Magdalena the Sinner: Novel, A

Written with pace, humor and startling literary allusion, Lilian Faschinger's novel is the story of the sensual Magdalena, who, disguised in a nun's habit, kidnaps a priest at gunpoint and drives him in the sidecar of her Puch motorbike to a remote forest clearing where she ties him to a tree. What she is about to confess to him is profoundly shocking: All Magdalena wanted was to find true love. What she found instead was a string of lovers who each made the fatal mistake of disappointing her. From a Latin dance instructor who uses a metronome to help him keep his rhythm in bed to a Ukrainian who plays mental chess games at the gravesite of former grandmaster Alexander Alekhine, Magdalena's men all lost their lives when they no longer satisfied her; perishing by her hand through poison, drowning and incineration.

A head-on collision between Church and sex, Magdalena the Sinner interweaves highly charged erotica with modern views on Catholicism, feminism and the tensions between men and women.