic in France. For anyone who wants to round out the literary side of this list without starting a fat novel.
Liefde in verhouding (The State of Affairs)
Perel on infidelity, written from the chair where she listened to couples for thirty years. She refuses the easy moral and asks instead what an affair gives the person having it. An uncomfortable book for anyone who likes to think in terms of culprit and victim, and clarifying for anyone who wonders why people do what they do.
Ester Perel beschrijft met veel inzicht en begrip wat er gebeurt als veiligheid en vertrouwen schade oplopen.
WillemijnvD, bol.comThe Sex-Starved Marriage
About the marriage where one partner has wanted it for years and the other no longer does. Weiner-Davis treats it as a problem belonging to two people rather than the fault of the one with the low libido, and that suddenly makes the conversation possible. The classic book for this particular pain.
Seks! Een leven lang leren
Laan was a professor of sexology in Amsterdam and hated myths. This book clears them out. About arousal, about how desire works in women, and about why “spontaneous urge” is a bad yardstick. The best Dutch-language sexology book there is.
Gewoon een fantastisch boek dat iedereen zou kunnen lezen die werkelijk geïnteresseerd is in seksualiteit.
Brussee, bol.comDe waarheid over seks
A more current and more accessible version of their earlier work, written for everyone rather than for the consulting room. If you read one Dutch book about sex and it must not be self-help, this is the one.
Wat een eye-opener is dit boek! Helder geschreven, complexe dingen worden heel begrijpelijk uitgelegd en alles wordt ongegeneerd bij de naam genoemd.
AmDie, bol.comMake More Love
Written explicitly for people over forty-five, which makes it nearly unique. What changes in a body, what changes in a relationship, and why the idea that it is all over after that is simply wrong. Level-headed and without the whining tone this subject often gets.
Houd me vast
The founder of emotionally focused therapy explains that arguments are rarely about the dishes and almost always about whether you still matter to the other person. Closeness as a need rather than a bonus. Useful for anyone who senses something is missing but cannot name it.
Absoluut het beste boek ooit. Lifechanging en relatiereddend in ons geval. Terug van bijna uit elkaar naar opnieuw verliefd, en dat na 14 jaar en 2 kinderen. Echt een aanrader, ook als je relatie wel goed is heel leerzaam denk ik.
Eferiz, bol.comDe relatie-APK
A Dutch relationship therapist who poured her practice into a book. Concrete questions to work through together, without the woo this genre sometimes sinks into. For the couple that wants to take stock before it is too late.
Schaamteloze seks
About shame as the biggest brake on a good sex life. Using her own clients, Nijman takes apart where that shame comes from and what you can do with it. Of all the books here, this is the one closest to the reason people only message me after months of doubt.
Dit boek is ontzettend goed en genuanceerd geschreven. Het gaat in op heel veel kanten van seksualiteit en niet slechts een deel.
HelenaElize, bol.comWhat Do Women Want?
Untrue
Anthropologist Martin examines female infidelity and shows that the image of the naturally faithful woman is mostly a cultural story. Freeing for readers who feel guilty about what they want, and good for the quality of the conversation about it.
Come Together
The follow-up to Come as you are, and this time about desire in a long-term relationship. Nagoski shows that couples with a good sex life after twenty years do nothing special except make it a priority and talk openly about it. Available in Dutch.
Women on Top
Twenty years after My Secret Garden, Friday asked again, and the fantasies had changed. Bolder, more active, less apologetic. Interesting next to the first book, precisely because you see what happened to women’s freedom over two decades.
The Pleasure Gap
About the gap between what women are supposed to feel and what they actually feel. Rowland spoke with hundreds of women and puts her finger on the spot where pleasure got arranged away somewhere along the way. Confronting in the good sense.
Becoming Cliterate
Psychologist Mintz on the orgasm gap, with plenty of practical explanation and without blaming anyone. Often read by women who suspect they are missing something and want to know whether it is their fault. Answer: no.
Mind The Gap
Clinical psychologist Gurney on the difference in desire between two partners, which she considers the most common sexual problem there is. Practical, dryly British, and exactly the reason most people first write to me.
