I remember where and when I wrote the book, although I can’t say I recall much of the writing, or indeed of the book itself. It would have been in the late summer or fall of 1959.

A WOMAN MUST LOVE is #12 in the Collection of Classic Erotica, and it’s never been reissued since Midwood brought it out in 1960. Consequently I’ve just read it for the first time since I wrote it some 57 years ago.

Ah, yes. THE ADULTERATORS, the thrilling account of a couple of desperadoes whose violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act brought a nauseated nation to its knees, and—Oh, it’s THE ADULTERERS? Oh. Well, never mind.

So you’re unemployed, fresh off a construction crew in Albany, and standing on a Thruway ramp trying to thumb a ride, and a babe in a Cadillac convertible stops for you. Hey, these things happen.

You might be surprised to learn that back in 1961 Nightstand Books published an inquiry into the heartbreak of scoliosis, but—oh, hang on a minute. You say the title refers to characters who are not spinally but psychosexually bent? Oh. Well, never mind.

When I was sifting through copies of my pseudonymous erotic novels of the early 1960s, deciding which books to republish, HIGH SCHOOL SEX CLUB didn’t make the initial cut.

What’s the autobiography of a prostitute doing in the Collection of Classic Erotica?I asked myself this very question while weighing its suitability for the collection.

Two innocents fall prey to a woman whose beauty bewitches—and destroys

Back in the late 1950s and early '60s, when I was finding myself as a writer and producing a great quantity of books under pen names, some of the books I wrote were as much crime fiction as they were erotica.

It's a pleasure to be able to bring back CIRCLE OF SINNERS, which was both easy and enjoyable to write—and, I can but hope, to read.

Here you go—the first collaborative effort for Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall...with cover art by the great Paul Rader!

This is the third novel Donald E. Westlake and I did in collaboration, SIN HELLCAT, and I think it may have been the best of the three—but we didn't get to put a joint byline on it.