This is the passage that met my eyes: "People were fucking anywhere they could find a spot. I fucked three men at the same time on top of the green velvet cloth on a craps table while my cumdaddy feed [sic] his dick to two of the new sorors from the Nashville chapter. They were all on him and I thought they were about to come to blows over it because they were both being so damn greedy with the dick. Can't say I blame them though cause the brotha did have some good as dick."

What the fuck was this? I got a look at the cover, an illustration of three black women in lingerie that looked like some collaboration between Essence and the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog, and saw the title "The Sex Chronicles." Stopping off at Barnes & Noble, I got a copy. A "preview" section in the back of the book informed me that Zane had also written the novels "Addicted" and "Shame on It All." Her latest novel, "The Heat Seekers," came out in hardcover this past June.

Self-published until she was signed by Pocket Books, Zane is part of the group of African-American fiction writers, like Eric Jerome Dickey or Bebe Moore Campbell or Omar Tyree, who've emerged in the last few years to find an audience without substantial coverage from the white press or any recognition from white readers. Though you can't help seeing their books if you spend any time browsing Barnes & Noble or Borders, or if you live in a city and pay attention to what other people are reading on the subway or the bus. My copy of "The Sex Chronicles" even includes a section of testimonials from readers. "My Sister!" begins one. "I thank U for so eloquently documenting your thoughts on ebony erotica. More importantly, thank U my sister for validating and confirming that my desires are not freaky or degrading to personhood."

Erotica is too often divided between the cozy, comfy nonthreatening variety (the kind that treats even the hottest sex as if it were cuddling with your genitals) or the "dark, transgressive" kind that may turn us on but bears no relation to our actual sex lives.

Zane is the damnedest mix of libertine and prude. Explicit, raucous and profane sexual descriptions stud her prose, along with bromides on infidelity and homosexuality that would do any far right-winger proud. Maybe that combination of wildness with a safety net is part of her appeal. It's also what limits the sexual imagination she shows, even as she acknowledges the sexual hunger that can bedevil people in committed, monogamous relationships.

Zane, at heart, is a conventional romantic but she brings hot, explicit sex into familiar scenarios of middle-class life. She doesn't treat marriage as sexual death or write about how sexual desire ruins people's lives.

In her erotic stories, at least. Her novels are another story. It's not just that it's badly written or that, for slickness and sheer fun, she can't hold a candle to a born entertainer like Terry McMillan. It's that she turns preachy. "Addicted" is the story of a woman who marries her childhood sweetheart, finds he's a lousy, inhibited lover, and goes looking for sexual satisfaction elsewhere. That leads her (spoiler alert) into the arms of one man who's little better than a thug and another who turns out to be a serial killer. The climax includes revelations about Zoe, the heroine's childhood (and the childhood of her husband), the message of which seems to be that a strong sexual appetite is evidence of buried traumas of sexual abuse.