The Romantic Naiad: Love Stories by Naiad Press Authors - Softcover

This new harvest of lesbian love stories is just what it appears to be. The stories don't pretend to be cerebral or dense, and they won't take any literary prizes. Ephemeral flights of fantasy, they leave a ring of light around the edge after the inside image disappears. A couple of stories stand out from the predictable pack for their graceful, fluid writing. Lori Paige's "The Poet's Descendant" concerns a graduate student who does research in England on a minor 18th-century poet, while Nancy Tyler Glynn's "Curiosities and Surprises" examines the attraction between two women who work in an advertising agency. Love scenes, though veering toward the graphic, are not vulgar, and if love interests turn up in the cemetery (or around every grocery store aisle), it only proves that proximity can play a major role in kindling a romance. Though the writing is less than dazzling, this book will appeal to many readers only too anxious to gobble up love stories from the variety of authors included here. As a complement to The Erotic Naiad (Naiad, 1992), and where demand is high, this book will fill a need.
- Lisa Nussbaum, Euclid P . L . , Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Erotica as a genre really has yet to be defined, so this anthology--more of what was offered in last year's Erotic Naiad--is as hard to pin down as an invisible butterfly. Twenty-seven authors from the Naiad stable offer contributions varying from the saccharine to the succulent. Since sex scenes are de rigueur in Naiad fiction, it's not surprising that the mystery writers are second in number only to the romance grinders. Accordingly, sleuthers Diane Salvatore, Nikki Baker, Lee Lynch, Jaye Maiman, and Lauren Wright Douglas purvey their craft. Pleasant surprises come from Carol Schmidt and Dorothy Tell, and the expected dripping prose from Naiad's big gun in lesbian erotica, Robbi Sommers. Athough there's not much here to challenge fans of Ana{‹}is Nin, what is here is on a par with a Playboy reader. Marie Kuda