Paperback 360: The Big Bust / Ed Lacy (Pyramid X-2037)

Paperback 360: Pyramid X-2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Big Bust
Author: Ed Lacy
Cover artist: F. Pfeifer

Yours for: SOLD! (10/8/10)


Best things about this cover:

• [Insert joke about connection between title and woman's rack here]
• For a woman who's tied up, gagged, and carrying a tiny drowning man in her stomach, she's awfully concerned about those guys behind her. Lady, you've got your own problems.
• I have reluctantly tagged this post with "Redhead" label, though honestly I don't know what you call that color.

Best things about this back cover:

• Geek observation #227: "Supercharged" is just "surcharged" with "P.E." inside it. . .
• So the woman is like good pancakes. Well, who wouldn't want to tail that?
• If the boardwalk is "bikini-filled," does that mean the ocean is filled with naked women (who, presumably, all left their bikinis on the boardwalk)? I hope so.
• One of these paragraphs should immediately be countered with "That's what she said!"

Page 123~

Walter awoke me at one-fifteen and watching for snakes, back of a crumpling wall, I changed into the woolen underwear and rubber suit, Rhoda's $60,000 bra doubling as a jock strap.

[Speechless]

~RP

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Paperback 352: Me An' You / Jay Thomas Caldwell (Lion 220)

Paperback 352: Lion 220 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Me An' You
Author: Jay Thomas Caldwell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this front cover:

• "Grrr, Hulk hate ordinary kitchen chair. Prefer mid-century modern aesthetic. Grrrrrr... Hulk crush chair!"
• They promise a "two-fisted Negro," but I can see just the one fist. Rip-off.
• I think the white t-shirt was a late decision. Pretty sure he was originally depicted shirtless, but then censors were like "Dude, we're already pushing the interracial envelope on this one—put some clothes on the guy." Anyway, late-add would explain somewhat the remarkable definition visible even through the shirt.
• I love her bored expression: "What's shaking my chair? Oh, it's you ... I don't suppose you're a big shot yet?"
• Lots of telling details in this one—the liquor, the news headline, the pile of dirty dishes, and of course, the pervading aura of grime.
• I think I remember Robert Polito saying (in his Thompson bio) that Jay Thomas Caldwell was a black writer who died young, possibly in a bank hold-up. But I could be misremembering my details.

Best things about this back cover:

• Why in the world would you even get *on* "the long ladder of bitterness and bleak despair?" I imagine any direction on that thing is a bad one.
• I am a little worried about Irma.

Page 123~ (four pages from end of book)

"People I used to know in the fight game stop me on the street an' say, 'Tommy, I hear you're a preacher now.' Yes, I tell them. I'm workin' for the Lord now."

"AAAAmen!"

"Praise the LOOOrd!"

Well, I did not see that coming.

~RP

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Paperback 342: I Fear You Not / Ben Kerr (Popular Library 763)

Paperback 342: Popular Library 763 (PBO, 1956)

Title: I Fear You Not
Author: Ben Kerr (pseud. of William Ard)
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: Not For Sale

Best things about this cover:

• "C'mon, this is prime lady flesh. At $4.95 / lb. ... you're not gonna get a better price than that!"
• "Take My Wife... seriously, take her, she's drivin' me and my pal Barney here nuts!"
• "Hi, Steve? I'm just calling you from my bubble bath to tell you that I fear you not, OK? OK, bye."
• *He Bought Cops The Way He Bought Women ... With A Nice Dinner And A Little Sweet Talk*
• "Down I Go," HA ha.
• The exclamation point motif (continued, in spades, on the back cover) is Exquisite.

Best things about this back cover:

• Poor Rita: "Ok, I've got on a sweater, parka, overcoat, headscarf ... so how 'bout now?" "Nope, sorry, you still look naked." "Damn it!" "Maybe tweed will work. Try tweed."
• Poor Paul: It's hard to come out to your mom, on the phone, in the '50s.
• Poor Gloria: She just looks really, really stupid.

Page 123~

He watched dispassionately as her shadowy figure gathered up clothes and put them on. It was a lithe young figure, a pleasure to watch in motion, but its bloom was aborning."

Easy on the thesaurus work there, Yeats. "Aborning?!" As in "Your writing is 'aborning' me to tears?"

