The Lure of Dangerous Women [Kindle Edition]

Shanna Germain (Author)

Book Description

Dangerous women aren’t always the ones who carry guns and take down the bad guys. Sometimes, the most dangerous women are the ones we don’t even notice -- the sultry siren crooning in a smoky bar, the innocent young girl twirling in her summer dress, the soft-shoed nurse who helps the comatose.

In this collection, award-winning author Shanna Germain gathers seven of her darkest, lushest fantasy and horror stories about strong, smart women who know that danger is a matter of scale -- and of which side you happen to be standing on.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Shanna claims the titles of writer, editor, leximaven, girl geek, she-devil, vorpal blonde, and Schrödinger’s brat. Her poems, essays, short stories, and novellas have been widely published in places like Absinthe Literary Review, Best American Erotica, Best Gay Romance, Best Lesbian Erotica, Salon, Storyglossia, Subversion, and more. An Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute in Portland, OR, she has taught classes in writing, publishing, media, and photography at a wide variety of places. She’s even garnered an award here and there, including a Pushcart nomination, the Rauxa Prize for Erotic Poetry, and the C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship.

Product Details

• File Size: 252 KB
• Print Length: 130 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1938757033
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Wayzgoose Press (July 24, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B008P1228O
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,382 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Succumb to the Lure August 3, 2012

By noah mclaughlin

Format:Kindle Edition

The surface of things is deceiving. Seeming can hide beauty, pain or consuming power.

On the surface of it, "The Lure of Dangerous Women" is a trifling thing: seventy-odd simple pages filled with black symbols and white pages that we see every day. On the surface of it, this is the kind of thing that I barrel through in less than an hour. On the surface of it, this is simply another collection of short genre fiction of which there is an embarrassing surfeit. But this book is alive, a breathing, writhing thing that grips you with ever turn of the page, that entices you along like a pied piper. It is not a pleasant ride; it is terrifying and erotic, icy and scalding, messy and precise, all at once.

It took me three days to finish this book. I had to put it down every other story, surfacing to breathe. I had to walk away and let its characters talk to me some more, let the shadowy cling of their adventures become brittle so that I might brush it off and begin my next journey anew, without the weight of the their sexy, horrifying pull.

All of the women in these stories are dangerous in different ways. These are not all Ripleys and Amazons; they are not all sirens and femme fatales. Rather, they are fully-realized characters, at once sympathetic and wholly themselves. There is as much pain as power, and many of them are so strong as to push past simple binaries of dominance and submission (sexual, physical, political or otherwise) to offer themselves as sacrifice, or even just a part of themselves, for the good of others. There is no bowing involved, but a entirely honorable, uniquely powerful and self-possessed decision. These are the kinds of heroines we need more of....

A very thorough review might walk you step by step through each of the seven offerings, but I'd like to focus on a few highlights. "Trill" is a study in disturbing subtly, taking a familiar trope and turning upon itself. A dark version of the pied piper is only the starting point; it dips and weaves its song into dark and daring places that set the tone of this collection. "Seed" & "One Woman Town" are terrific examples of worlds that are at once alien and accessible, offering a fantastic reality with its own lexicon, its own culture and sets of ideas, but one that also immediately draws us in with both wonder and lust tinged with the fear of Germain's razor-sharp observation.

For it is Germain's style, flexible, expressive and keen, that ties all of these disparate tales together. Make no doubt, these are imaginative stories of terror that are equally very sexy; but they are also stylish bits of prose, a style that engages and engrosses, that pulls you in with a siren's song that can drown you.

Shanna Germain's latest collection is heartily recommended reading for those seeking something extraordinary. Bring your red wine for the libido, your teddy bear for your fear and your shotgun for protection. And even still, you will succumb to the Lure of Dangerous Women. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully dark, lyrical and disturbing, September 9, 2012

By Terrance Aldon Shaw

Format:Kindle Edition

Shanna Germain may well be among the most accomplished, consistently interesting, imaginative and original prose stylists in contemporary American fiction, transcending all considerations of genre. She is probably best known for her erotic short fiction, though much of that impressive oeuvre is scattered here and there throughout a vast uncharted nebula of anthologies and compilations. I first encountered her story "Smoke and Ashes" in the Susie-Bright-edited collection, "Bitten," and was immediately taken with Germain's gifts for atmosphere and pacing; form and proportion; and, not least, her striking command of what screenwriters sometimes call "the slow reveal." All these characteristics are very much on display in "The Lure of Dangerous Women," Germain's new and not-to-be-missed collection of seven short stories

This review must necessarily be framed in broad terms, as trying to synopsize any of these stories too closely would be to give away their hidden prizes and spoil the payoffs that make them so compelling in the first place. Suffice to say these are stories to be savored, reflected upon and dreamed about, returned to again and again; and always with that same quickening delight of first discovery. Germain's language is lithe and lyrical, prose ravished by poetry; dark fantasies turned on subtle lathes of light. Rare alchemy indeed; these tales are evocations of the elemental, drawn from the most exquisite strata of quantum possibility. The author captures those infinitesimal flashes of human experience--the unconsciously commonplace--drawing out what we know in our bones, yet could never express in anything less than music, at least until now.

