Reviews
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REVIEWS |
THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF AMBROSE HORNE
Local author, Chrissie Bentley, goes back in time across three books of short stories featuring everyone’s favorite erotic detective, Ambrose Horne!
The Erotic Adventures of Ambrose Horne
The Erotic Memoirs of Ambrose Horne
The Erotic Return of Ambrose Horne
With Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movie going gangbusters on the DVD circuit, there could be no better time to step back in time with another of Victorian England’s greatest detectives – although you will quickly discover that Ambrose Horne had a penchant for somewhat earthier pursuits than Holmes.
The brilliant creation of Philadelphia author Chrissie Bentley, Ambrose Horne is the sleuth that society calls upon to unravel the mysteries that delicacy and discretion dare not discuss with anybody else. Three volumes of his adventures – each containing five full-length stories – include such seemingly unfathomable puzzles as a mysteriously damaged stamp collection (“The Coagulated Conundrum”), a lost book of the Bible (“the Rediscovered Heresy”), a plague of ginger-haired children (“The Midnight Succubus”), and more. But behind those simple descriptions, and the deductive process that solves them, there lurk secrets and situations at which Holmes would have blanched before he even picked up his deerstalker.
Each of the stories is genuinely gripping, littered with both arcane historical observations and fascinating period trivia, and all pose genuine mysteries for the reader to attempt to solve alongside Horne. Where Bentley steps away from the detecting norm is in the sheer eroticism of her storytelling – anybody familiar with her other writings will already be aware of the full XXX impact that she brings to every tale, and Ambrose marches proudly to the same delirious drum.
From the genuinely idiosyncratic manner in which he contemplates the matter at hand, to the distinctly unconventional means by which he concludes every case, Horne’s adventures are exhilarating excursions into a world that is as far removed from the typical view of Victorian England as it is possible to journey. At the same time, however, it is very easy to believe that both Horne and his memoirs really are genuine survivors of an age in which the merest glimpse of a lady’s bare ankle was sufficient to morally bankrupt a passing gentleman, suppressed for so long that society itself had forgotten him. Now he is back and, needless to say, he discusses a lot more than mere ankles.
These three fantastic books are all available at : Xcite Books
Amy Hanson, Wilmington Examiner
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WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION
Breathtaking, breathless and brilliantly brazen, What I Did On My Summer Vacation is a vacation in its own right, 49 terrifically paced pages that set out their erotic agenda from the very outset (“if this is how they treat you in First Class, imagine what happens in Coach”), and are over far too quickly.
A New York businesswoman travels to the UK for two weeks of meetings, interspersed with some sightseeing around the Dickensian city of Rochester.
But it is what happens in and around those intentions that powers her story, and the sense that Dickens himself is overlooking and, in some way, approving of her activities adds a wry humor that is as captivating as it is arousing.
So we shift from the bedroom to the riverbank, from the top of an historic monument to the floor of a restaurant restroom (and let’s not forget the photographer’s studio at the end), and every encounter is presented with a vividness that is almost cinematic in delivery and execution.
It would be easy for this catalog of carnality to slip into either crudity or, even worse, repetition. But author Bentley, a veteran short story writer stepping into the longer form for the first time, maneuvers effortlessly around such pitfalls, both via the fluidity of her writing and the strength of her characterizations.
With only a few lines of description, her partners leap fully formed from the page, while their activities are detailed with both experienced expertise and the thrill of discovery. Her first encounter with a naked Englishman, for example, is laugh-out-loud priceless.
With just five chapters, What I Did On My Summer Vacation is as powerful, and certainly as incident-packed, as many books twice, three times its length. It certainly confirms Bentley’s place among today’s most exquisitely (and explicitly!) readable erotic authors, and leaves one yearning for her to turn her hand to a novel-length work.
TCM REVIEWS
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WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION
Chrissie is a woman who is taking a summer working vacation to England.
She meets Melissa and Martin, with a few other people along the way. She is thrilled to finally get to see the places her favorite author wrote about.
Melissa works in the same office as Chrissie and is happy to finally have some off. She helps her find her way to the hotel and around town. When a night out includes them getting to know one another. Martin is a local hard working man who gives Chrissie a tour of the small scenic village she visits briefly and gives her special privileges.
Chrissie has a great time enjoying herself in Europe, not only does she get to see places she dreamed about visiting, she gets to have some fun with Melissa and Martin, what a great vacation this turned out to be. Only one problem, How to write her report on what she did on her summer vacation!
