Red Velvet and Absinthe - erotic book by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Jenny Swallows

Halloween isn't so far away that it's too early to start loading up the bookshelves, and of course it is never too late to have the pants scared off you. Especially if who (or what) ever is doing the scaring knows what to do once they're off. So welcome to Red Velvet and Absinthe, a collection of sexy supernatural stories that really is as good as its title suggests.

Strange thing about the supernatural. The number of people who claim not to believe in it has absolutely nothing to do with the number who want to (poll your friends if you don't believe me), which means you can enter this book with a head full of humbugs, and remain Ebeneezer Scrooge like through every manifestation you meet. But sooner or later, you'll come across one, which - well, it might not be as grisly as the ghost of Jacob Marley, but it will make a promise anyway, and you'll be hooked. And the earlier in the collection that happens, the longer you'll have to enjoy the sensations.

The usual erotic standbys are here, of course, the vampires who flit unseen through the dark, and the werewolves who howl unbidden at the door. But the treatment is never less than fascinating - whether it's the doctor who takes in a fresh lycan victim, presumably for the wild sex that will follow (Rose de Fer's opening "Snowlight Moonlight"), or the TV vampire that twists the unexpected in editor Mitzi Szereto's "The Blood Moon Kiss."

Even better, though, are the tales that step deeper into the arcane than that; the mythological deity chained in a cave until one of his keepers learns the lust that he personifies (Janine Ashbless, "Cover Him With Darkness"); the work of living art that stalks Anna Meadows' "Painted"; Charlotte Stein's frankly unsettling and so exquistely titled "Dolly".

Not every story here is up to those standards and one or two do stumble into cliche sooner than you would hope. But then again, not every ghost goes out of its way to be scary, and not every spectral hound is naturally hellbent on mayhem. The fifteen stories here offer you chills with your thrills regardless, and Giselle Renard's "Milady's Bath" will seriously keep you soapy for hours.