Glijmiddel
About menopause, vaginal dryness and all the other things nobody talks about. Van Lierop writes about it with humor, which helps, because the question underneath is usually whether you are still allowed to want. So yes, you are.
Te lijf
Two well-known Dutch women on getting older in a body that changes, sexuality included. Wide reach, and precisely because it does not come from the sexology corner, it reaches readers who would never buy such a book otherwise.
Dit boek heeft mij geholpen te begrijpen wat er met je lijf gebeurd als je in de overgang of pre overgang komt. Iedereen beleefd het op haar manier. De niet goede beoordelingen begrijp ik dan ook niet. Ik heb het als heel waardevol ervaren en speel hem door naar mijn vriendinnen, dankjewel Isa en Medina
WillyWonka75, bol.comMevrouw de Wit
All the first times after a divorce, including the first time you are in bed with someone again. Relatable, light in tone, and for many readers the book that makes the step from thinking to doing smaller.
Fuck de menopauze
A science journalist on what menopause really does to a body, including the part about lust that most books walk around. A gateway to a conversation women over fifty rarely start.
Het wonder van de vrouwelijke seksualiteit
A tantric take on female sexuality, with exercises. Woollier than the rest of this section, and useful for exactly that reason to readers who get nothing from the clinical approach. It overlaps heavily with what happens on a tantra date.
De cyclus strategie
About how your cycle affects your energy, mood and libido, and how you arrange your life around it instead of fighting it. Body awareness as the starting point, which for younger readers is often the first step.
Sexual Intelligence
Klein, a sexologist with forty years of practice, shifts the question from how well am I performing to what am I actually feeling. His claim: almost everyone who comes to him has no sexual problem but an expectations problem. That is my experience too.
She Comes First
A technical book about oral sex from the perspective of her pleasure. Bought strikingly often by women who hope their partner will read it, and that tells you something in itself.
Better Sex Through Mindfulness
Brotto studied whether attention training works for women with low desire, and it works. No woolly exercises but measured results. It fits neatly with everything that goes slowly. Tantra, long dates, and not wanting too fast.
Attached
Attachment styles explained for ordinary people. Why one person clings and the other walks off the moment it gets close. The bridge between I want closeness and I do not dare, and the book that most often makes the penny drop.
Polysecure
Attachment within consensual non-monogamy. Fern is a therapist and takes on the question of how you keep feeling safe when your partner also has someone else. Relevant for couples where the partner is in the loop, which happens more often than people think.
Opening Up
A practical handbook about open relationships, based on hundreds of interviews rather than on a single model. Taormino shows that there is no one way and that the agreements matter more than the label.
More Than Two
Sex at Dawn
An argument that monogamy is not a law of nature but an invention of agriculture. Scientifically disputed, which you have to keep in mind while reading, but as an ideological unlocking the book has worked for a lot of people.
Pleasure Activism
Essays and conversations about pleasure as a right rather than a reward. More political than the rest of this section, and popular with a younger audience that refuses shame on principle.
PolyWise
The follow-up to Polysecure, and it is about what happens once the first excitement wears off. The recurring fights. The broken agreements, and the jealousy that does not resolve neatly after one good conversation. Less attachment theory than the first book, more work at the kitchen table. Read Polysecure first, or you miss half of it.
Building Open Relationships
Powell is a psychologist and wrote a book that consists almost entirely of exercises. You start with what you want yourself, and only then come the agreements with your partner. The strong chapters are the ones about how you reopen an agreement once it stops working, because that is exactly the point where most open relationships fall apart. Self-published. You can tell from the design.
Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships
Grown out of the podcast of the same name, and you can tell from the structure. Separate tools you can use right away. The monthly relationship check and the step-by-step plan for a hard conversation are the best known. Works fine monogamously too. What is missing is a story that holds the parts together, so read it as a reference and not front to back.
The Anxious Person's Guide to Non-Monogamy
Phoenix writes for people who dream of an open relationship and lose sleep over it at the same time. The book starts with the question of why you actually want this, and insists you cannot skip that question. After that it is about boundaries and independence. Also about self-compassion, without getting woolly. Honest enough to leave open that the answer is no.