Ms.... Germain is fearless in exploring the shadowy erotic impulses at the heart of some of our most chastely cherished legends (as in "Trill", the story that opens the collection). She does not blink when the disturbing logic of her premise is carried out to its inevitable, sometimes horrific conclusion ("Animal Instincts," "Trill," "Seed"). She can, with seeming effortlessness, conjure up new cultures and civilizations, as with the alien matriarchy of "Seed"--a strange through-the-looking-glass reflection of our own mores and assumptions about propriety--or the Old-West inflected wilderness of "One Woman Town," which seems to occupy the frontier between the epic wastelands of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger," and the wind-swept post-apocalyptic ruins of William Miller's "A Canticle for Liebowitz."

Critics more jaded than I might complain that there's nothing particularly revolutionary about this bending of myth and folklore through the well-worn prism of Jungian analysis. "Hasn't this sort of thing been done to death?" they may sniff. To which I would reply most emphatically, "not quite like this; seldom with this level of originality, and certainly never so beautifully or with such purely entertaining results."

Few writers employ the first person with such unassuming subtlety. Still fewer so easily break out of established genre patterns to create settings and characters with such consummate economy and soul-searing truth. Germain invites her readers to use their own imaginations in concert with hers. She does not assault our senses or insult our intelligence with bald declarative sentences or awkward backstory digressions. Her sense of timing is uncanny; the unhurried, almost seductive unfolding of plot; the artfully controlled "unwrapping" of essential detail. The stories take shape before our eyes as if viewed from over the shoulder of a master artist at work on a drawing; a single boldly sketched line is all it takes to define a whole new world; a few more delicate strokes of the pencil, a hint of shading, bring that world and its remarkable inhabitants to unforgettable life. We may, perhaps, be left guessing, pleasantly, at the end, having been given only enough information as our imaginations require to soar.

"The Lure of Dangerous Women" is recommended without reservation. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Seven mesmerizing traps August 13, 2012

By Ernesto I. Ramirez Gomez

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a collection of seven short dark fantasy and science fiction stories, each one absolutely different from the others except in a couple things: they are written exquisitely and everyone is enticing and addicting, drawing you forward into a powerful and dark embrace.

Personally, I am not often fan of first person stories, I understand the unique opportunities they offer and their strength is often their weakness. When the inner monologue stops moving the story forward and stops in loops inside the character's mind it can be bothersome, tiring. Here, can't complain at all, the first person brings a unique perspective for each story, keeping secrets and revealing them just in the right time.

I will try to tell you a little about them without giving too many spoilers, anyway the stories need to be truly experienced, and nothing I can say here will encompass all their dark beauty. I can only say that the notes at the end of the book explaining a little bit about the writing process of each of the stories is both priceless and enlightening for those of us who like to write.

*Trill* has a dark magic of its own, enticing and terrifying the reader into discovering the truth behind the musician and the power of his flutes.

*Seed* is simply a window into a very different society, where what is pleasure, what is privacy and taboo is completely different of our own, a view of the experience of said society as it compares with our own, or something akin to our own.

All the seven stories has a beauty of their own, still *Seeing stars* is my favorite for many reasons.... It shows a dystopic society where hedonism has reached a point where some practices have become so common than straight sex is the uncommon, and where for safety of those who are able to pay there are new services for those who want to experience things so exotic and so drastic that lives are at stake, and the perspective of one of the meds dedicated to keep them alive as she travels steps into a situation that might be too much above her head. But mostly I think I could see every scene in my mind and marvel at it, watching like a voyeur without guilt.

*Animal Instinct* is too personal and sensible, this in, many ways eludes me to describe; I can only say you need to read it and you will see and feel each scene as easily as I if you were there.

*One-Woman Town* is my second favorite, mostly because of its elements of so bizarre fantasy that I can do nothing else than to love this place and creatures, envying Shanna as how she as inspired in such marvel and terrors as she webs the story toward a conclusion that while you can try to guess it will still jump at you.

In *Forced-Expiration* Shanna captures her characters and the situation with a deep knowledge of the sensation, you can see it clearly as the life of one is escaping and you can only follow the main character as she tries to bring him back of the edge, her work absolutely necessary, but everyone around disliking the need of it. I have tried to write about this but Shanna captures it so easily that I can only admire her work.

*The Lure of Dangerous Women*... I have been there, and I have felt what the character felt, either seeing someone that was so brilliant than everyone blurred around her, or listening to something so beautiful or enticing that I needed to posses it. They are the lure of sirens, so powerful that make us forget about ourselves or others. And while others might be my favorites because of topic, this one I can feel connected completely.

I am only recommend you to read each story, tasting every character and every part and enjoy them for what they are. If they were chocolate they will be a dark one, with strong scene and so inviting in their flavor that you won't want to stop eating. Read more ›

More About the Author

Shanna Germain claims the titles of writer, editor, leximaven, girl geek, she-devil, vorpal blonde and Schrodinger's brat. Her short stories, essays, poems, novellas and more have appeared in hundreds of books and publications, including Best American Erotica, Best Bondage Erotica, Best Erotic Romance, Best Gay Romance, Triangulation, Salon, Storyglossia and more. Visit her online at www.shannagermain.com