Since the 19th century, dolls have served as toys but also as objects of obsession, love, and lust. That century witnessed the emergence of the term "heterosexual" and of modern concepts of fetishism, perversity, and animism. Their convergence, and the demands of a growing consumer society resulted in a proliferation of waxworks, shop-window dummies, and customized love dolls, which also began to appear in art. Oskar Kokoschka commissioned a life-sized doll of his former lover Alma Mahler; Hans Bellmer crafted poupées; and Marcel Duchamp fabricated a nude figure in his environmental tableau Etant donnés. The Erotic Doll is the first book to explore men's complex relationships with such inanimate forms from historical, theoretical, and phenomenological perspectives. Challenging our commonsense grasp of the relations between persons and things, Marquard Smith examines these erotically charged human figures by interweaving art history, visual culture, gender, and sexuality studies with the medical humanities, offering startling insights into heterosexual masculinity and its discontents.

This scholarly study of the centuries-long history of fornicatory dolls examines the enduring obsession with creating an idealized, silent female sexual object and the manifestations of this desire through the ages in mythology, literature, art, philosophy and science. This particular sexual impulse has been expressed in a great variety of forms such as statues, mannequins, sex dolls, and gynoids (robots). In particular this study focuses on the evolution of the sex doll through its original incarnation as a sack cloth effigy, through the marketing of inflatable dolls, to the current elaborate cyber-technology figures, in an attempt to discover the hidden drives and desires which fuel this ongoing fantasy of creating a perfect, powerless, silent partner.

You'll love this new deluxe edition of an underground classic. Meet 37 outrageous, sexy, glamorous swinging singles and socialites at a fabulous Manhattan cocktail party hosted by "Aunt Mary." A parade of gay and lesbian stereotypes are trotted out in paper doll form for perusal in this reprint of the iconic, highly collectible Attitudes book first released by renown paper doll artist Tom Tierney in 1979. This new volume has been recreated, now in full color and with six new characters, to commemorate one of the early books in a long series of paper doll books for which Tierney has become famous. Enjoy hairdressers, movie stars, millionaires, models, drag queens, and others, each nearly naked in seductive loungerie, and with character appropriate clothing.

Most kids don't grow up wanting a dead-beat dad. Those kids don't understand how much worse it can truly be. How it feels to grow up wishing your father was a neglectful dead beat and not a living nightmare.I did. I do. And my safest place is to hide among the monsters. So, that's what I do. I blend into a sea of criminals and the depraved. Any of them are far better company than my father.It's been over two years I've stayed safe, over two years of keeping the balance, over two years of being someone else and living their life. Then he walks through the dark red lacquered doors of my hiding place. His eyes searching, probing, and knowing. Now, this temptation swirls on the tip of my tongue, teasing my taste buds, making me want to confess all my sins to a man who could punish me and free me in the most wonderfully worst ways.This isn't a romance. This isn't a love story.This is primal. This is raw. This is obsession.~*~ Doll Face is a dark erotic tale suitable for ages 18+. This contains DARK subjects. If you require trigger warnings, guaranteed HEAs, are easily turned off by dark subjects, or just have any hard 'limit/requirement for a story, this isn't the book for you (Check out The Falling Stars Series instead). If you like dark subjects, over the top obsessive controlling alpha males, and aren't afraid of how bloody love can truly get... Then enjoy. ~*~

Doll is celebrated cartoonist Guy Colwell's (Inner City Romance) darkly satirical take on patriarchal ownership, dehumanization, and sexual objectification. When an artist crafts a lifelike sex doll for a disfigured, middle-aged virgin, it soon takes a lurid life of its own. Like an erotic Frankenstein's monster, the mannequin brings out the basest instincts in each person it crosses paths with.

The #1 international bestseller and The New York Times Editor’s Choice “As lush as the novels of Kate Morton and Diane Setterfield, as exciting as The Alienist and Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, this exquisite literary thriller will intrigue book clubs and rivet fans of historical fiction.” —A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window “A lush, evocative Gothic.” —The New York Times Book Review “This terrifically exciting novel will jolt, thrill, and bewitch readers.” —Booklist, starred review Obsession is an art. In this “sharp, scary, gorgeously evocative tale of love, art, and obsession” (Paula Hawkins, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train), a beautiful young woman aspires to be an artist, while a man’s dark obsession may destroy her world forever. Obsession is an art. In 1850s London, the Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and, among the crowd watching the dazzling spectacle, two people meet by happenstance. For Iris, an arrestingly attractive aspiring artist, it is a brief and forgettable moment. But for Silas, a curiosity collector enchanted by all things strange and beautiful, the meeting marks a new beginning. When Iris is asked to model for Pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly, her world begins to expand beyond her wildest dreams—but she has no idea that evil is waiting in the shadows. Silas has only thought of one thing since that chance meeting, and his obsession is darkening by the day. “A lush, evocative Gothic” (The New York Times Book Review) that is “a perfect blend of froth and substance” (The Washington Post), The Doll Factory will haunt you long after you finish it and is perfect for fans of The Alienist, Drood, and Fingersmith.