LS Hilton’s mail routinely turns up missives from fawning 89-year-old men, young professionals and “loads of nutters”. The British author amassed a vast and varied fan base when Maestra (Bloomsbury, 2016), the first part of her sexy, sinuous trilogy, was published. It tells the story of Judith Rashleigh, an ambitious Londoner and auction house employee who embarks on a killing spree after landing herself in a high-stakes art scandal. It won little love from critics, but was devoured by readers—and swiftly optioned for a movie adaptation too. The Oxford graduate has previously published historical non-fiction, which, she says, offered enough disturbing sex and violence to inspire Maestra. “The novel was an extension of what I was doing. I’ve always been interested in transgressive women—those who were not bound by the role their gender assigned them,” says the 42-year-old.
“I wanted to write about a millennial woman, a product of the Tinder generation. I wanted to write about sex in a way that was modern and realistic. Domina (Bloomsbury; out now), the follow-up to Maestra, is a similarly enslaving fix of gripping twists, glamorous fashion, art history and dangerous sex with a terribly high body count. For readers grudging the year-long wait for the concluding part of the trilogy, Hilton offers some of her favourite reads from
the genre to tide you over.
LS Hilton’s picks of racy reads:
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