Plot: A student bike messenger, big fan of the Story of O, explores S&M with well-mannered friend, who yearns to auction her off.

Why it's on the list: Published in 1995, this novel, written in response to a Take Back the Night/anti-porn demonstration, is the American twist on Story of O. Weatherfield, a San Franciscan woman, gives her own take on château porn and the seductiveness of submission. Where O was written from the third person (further reducing the heroine to an object), this first-person account of the same process bristles with wit: She describes two men in a double penetration scene as being so coordinated they must have rowed together in college.

Excerpt: The trainer held a small whip, which he mostly used for pointing and gesturing. He pointed to her and said, shortly but calmly, "Elizabeth. Mouth." Slowly, and with wonderful grace, she kneeled in front of him, holding her body so her mouth was perfectly in line to receive his cock.... I don't know how she judged the probable angle of his erection, but she put her open mouth six inches from his crotch, arching in a perfect curve from the small of her back to her neck, so that when he unzipped his fly, there she was, to the naked eye immobile as she received his cock down her throat and began to suck. You could tell, too, that her throat was wide open and relaxed and that she was breathing gently through her nose. Her eyes were wide open and serene. There was scattered applause.