The Jealousy Workbook
Forty-two exercises from a relationship therapist who has been doing this for decades. Barely any theory about where jealousy comes from. Instead, assignments you do alone or together, from naming your own relationship style to putting yourself in how your partner sees it. Labriola assumes jealousy stays and that you learn to work with it. A nicer starting point than the books that promise it will pass on its own.
What Is Compersion?
Compersion is the word for being happy because your partner is enjoying someone else. Thouin was the first to really research it, interviewed dozens of people, and concludes that it is not the opposite of jealousy and not a character trait either. Academically written. Not cheap. But the only book that takes the concept seriously instead of using it as a test.
Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator
Gahran surveyed fifteen hundred people who do not follow the fixed route from dating to living together to forever-and-ever. She calls that route the escalator and peels it apart into the separate assumptions it is made of. Useful for solo poly and relationship anarchy. Just as useful if you simply do not want to live together. The book describes and barely advises, so look elsewhere if you want a step-by-step plan.
not in the bol.com catalog as of August 3, 2026
Relationship Anarchy
Relationship anarchy comes from Sweden and means you do not automatically place any one relationship above another. Your friendships included. Pérez-Cortés turns it into a political story about ownership and obligation, not a manual for more sex. The English translation from Spanish is clunky. The idea is a good deal more radical than what you find in most poly books.
Thy Neighbor's Wife
Talese followed the American sexual revolution for nine years and wrote himself into the story, including his visits to the Sandstone commune and his own extramarital sex. That part is still the best description of how a group of people tries to agree on who is allowed with whom. He writes about the women in the book downright badly. There is no excusing that.
The Lifestyle
For years Gould worked his way through swingers clubs and conventions across North America to find out why ordinary married couples do this. He lands on an evolutionary explanation. You do not have to believe it to find the book useful, because the value sits elsewhere. In what he notes about the etiquette on the floor, who asks for what and how a no gets delivered there.
Swinging in America
Bergstrand and Sinski put a questionnaire to eleven hundred swingers and set the results next to those of monogamous couples. Their conclusion that swinging marriages are on average more satisfied stands or falls with who fills in such a list. They admit that themselves. Dryly written and expensive. You read it for the numbers, because on this subject they are hard to find anywhere else.
The Ultimate Guide to Threesomes
The practical book about threesomes. How you raise the subject, where you find a third, what you settle beforehand and what you do when someone is sitting on the couch afterward feeling lousy. Harris devotes a whole chapter to that third person and to couples who treat him or her as a tool. She also writes about what you can do with it if you would rather keep it a fantasy.
The Threesome Handbook
Older and looser in tone than Harris’s book, and better on one point. Vantoch goes into detail about what goes wrong. Who cries. Who feels left out, and what you do when one of the three falls in love. She writes from her own experience and with humor. The advice about where you meet such a person is outdated by now.
Insatiable Wives
Ley is a clinical psychologist and wrote the only serious book about cuckolding and hotwifing. He sets the history and the numbers next to his own practice, and refuses to treat the fantasy as a disorder. The most valuable parts are the interviews with men who explain what is exciting about it. His evolutionary explanations are thin. He would have done better to leave them out.
Erotic Surrender: The Sensual Joys of Female Submission
Written for the woman who notices she wants to surrender and has no idea what to do with that. Varrin starts at the beginning: what it is, what it isn’t, and how you talk about it with someone you trust. Of all the books on this list, this is the most direct way in for anyone who has only just discovered this about herself.
The Art of Sensual Female Dominance
The flip side of her other book: the woman who wants to dominate. Varrin covers posture, voice, scenes and the practical tools, and never pretends you have to be a certain type for any of it. For more than twenty-five years the standard way in for women new to dominating.
Consensual Non-Consent (CNC) in BDSM
A recent book about the fantasy in which someone acts as if there is no consent, while consent is in fact laid out very carefully. Hayes covers exactly the part where it usually goes wrong: the agreements beforehand, the stop signal, and the aftercare afterward. The search term is growing fast and there is very little decent material out there.