What I Did On My Summer Vacation is a wonderful erotic contemporary. It is full of scenic views that make the reader feel like they are there, experiencing it for themselves. The secondary characters add to the plot backdrop and give the story depth. The book is full of adventure, and the sex sizzles. I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good erotic/contemporary story.
COFFEE TIME ROMANCE
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WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION
England – Present Day
When Chrissie Bentley gets the opportunity to head over to England on business, she decides to add a little pleasure to the mix with a mini-vacation between conferences. Work soon becomes the least of her interests though when there are so many other sights and people to enjoy. What did Chrissie do on her summer vacation? Or better yet, who did she do?
An irreverent account of an erotic vacation, WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION is a charming throwback to the first school assignments of our youth, with a decidedly adult flavor. Chrissie is an adventurous woman willing to try anything at least once. Check this out and see for yourself how her vacation went.
RRT REVIEWS
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NAUGHTY MIRANDA
In an age when erotic literature is either driving hard for mainstream respectability, or following its movie cousin’s dive into ever more extreme scenarios and brutality, Chrissie Bentley’s Naughty Miranda arrives to remind us that sometimes, erotica is just that erotic. Vividly so. Presented as the autobiography of a (presumably) fictional primetime TV star, a teenaged rival to the Jump Street and 90210 hits of the early 1990s, Naughty Miranda details the behind the scenes love life of its titular star, as she chafes against her TV role’s portrayal of herself as the ultimate all-American good girl. And it is no exaggeration to say that every chapter packs in more exquisite sexuality than many erotic novels muster over the course of their full length.
“Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” insists the book’s jacket, “but her men do,” and that should serve as ample description of Miranda’s sexual forte, as it plays out in exquisite (but never repetitive) fashion again and again. Whether hitch-hiking home after a disastrous vacation, playing Scrabble with her scriptwriter, or even attending her local book club, Naughty Miranda locates the sexual possibilities in every situation, then explores them in vivacious detail. Bentley writes from the hip, and pulls no punches. There is no fluffy romance to confuse Miranda’s motives, and no flowery analogies to disguise her intentions. She is just a girl who enjoys sex, and out of her enjoyment emerges one of the most deliciously explicit novels of the year so far.
TCM REVIEWS
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BELOW BLUE LONDON 
Not so much the tale of one city, as the saga of several, Below Blue London collects ten very different, but irrevocably inter-woven stories, each one set in a very different era, but all with the same locale in common, a patch of land in London’s east end where something happened. What, when and even why it was, we won’t discover until later… the book opens in the present day, then works its way back, a few decades at a time, to the early 1800s. Then it rockets precipitously forwards again, to an orbiting space station 25 years from now, looking down on the drowned remains of a globally warmed-up London. But the ruins still remember their heritage, just as they always have.
The first chapter, “Old Times,” sets the stage, as a young female journalist moves into a new development in what used to be London’s docklands, to find her room-mate, and their nights, disturbed by what can only be described as ripples from the past, the sight, sound and sensations of other people making love. Hungry to get to the bottom of the phenomenon, they trace the history of the area and, in so doing, build up a portrait of a society and culture that modern progress simply swept away, but which was far more alive than any world that replaced it.
Chapter two takes us back to the yuppie-fied 1980s, and the slow redevelopment of this so-historic area; chapter three to the horrors of the London blitz, and its destruction. And from thereon, every chapter in turns adds another layer of explanation to what we witnessed in the opening pages, and another layer of mystery as well. Names begin to recur, some of them the families that lived in the rabbit warren of streets that once covered the neighbourhood, others are simply visiting – a once legendary soccer player, winding down his career with the local club, a soon-to-be-legendary author, building up his… you will never consider Charles Dickens in the same light after reading this book. Or Thomas Nashe. The introduction to Below Blue London speaks briefly of a play that the famed Elizabethan playwright wrote and saw performed just once, and which was then suppressed for reasons unknown. Chapter Eight rediscovers it.
A happy hooker; a pious evangelist; a young girl spending her last night in London before travelling to India to marry her sweetheart; a gypsy queen and an African sorceress. All pass through these pages, a bright and brilliant cavalcade of exquisitely drawn figures who each leave such an impression on the so fertile soil around them that, even without the explicitly detailed sex that will probably be this book’s chief selling point, Below Blue London would be a masterful creation. With it, it emerges as one of the most spellbinding erotic novels of the year so far, and one that deserves an audience as vast as the panorama that it covers.
