“Poets confirm what cynical psychologists say: there’s one person we’re destined to love, and if we ever meet that paramour, we’re done for,” writes author and poet John Wareham as he leads us on a delightfully delirious journey of lovers grasped in the clutch of stolen passion in SONNETS FOR SINNERS: Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love (Welcome Rain, February 14, 2010, $14.95).

Like a fiery habanera pepper, this tiny tome packs a huge wallop as Wareham introduces us to historical sinners and the stages of their desire. “Love leads the heart astray but lust enters below the belt and takes command of absolutely everything,” he writes as he examines the initial attraction phase. Dire warnings prevail as William Shakespeare cautions of the madness of lust and poet Elan Haverford weaves a web of seduction’s lies.

In the chapter “Fever” Wareham warns that, “The delirium must take its course.” And what a course it is – Chandler Haste compares the cravings of parted lovers to cocaine addiction in “White Lady.” Oscar Wilde’s own beloved Lord Alfred Douglas faces the scorn of ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ in “Shame.”

Celebrity poets enter the fray as Wareham moves on to “Endings.” Drawn from their actual words and set into sonnet, the late Princess Diana reveals the torture of being the third wheel in her own marriage in “Hearts.” John Edwards glibly dismisses his own “Secrets and Lies” and Elizabeth Edwards reveals her own ambivalence, striking at the heart in “Rings.”

Choices in “Epiphanies” come with a heavy price as Edna St. Vincent Millay observes “I only know a summer sang in me a little while, that in me sings no more.” But Oscar Wilde reminds us that life is nothing without “the red fire of passion.”

It is only the greatest passions that are worth such a price. “If tortured to reveal a vital secret, no captive terrorist could withstand the level of pain that sinning lovers routinely inflict upon each other,” Wareham reminds us. SONNETS FOR SINNERS reveals them all. Even the most faithful of lovers will add a spicy tang to their Valentine’s Day celebration by sharing the sinfully delicious SONNETS FOR SINNERS.