The CNC Sextbook
More practical and shorter than the book above: how you negotiate a CNC scene, which words you use, and what you agree on in case things go differently. Basically an intake conversation on paper.
Look Into My Eyes
About the mental side of dominance: how you read what is happening inside someone and how you steer by it. Masters has little patience for tricks and gear, and that makes this one of the few books that approaches the subject genuinely from psychology.
Femdom: The Complete How-To Guide for Dominant Women
A straightforward handbook for women who want to dominate and are looking for a step-by-step plan. Less reflective than Varrin, more concrete scenes and ideas to start with today.
Female Led Relationship
About the relationship in which the woman is in charge as a matter of structure, so not as a scene but as an everyday arrangement. Rudder covers how you build that without it turning into a power struggle.
Erotic Slavehood: A Miss Abernathy Omnibus
In 1996 Christina Abernathy gathered her experience with consensual slavery into two slim booklets; this is the omnibus of them, workbook included. About what it means to bind yourself to someone, how you build that, and how you keep it alive. More practical than the reflective titles, and still in demand within the scene.
Ties That Bind
Collected essays by Baldwin on D/s as a way of life rather than a hobby. Older work, written from the American leather scene, and still cited because as a psychotherapist he asks the questions the handbooks skip.
The Compleat Slave
Rinella on the serving side: what it means to bind yourself to someone, how you build a relationship like that, and where the pitfalls are. A companion to his Philosophy in the Dungeon, more practical in tone.
Miss Abernathy's Concise Slave Training Manual
Slim, old, and still in demand within the scene. It treats training as something you build together rather than something you do to someone. Not literature, but a practical little reference.
Ecstasy Is Necessary
Carrellas comes from the tantra world and treats sexual exploration as something that involves your whole nervous system. A bridge between kink and spirituality, with exercises that work even if the spiritual part does nothing for you.
The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Fantasy
About the step from fantasizing to actually doing: how you figure out what you really want, how you bring it up, and what you do when the real thing disappoints. Exactly the threshold most people stay stuck on for years.
Say Please
An anthology of lesbian BDSM stories, put together by one of the sharpest writers in this field. It widens the list beyond the straight dynamic that dominates the rest of the genre.
Complete Shibari 1: Land / 2: Sky
The standard work on Japanese rope, in two volumes: Land for ties on the ground, Sky for suspension. Kent explains the knots and why a pattern works, so you start to understand what you are doing instead of copying a diagram.
Better Bondage for Every Body
About rope on bodies that aren’t the one in the handbook photo: heavier, older, less supple, with a slipped disc. Vane covers nerve safety more thoroughly than anyone, and in doing so removes the objection I hear most often, that someone’s body supposedly isn’t suited to it.
The Little Guide to Getting Tied Up
Written for the one who gets tied up, not for the one doing the tying. What you say beforehand, what you watch for during, how you notice something is wrong with an arm. A rare perspective, and exactly the perspective of my clients.
The Beauty of Kinbaku
The history and aesthetics of Japanese rope rather than technique: where it comes from, how it developed in Japan, and why it looks the way it does. For the reader who is after meaning and not one more knot.
Erotic Bondage Handbook
Wiseman does with rope what he did with everything else in SM 101: first explain what can physically go wrong, only then how to do it. Dry, thorough, and the safety authority the rest points back to.
Rope, Bondage and Power
An essay collection about what happens between two people the moment rope enters the picture. No instructions, but the questions you start asking yourself after a few years.
Wild Side Sex
Midori with a book full of playful scenario ideas rather than technique. Handy when you already know how to do something but have run out of ideas for what to try next.
The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women
The standard work, and the only book that treats the subject with the calm it deserves. A lot about relaxation, pace, and why rushing is the one thing that ruins it. High search volumes, and behind almost every search sits fear.
Anal Pleasure and Health
Same author as The Erotic Mind, and medically a good deal more thorough than the title suggests. Morin covers the muscle tension that causes most of the discomfort and shows that it almost always traces back to the mind.
