Erotica

Edited by performance artist Karen Finley and with an introduction by Richard Hell, Aroused runs the erotic gamut—fiction, drama, poems, essays and several pieces that defy categorization. (There are photos, too: director John Waters's offering is a series called "Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot.") The contributors—from Wallace Shawn, Mary Gaitskill and bell hooks to Annie Sprinkle, Lydia Lunch and Richard Lewis—are as diverse as the subject matter, which ranges from cybersex to autofellatio. Irreverent, hip, intelligent and frequently kinky, here is a welcome break from the one-note erotic anthologies that currently proliferate. (Thunder's Mouth, $17.95 paper 352p ISBN 1-56025-282-0; Dec.)

Lawrence Schimel's His Tongue is a collection of inventive erotic shorts focusing mainly on a cast of gay Manhattan men on the prowl. A young Jewish man attends a sex party with other members of his congregation in "The Minyan" (which helpfully includes a brief glossary); two neighbors form a sort of relationship by performing for one another in front of their windows in "Season's Greetings"; and "Frighten the Unicorns" finds a couple engaging in a bit of randy fun at the Cloisters. Safer sex issues are handled frankly, without lecturing, as the characters flex their libidos in backrooms, bathhouses and bedrooms. (Frog Ltd., $14.95 paper 160p ISBN 1-58394-04909; Nov.)