TCM REVIEWS
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Below Blue London
Philadelphia author Chrissie Bentley has been described as one of America’s foremost erotic writers and a visit to her website will show you why. But she also has a sound historical knowledge, and a firm grip on the supernatural, and it is these talents that raise Below Blue London so high.
Set in London’s docklands area over the course of 400 years, Bentley traces the story of a single plot of land as successive builders and developers transform it from a boggy wasteland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, through the private home of a wealthy professor, a rough dockside bar, a run-down curiosity shop, a sad and sordid slum, a bored housewife’s makeshift bordello, a bomb-site and, today, a luxury apartment building. And it is in the present day that the story begins, as two room mates discover they are sharing their home with a most peculiar presence – the spirit of raw sexuality.
At first, the story traces their efforts to discover more about their home; before looping back to explore the home itself, a dazzling parade of past residences and visitors, among whom author Charles Dickens is only the best-known. His involvement with the specters that haunt the site is simultaneously uproarious and arousing, and will almost certainly leave the reader reaching for some of Dickens’ own ghost stories. The subject matter may be very dissimilar, but not so the spell that the story weaves.
Characters are painted in vivid slashes of color and life, and fresh surprises unfold with as much explosive drama as the wartime bombs that shatter the house … and, indeed, the entire neighborhood… in 1940. And every one of them leaves its mark on the landscape, every one adds a whole new layer to the mystery.
Below Blue London is a ferociously erotic book, pulling no punches in either language or descriptions. But look beyond, or around, those attractions, and this is a story that will live long in your imagination.
This remarkable e-book is available through MojoCastle Press.
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GIRLS TALK (from the anthology Misbehaviour)
Like all girlfriends it is common to talk about your guy and your love life, but Chrissie is having decidedly un-girlfriend feelings for her friend.
The writer of the erotic, Jenny, takes it upon herself to plan a surprise for their mutual friend Martha.
They discuss using Chrissie’s boyfriend for the Martha experiment, but when he comes down with a nasty cold, Jenny finds them a replacement. Since Chrissie has no desire to cheat on her boyfriend with another man, she is thrilled to finally get to experiment somewhere else.
A little naughty and a whole ton of fun is the basis behind this sexy little story.
COFFEE TIME ROMANCE
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BLACK AND WHITE AND BLUE
by Dave Thompson. Introduction by Chrissie Bentley
Thirty-five years after its taboo-busting release, 1972′s Deep Throat is still the most iconic symbol of the adult film world. The movie raked in an unprecedented $25 million in theaters (unrivaled to this day for a pornographic film). It introduced fellatio into popular culture (paving the way for Bill and Monica). Perhaps most trenchant, it ushered in the modern age of porn cinema. Make no mistake, the present day, silicone-jiggly, multi-billion dollar porn industry owes much to director Gerald Damino’s erotic breakthrough. In many ways, Deep Throat was the beginning of porn as we know it.
Interesting, then, that author Dave Thompson opts to end his latest book, Black and White and Blue: Adult Cinema from the Victorian Age to the VCR, with the release of Deep Throat. Thompson tells the tale of what led up to the modern age of erotic cinema, surveying the fascinating, dark, backroom cultural history of stag films before the arrival of Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems. Black and White and Blue traces the earliest pornographic movies — grainy, silent, hardcore, contraband productions dating all the way back to the early 1900s. Thompson estimates that 1,500 to 1,700 American stag films (hardcore porn made before the late 1960s) still exist. It is likely, he posits, that a vast number of films either vanished due to the decay of time or were destroyed by the morality police. “It is only in recent years that society has become concerned with preserving every possible facet of its entertainment past,” writes Thompson. “No matter how worthless or sordid it may once have seemed.”
Thompson goes a long way in contributing to the cultural study of dirty movies. With a pedigree in rock music books (U2, David Bowie, Deep Purple), his latest, while ostensibly a scholarly dissertation on the history of stag films, is written with a certain punk aplomb. Black and White and Blue shines when Thompson tracks down and interviews the little old ladies who starred in the pictures of porn past and when he tells the story behind milestones in the genre’s history, such as the dubious achievement of the first golden shower captured on celluloid. While Black and White and Blue is not quite mainstream pop culture fare, neither is the subject it covers. Still, cultural historians will delight in Thompson’s tale, and hardcore porn purists will finally learn what set the stage for Deep Throat.
PLAYBOY