The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure
For couples in which the woman takes the lead and for anyone wondering how pegging actually works. Glickman writes about it plainly, including the part about what it does to a man to be on the receiving end.
The Sexual Healing Journey
The standard work on reclaiming your sexuality after abuse. Maltz works in steps and never moves faster than the reader can handle, which with this subject makes all the difference. Alongside Healing Sex, the book I mention most often when someone tells me there is a history.
The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent
Martin came up with the Wheel of Consent, the model that separates who is doing something from who it is for. That sounds abstract until you have done it once, and then something clicks about why you sometimes consent to something you didn’t want. The source behind half the consent material going around online.
Touch Hunger
About skin hunger: what happens to a person who has gone too long without being touched, and why cuddle therapy isn’t woo but an answer to a real shortage. The book that gives a name to something many people are ashamed of.
Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin
The classic scientific grounding for touch, written by an anthropologist and for more than fifty years the work everyone points back to. About what happens to animals and people who are not touched, and that is not gentle reading.
Touch
Field founded the Touch Research Institute and has spent decades measuring what touch does to blood pressure, stress hormones, and pain perception. Dry numbers for a subject that is usually defended with feeling alone.
De tijger ontwaakt (Waking the Tiger)
Levine explains why trauma lodges in the body and not in the story, and why talking alone is therefore often not enough. The foundation under somatic experiencing. Available in Dutch.
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
About trauma that comes not from one event but from years of them. Walker describes the four responses, including the fawn response, in which you adapt in order to stay safe. That last part explains, for a lot of people, why they are so bad at saying no.
Wanneer je lichaam nee zegt
Maté on the price of ignoring your own limits, and how that piles up in a body until something snaps. Widely read in the Netherlands and often the first time someone connects always being nice with always being tired.
De mythe van normaal
His most recent and thickest book: about how our way of living makes people sick and what it takes to recover from that. The same reader as above, more current and broader.
The Courage to Heal
For almost forty years the recovery handbook after sexual abuse, with plenty of room for the voices of survivors themselves. Thick, and meant to be read in pieces when you are ready for them.
Anchored
Polyvagal theory for ordinary readers: why your nervous system labels something safe or unsafe before you have thought about it. It explains in one go why pace, tone, and consent matter so much.
My Grandmother's Hands
About trauma that passes down generations and lingers in bodies, with racism as its starting point. Its reach goes wider than that one angle, and it is one of the best-written books on body-based recovery.
The Politics of Trauma
Same author as Healing Sex, but this is her major work: how personal recovery and social conditions interlock. Heavier, more theoretical, and worth it once you already know the lighter book.
Burn-out
The Nagoski twins on exhaustion in women and on the stress cycle you have to complete rather than just removing the source of stress. Exhaustion is the most underrated libido killer there is, and this book explains why.
De kracht van kwetsbaarheid
Brown on shame and on what happens when you allow yourself to be seen. Little that will surprise anyone who already knows her, and still, for many people, the first step toward saying out loud something they buried for years.
Cuffed, Tied and Satisfied
Jaiya connects kink with body-based sexuality and her erotic blueprints: the idea that people get aroused along different routes. Practical and playful, with exercises you can do alone or together.
Gigolos: The Secret Lives of Men Who Sell Sex to Women
Journalist and sex historian Lieberman spent years talking with men who sell sex to women, and with their clients. Published by Beacon Press, so research rather than sensation. It is about exactly my line of work, and about exactly the question my clients ask themselves before they message me.
Whatever She Wants: True Confessions of a Male Escort
A British escort writes down what type of woman hires him and why. She rarely turns out to be the lonely woman of the cliché: they are busy, independent women who have no patience for the fuss around it. If you are wondering whether you recognize yourself in these clients, this book has the answer.
A Memoir of a Male Escort: Secrets of the Sex Industry
A straightforward account of the work, with a lot of attention to the reasons women hire someone. Less literary than Rosetta, more concrete about how a date actually plays out.
An Italian Gigolo in the City
Same profession, different country, different temperament. Rossetti also covers the dates that involve more than two people, including couples where the man watches. That is a part of the work almost no one writes about.
