Paperback 266: Hill Girl / Charles Williams (Gold Medal 141)

Paperback 266: Gold Medal 141 (PBO, 1951)

Title: Hill Girl
Author: Charles Williams
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• This is my nominee for "Most Phallic Gun Ever"
• "Maybe if I just sidle along this wall *very* slowly, that yokel standing four feet in front of me won't see me ..."
• Tori Spelling is ... Hill Girl!
• Guy in background: "Excuse me, I was just On The Road and I was wondering if ... oh, I see you're having some kind of altercation or mating ritual ... I'll just move along."
• This book is credited as "the first original paperback" by Jim Silke (Dames, Dolls & Gun Molls: The Art of Robert A. Maguire). But ... there are 40 Gold Medal pbs published before this one, almost all of them paperback originals (as far as I can tell). So ... I was confused by the claim. Maybe it's the first paperback to say, on the cover, "an original novel — not a reprint"? The wikipedia entry for "Gold Medal" confirms that it was publishing original paperbacks in 1950.
• Here's a nice write-up of Charles Williams by Bill Crider.

Best things about this back cover:

• I like back cover copy that gets right to the point.
• Who is "I" in this scenario?

Page 123~

The flowers were there in the room when we came in. She put her arms around my neck and pulled down hard, with the way she had, like a drowning swimmer, and with her lips against my ear she whispered fiercely, "Hold me tight like this, Bob. Don't ever let me go." [end of chapter]

~RP

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Paperback 64: Hill Girl / Charles Williams (Gold Medal s1138)

Paperback 64: Gold Medal s1138 (9th, 1961)
Title: Hill Girl
Author: Charles Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• Ponderosa pine!
• I didn't know creepy, hunched-over, wraith-like men could have such slick rockabilly haircuts.
• Is this woman:

a. doing hillbilly calisthenics?
b. looking for her hillbilly contact lens?
c. disappointed at her inability to make a sandcastle out of hillbilly dirt? OR
d. holding perfectly still in the hopes that the elderly zombie behind her will mistake her for a pig trough and walk on by?

This book is in near perfect condition. Tiniest crease on the back cover, but otherwise, unread and extremely well preserved (why else would I buy a 9th printing, for god's sake?). This novel is by a more- than- respectable writer, though it appears to be trying to bank on the strange vogue in hillbilly sex stories that Erskine Caldwell somehow set in motion. Caldwell's novels were about much more than sex, but you'd never know it by looking at most of his paperback covers (you'll see his work in future write-ups).


Best things about this back cover:

• I love how, out of nowhere, this guy's shirt attacks him.
• You gotta love a book that's so willing turn underwear-free poverty into something steamy.

RP

Paperback 36: Gold Medal K1344

Paperback 36: Gold Medal K1344 (3rd ptg, 1963)

Title: Go Home, Stranger
Author: Charles Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited

SOLD 9/18/10

"Back off, ladies! This shirtless swamp drunk is mine!"

Or, how 'bout:

"Go home, stranger! - or I'll drag your shirtless ass home!"

Why not invent your own caption and / or imaginary dialogue.

RP