Books Like 50 Shades of Grey: 10 Steamy Reads to Devour Next

Nobody reads Fifty Shades of Grey for the prose. People read it, and then read it again, for Christian Grey: young, absurdly rich, damaged in ways he will not explain, and utterly fixed on one inexperienced graduate who has no idea what she is walking into. Ana narrates in the first person, so you are inside her head for every negotiation over that contract, every flare of jealousy, every moment she decides she wants more of him than the arrangement allows. The sex is explicit, the emotions are enormous, and the chapters pull you along whether you approve of any of it or not.

So this list is built for that itch and nothing else. Every book here is an adult romance with the door wide open, a dominant, possessive hero who is used to getting his own way, and a heroine who changes him rather than the other way round. Most are the first book in a series, so you can start at the beginning and stay a while. A few dial the angst up, a couple swap it for laughs, and one keeps the heat on a slow burn; we say which is which. Strictly for grown-ups, all of it.

What to read after Fifty Shades of Grey

Bared to You by Sylvia Day

Eva Tramell starts a new job in Manhattan and walks straight into Gideon Cross, a young billionaire whose attention is immediate and total. Both of them are carrying serious damage from their pasts, and the book is about two people trying to build something honest while the sex is anything but restrained. It is the closest match to Fifty Shades we know, with a heroine who pushes back harder and a hero every bit as possessive, and it opens the Crossfire series.

This Man by Jodi Ellen Malpas

Interior designer Ava O'Shea turns up to quote for a job at a country manor outside London and meets its owner, Jesse Ward, who decides on the spot that she is his. He is intense, controlling and hiding something about both the house and himself, and Ava spends the book trying to work out why she cannot walk away. It is British, very explicit, and every bit as obsessive as Christian, and it is the first of a trilogy.