An Intimate Life
A memoir by a sexual surrogate partner, the woman the film The Sessions is based on. She spent forty years working with people who, through illness, disability, or fear, never got to intimacy. Of all the books here, this is the best answer to the question of whether paid intimacy is something to be ashamed of.
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl
The diary that started as an anonymous blog and whose author turned out, years later, to be a scientist. Note: this is a different book from the same-titled novel by Kessel earlier in this list. The female counterpart to section E, and a good deal more level-headed than the novels would suggest.
Male Sex Work and Society
Men Who Sell Sex: Global Perspectives
A collection of research from around the world, including a chapter on Australian escorts and their client profile. For anyone who wants to know what this profession looks like outside the Netherlands and what turns out to be universal about it.
Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society
The most current overview, including the part on how the internet and apps have changed the work. Academically priced and academically written, and the source the other titles in this section point back to.
Human Sexual Inadequacy
This is where surrogate partner therapy was introduced: bringing in a paid partner as part of a treatment. A historical document, and the reason paid intimacy as a form of care became discussable in medicine at all.
Playing the Whore
A short, sharp argument that sex work is work, written by someone who has done it. Political in tone, and useful as a counterweight to the rescue narratives that usually dominate the public conversation.
Revolting Prostitutes
More thorough and better supported than Grant, with a country-by-country analysis of what different laws actually produce for the people doing the work. Widely praised, including outside the sex worker movement.
Gigolo
A Dutch-language novel about a man who lives off well-off women. This is just about the only Dutch novel about this profession, which means anyone searching in Dutch ends up here almost automatically. Worth it for that reason alone.
Bekentenissen van een gigolo
A Dutch translation of a gigolo memoir, about rich women, film stars, and what happens behind those doors. It is on the shelves of the public library, which makes it many readers’ first encounter without having to order anything.
Seksualiteit, intimiteit en hulpverlening
A Dutch standard work from the care and social-work programs, one that treats sexual services seriously instead of tucking them out of sight. Essential if you want to know how care professionals in the Netherlands view paid intimacy, and that view is more nuanced than you would think.
Chéri
An older courtesan and the much younger man she keeps, and whom she eventually has to let go. Colette wrote it more than a hundred years ago and it is still the most tender book about this kind of bond. The literary archetype of my work, and perfectly respectable to point to.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
A widow in Rome and the young man she pays for company. Williams writes the loneliness underneath it without making her ridiculous. Melancholy, short, and painfully familiar to anyone reaching for contact again after a loss.
Gigi
A girl is trained to be a courtesan and then decides she wants something else. The other side of the same economy as Chéri, lighter in tone, and made famous by the film adaptation.
Midnight Cowboy
A boy from Texas goes to New York to service rich women and finds out it doesn’t work that way. The novel behind the film, and harder than the film. About the illusions around this line of work, from someone who expected nothing from it.
When Someone You Love Is Kinky
The only book on this list written not for the kinkster but for the person who gets told. What do you say back, what do those words mean, and is this dangerous. From the same authors as the Topping and Bottoming pair, and just as warm in tone. Give this to a partner who has just learned something about you and doesn’t know what to do with it.
Hell on Wheels: Disabled Dominants
Kaldera and others on dominating with a body that won’t cooperate. What do you do when you use a wheelchair, when your energy runs out halfway through a scene, when chronic pain sets your schedule. The unspoken assumption in almost every other handbook is that your body simply does what you want, and this is the book that takes that assumption away.
Kneeling in Spirit
The mirror book to Hell on Wheels, this time written by submissives with a disability and by the people who own them. Blindness, MS, amputation, chronic pain, and everything in between. Written largely by the people involved themselves, which makes it more honest than a handbook about them.
not in the bol.com catalogue as of 3 August 2026 (available on Amazon, ISBN 9780982879450)
Just F*ck Me!
A short book by a woman, written for men who have become too polite. The core: she is asking for it, he doesn’t dare, and the two of them keep each other locked in a pattern that serves no one. Little subtlety, and that is exactly why it works for the audience it is meant for.
