What do women think about when they think about sex? What do they secretly desire? What do they want? For this bold and insightful book, inspired by Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, Gillian Anderson collected the anonymous letters of hundreds of self-identifying women from around the world to gain a better understanding of women’s deepest, most intimate fantasies and fears, the kind of things that usually remain locked away until someone comes along with the key.

Gillian Anderson was just that person. In Want, she has carefully selected over a hundred of the best and most revealing of these erotically charged letters and arranged them for readers along with her own original essays. Here are women’s secret fantasies for safety and acceptance, for two partners or three partners (or more), for all genders, for watching or being watched, for finding release in complete abandon or satisfaction in submission, and for encounters with strangers or with someone they know. Uninhibited and at times shocking, Want is a riotous portrait of women’s imagination, need, and sexual diversity.