Derek Parker: 16 books

Should a man be free to kill his adulterous wife? This is the most notorious trial for the most notorious crime of the eighteenth century. Count Guido Franceschini is accused of murdering his beautiful young wife Pompilia, said to have eloped with a handsome young priest. But did they actually commit...

Franz Liszt, the son of poor parents, became the sensational and enormously rich 'greatest pianist in the world'. Touring Europe unceasingly for seven years he was adored by the public - especially by women, who fainted at his good looks and flamboyant behaviour, collected his cigar butts...

Lord Byron was born in poverty, and remained in poverty for most of his life: money-lenders and other debtors paid for his luxurious life-style and his incessant womanizing. Famous overnight on the publishing of his poem 'Childe Harold', he became notorious for his affair with his half-sister...

When King Charles II was dying, the name of only one of his many mistresses was in his mind and on his lips: that of Nell Gwyn. Born in extreme poverty, forced to become a child prostitute, she went on the stage and became the most popular actress of the time until Charles took her into his bed, where...

John Donne rose from abject poverty to become Dean of St Pauls, and from being an unknown figure whose poetry was so erotic that it could only be circulated manuscript to being a distinguished man of the Church deeply uneasy to remember the sins of his youth. The confident of King James and King Charles,...

It would be difficult to write a dull book about the history of astrology: history is crammed with fascinating and amusing incidents, bizarre, stimulating, crazy, brilliant characters - from the astrologer who practically ruled the Roman Empire to the one who hid behind a curtain to spy on the birth...

All sex is here.Poetry has nothing to learn from prose, as far as eroticism and pornography are concerned. A glance through this book will prove that there’s no aspect of sex – straight, gay and anything in between - which isn’t given full rein: from dressing to undressing, from seduction to...

John Opie, a young artist, falls under suspicion when a teen-age boy he has been using as a model disappears. But this is only the start of a story which involves him in murder and suspense as he and his girl-field Penny discover that young Jonny has been kidnapped by a world-wife paedophile ring...

What is it about Silversands? The fact that the sun seemed always to shine down on the secluded beach? – the water so warm that it caresses your body like a soft, kindly hand? – the silver sand that gives the bay its name – sand which seems positively to invite you to stretch out on it as on...

Cora Pearl, born in Plymouth, England, rose to become the best-known and most highly paid courtesan in Paris during the richest years of the Second Empire. Introduced to sex at a boarding school in Boulogne, she discovered that not only did she enjoy it, but she could use it as a means of becoming...

While Paul, sailing back to Silversands from America on an ocean liner, enjoys the company of a black singer as skilled in sex as in jazz and with a body as smooth and sexy as the song she sings, Nicole teachers a young surfer other skills than simple balance, and finds that under his wet suit is a body that can give as good as it gets.

Silversands. Yes, it’s private, but this wonderful stretch of beach with its silver san and deep blue water somehow magicks everyone who sets foot on it: and the magic brings them sensual experiences which often change their lives. In this first episode Paul and Nicole, their adopted daughter Olivia...

V – Josh has become the official photographer to a small fashion house: one of the models, a beautiful but inexperienced young lady, needs an intimate adjustment to her pussy, and Josh’s old-fashioned razor is useful; he becomes besotted with her body, and she enjoys his introduction to the pleasures of sex.

Over a thousand prostitutes served in the Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, and it was a mark of great piety if a woman went there and coupled with a stranger. Sex was at the heart of life in ancient Greece, and so was the beauty of the human body – which was why completely naked servants served at...