The Deviations series
Six volumes about two men and the bond they build together: Submission, Domination, Discipline, Bondage, Safe Words, Soft Limits. Taken seriously within the scene because the dynamic rings true and because the books grow with the relationship instead of stopping at the first scene. Almost all the BDSM romance on this list is straight; this is one of the few exceptions.
Power Exchange
Detective Gavin DeGrassi has to solve a murder in the BDSM scene and discovers something about himself along the way. A police thriller and an m/m romance at once. The second book goes a good deal further into the dark; the publisher warns about that explicitly.
bol.combol.com, part 2 (Consent)Amazon.nl
part 2 carries a publisher's content note about rape and violence
The Master's Manual: A Handbook of Erotic Dominance
Rinella wrote this for men who want to dominate and don’t know how to do it without turning into a caricature. Older work from the American leather scene, practical in setup, and still the book named most often when someone asks where a beginning dominant should start.
not in the bol.com catalogue as of 3 August 2026
Sexual Outsiders
Two therapists on kink from the consulting room: what people are looking for in it, what it does to them, and where care professionals get it wrong. Written for professionals but easy to read, and one of the few books that treats kink without having to defend or explain it away.
A Defense of Masochism
Phillips takes masochism away from psychiatry and treats it as a way of being in the world. She draws on literature, art, and philosophy rather than on case notes. A hundred and sixty-five pages, and of everything on this list the book that argues most sharply that there is nothing here to cure.
Sex With Shakespeare
Keenan discovered at age six that the idea of being spanked aroused her, and for decades she had no words for it. She writes her life through fourteen of Shakespeare’s plays. Funny, learned, and painful at the same time, and the best book there is on growing up with a fetish you can’t explain.
Master Han's Daughter
Everyone knows Midori from her rope book; this is her fiction. Cyberpunk in a future Tokyo, with power and desire as the engine. Unusual for this list, and interesting because you get to watch an educator write about what she normally teaches.
Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M
The collection that the lesbian SM movement began with, put together by the Samois collective in San Francisco. Stories alternating with technique and politics, a model half the genre has copied since. Historically the starting point for just about everything further down this list.
not in the bol.com catalogue as of 3 August 2026
The Bride Wore Black Leather... and he looked fabulous!
An etiquette guide for the scene, from before Playing Well With Others. How you behave at a party, what you do and don’t ask, and how you approach someone. Dated on the details, and still witty about the part that doesn’t change: people who don’t know how to behave.
not in the bol.com catalogue as of 3 August 2026
Family Jewels: A Guide to Male Genital Play and Torment
The only book that is entirely about this subject, with a lot of attention to anatomy and to what can really go wrong. From the Greenery catalogue, and like most titles from it: slim, practical, and without fuss.
not in the bol.com catalogue as of 3 August 2026
The Bullwhip Index
Dante is the world record holder in whip cracking and has been teaching it for decades. A reference on gear, technique, and safety, and the most recent title on a subject that otherwise mostly has old books written about it.
Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism
An academic collection in which psychologists and sociologists treat sadomasochism without framing it as a problem. It appeared in the years the research field turned, and has been cited in just about every scholarly piece on BDSM since.
not in the bol.com catalogue as of 3 August 2026
Urban Tantra
Tantra pried loose from the incense and the straight norm. Carrellas writes for people with a job, a small apartment, and little patience for ceremony, and explicitly brings queer bodies and kinky preferences into it. Of all the tantra books on this list, the least woo and the most usable.
bol.combol.com, audiobook (NL)Amazon.nl
Beste boek over tantra dat voor alle genders ook non conforming geschikt is.
Forrestwitch, bol.comThe New Art of Sexual Ecstasy
The book that put tantra on the map in the West. Anand translates a centuries-old practice into exercises two people can do at home: breathing, eye contact, slowing down. Nearly four hundred pages, and still the work the rest of this genre points back to.
The Heart of Tantric Sex
Richardson turns the usual picture on its head: not more arousal, but less. Her claim is that the chase for orgasm removes exactly the thing sex ought to be about. It first appeared as The Love Keys and then became her best-known book.
