Plot: An Englishman takes a job at a private school on a Greek island. Local millionaire stages elaborate, almost hallucinogenic, mind games.

Why it's on the list: Not since Zorba the Greek has an author captured the natural aphrodisiac of the Mediterranean. Everyone who read this wanted to meet someone like Conchis, the mysterious stranger who spared no expense to create sexual scripts -- ravishing twins, gods and goddesses -- for the self-absorbed hero. Way better than Club Med.

Excerpt: She hesitated, then turned, slipped her right arm round my waist, while I put my left one over her shoulder and drew her close against my side. Her left hand felt lower, all round my loins, caressed, lifted and let fall, touched; then silked its way up the shaft, gripped, gently squeezed. The fingers seemed inexperienced, afraid of hurting. I slid my own free hand down and gave hers a little lesson, then left it, and raised her head, found her mouth. I began to lose all sense of everything around us. There was nothing but her tongue, her pressed nakedness, the wet hair, the gentle rhythm of the underwater hand. I would have had it go on all night....

All night; but it was too erotic. She seemed to know by instinct that I no longer wanted her gentle; clung tighter, began to show herself less of a novice; and as I racked quietly beneath the water, she bent her head and bit into the side of my armpit, as if she too had had her orgasm, though only in the mind.