Top 10 sexy French books

Helena Frith Powell is the author of All You Need to Be Impossibly French: A Witty Investigation Into the Lives, Lusts, and Little Secrets of French Women and other books.

Back in 2005 she named a top ten list of "sexy French books" for the Guardian.

One title on her list:

Madame de by Louise de Vilmorin

Classic faux-brow, this is the book that French girls love to take seriously, even though it's nothing more than a story of adultery, written by the lover of Duff Cooper, British ambassador to France during the 1940s. When Cooper was away, Louise hunkered down with Diana, his wife. The smouldering passion between the fictitious ambassador and his mistress is a splendid example of Parisian society at its best and most snooty. Cooper himself did the English translation.

Read about Frith Powell's criteria for the list and another title on it.

--Marshal Zeringue