Tantric Orgasm for Women
Written for women who notice something is missing while technically nothing is wrong. Richardson builds her approach on relaxation rather than on stimulation, which runs against just about all the sex advice you read elsewhere.
Tantric Sex for Men
The male side of her work, written together with her partner. About erection without performance pressure, about slowing down, and about why hurry is the enemy. When a client asks what I actually do differently from a rushed lover, most of the answer is in this book.
Slow Sex
Richardson is called the founder of the slow sex movement, and this is the book that name comes from. Practically laid out, with exercises for couples who notice it has become routine without anything being wrong.
Tantra: de kunst van bewust beminnen
The classic Western tantra guide, translated into Dutch. The Muirs cover the sacred spot and the rituals around it, with a lot of attention to the conversation beforehand. Older work and dated in places, but it is the text most Dutch tantra teachers were trained on.
The Multi-Orgasmic Man
Taoist techniques for uncoupling orgasm from ejaculation, so a man can keep going where it would otherwise end. It sounds like a trick and it isn’t: it is breathing, pelvic floor, and attention. Still used as a foundational book in the tantra world.
Taoist Secrets of Love
Chia’s first and most technical book, about directing sexual energy through the body. Old-fashioned in its writing and fairly esoteric, and the source the more accessible titles later drew from.
Lingam Massage: Awakening Male Sexual Energy
The standard work on lingam massage: the tantric massage of the penis where the goal is emphatically not orgasm. Riedl has been training masseurs for decades and covers both the hand techniques and what comes loose emotionally, because with this massage that is more often the heart of it than the technique.
Conscious Sexuality and Tantric Massage: Yoni and Lingam Massage
Covers both sides in one book, with step-by-step instructions for anyone who wants to learn it themselves rather than just receive it. More recent than Riedl and more practical in setup, with less theory around it.
Erotische massage
Dutch-language, richly illustrated, and the most approachable book in this set. Stubbs covers the whole massage rather than only the genital part, which makes it usable for couples who have never done anything in this corner before.
Duidelijke tekst en tekeningen. Niets verhullend en toch niet pornografisch.
HenkNie, bol.comThe Blow Job Bible
Eighty-two techniques and positions, delivered as pdf modules with an audio version. Jameson writes for women who want to surprise their partner and find it embarrassing to ask. Technically exhaustive, with a lot of attention to pace, breathing, and the conversation around it. Watch what you are buying: this is a download product with a sale price that seems to be permanent, not a book you put on a shelf.
digital edition (pdf + mp3), only directly from badgirlsbible.com; not in bookstores and not on bol.com or Amazon
The other Bad Girls Bible editions
Besides The Blow Job Bible, Bad Girls Bible sells four other editions: on orgasm, on squirting, on dirty talk, and one aimed at men who want more to happen at home. Be honest about what this is: they are online courses with video and audio, not books, and they are sold with heavy marketing and struck-through prices. What lifts the level is the editorial team behind them. Alongside Jameson there is a clinical psychologist, a sexologist with a master’s in human sexuality, and a health educator with a doctorate, and you can tell from how well it is backed up.
Easy Orgasm SolutionSquirting MagicWild Dirty TalkHow To Turn Your Wife Into A Nymphomaniac
online courses, not books; sold only directly through badgirlsbible.com
The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio
The counterpart to She Comes First, and from a publisher that takes this genre seriously. Blue writes plainly and without giggling, with as much attention to what the giver gets out of it as to the receiver. For more than fifteen years the standard title on this subject.
Handboek voor meisjes
A Dutch-language document of more than a hundred pages, written by an anonymous dominant man for women with submission fantasies. Chapters on appearance, character, and what dominant men look for, plus fifty reader questions with answers. It has circulated free in the Dutch scene for years and is, for that exact reason, the first thing many people read about it. One author, one perspective, so read it as his opinion and not as the norm.
a free pdf by an anonymous author, never sold commercially; not to be confused with the same-titled children's book by Elisa van Spronsen
No book matches this combination. Turn off a label to see more again.