~RP

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Paperback 340: Youth Against Obscenity / Sharron Michelle as told to Rex Nevins (Saber Books 106)

Paperback 340: Saber Books SA-106 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Youth Against Obscenity
Author: Sharron Michelle as told to [!!!?] Rex Nevins
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25

Best things about this cover:

• All this female flesh and I'm somehow obsessed with the driftwood (!?)
• These ... I'm gonna say 'triplets' ... have very nice bodies but scary alien faces.
• Love the cross-legged guy—just havin' a cig, checkin' out the view...
• "As told to" is perhaps the richest, awesomest thing about this cover. "Mmm, authenticish."

Best things about this back cover:

• If you made it through that second sentence (let alone the whole description) with even a fingernail still clinging to the main idea, you're a better (wo)man than I am.
• How is this description simultaneously massively detailed and exceedingly vague?: Crusading against "something?" Selling photos to "a segment of the public?"
• "Of whom..." It's like an earnest 14-yr-old wrote this.

It should be said that there are hand-written / cursive marginalia all over this book—2nd page has the beginnings of a detailed synopsis (breaks off mid-sentence [!?]) and first page has one-line rating: "VVVG perhaps the best of my 30 books"—seriously, this book's owner Really liked this book. Like the person who wrote the back cover copy, this book's owner also comes across as an earnest 14-yr-old.

Page 123~

Danny looked at Betty again, only this time his eyes took in her hair, breasts, legs, and buttocks, all at once.

It's an well-seasoned leerer who can take in breasts *and* buttocks "at once."

~RP

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Paperback 331: 5:45 to Suburbia / Vin Packer (Gold Medal s731)

Paperback 331: Gold Medal s731 (PBO, 1958)

Title: 5:45 to Suburbia
Author: Vin Packer (pseud. of Marijane Meaker)
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50

This copy is SIGNED


Best things about this cover:

• Douchey salesman by day ... vampire by night.
• That is the color red seen only on 1950s/60s paperbacks. Looks like the work of Barye Phillips, but the book gives no credit.
• Love stories of tawdry goings-on in the suburbs. Post-war pop fiction kind of obsessed with the suburbs, as they were relatively new and probably put on a sanitized, happy air that made writers sick—i.e. easy pickins.

Best things about this back cover:

• One of the few back covers that makes me genuinely want to read the book. The language isn't just descriptive—it bounces: his wife's impeccable tweeds, her wicked martini, their daughter's (!) long legs, the phrase "hatchet man," all great. Even the language of addiction in the second paragraph is compelling, and timely—makes Charlie Gibson sound like a different species of Burroughs' "Junky." Mmm, '50s underbelly. Delicious.
• Despite the obvious opening, I'm finding it hard to make any good jokes about the name "Charlie Gibson" (a onetime prominent morning TV host, in case you didn't know).

Vin Packer is Marijane Meaker (also Ann Aldrich, for her explicitly lesbian writing; M.E. Kerr, for her young adult fiction). She is a really compelling literary figure and a very good writer. I recommend her memoir about her relationship with Patricia Highsmith. In doing some research on the Mattachine Society (for a future writing project on a different pulpy literary figure), I came across a bunch of stuff by and about Meaker—a controversial figure among some gay people. Apparently, not all of Meaker's gay characters (and the lesbians she chronicles in her non-fiction books) were "sympathetic" enough for some. Hurray for someone's caring more about giving a realistic and complex picture of humanity rather than sanitizing and enhaloing her characters in order to push a political agenda. I really want to meet this woman, who (last I checked) is still alive. I own close to a dozen of her books, many of them signed (I can only hope the sigs are authentic, as I didn't get them myself).

Page 123~

"Very simple, boss—the child's in love with you."
"Hogwash!" Bruce Cadence snorted. "I'm old enough to be her father."
"That's the point." Keene laughed.
He waved and went out.

~RP

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Paperback 329: The Girls' Place / Saxon Craig (Evening Reader 1247)

Paperback 329: Evening Reader 1247 (PBO, 1966)

Title: The Girls' Place
Author: Saxon Craig
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• Joan Collins used to be Hot.
• The tops of those stockings suggest that the artist was planning on drawing a garter belt and then forgot/ran out of time—weirdly peaked.
• Top lady does not appear to be experiencing "Shame." That lower lady, though, yeesh. She's either wasted or sleeping or both. Or maybe she just lost a contact.
• Did you ever see "Sixteen Candles?" If so, do you remember when Jake's hot girlfriend gets sloshed and then gets her hair caught in a door jamb when Jake shuts the door on her, and she's just stuck sitting there until Jami Gertz and some other girl come over and cut her loose with a giant pair of scissors, and so she has a ridiculously huge swath of hair cut out of the back of her head? I think her character was based on the lower half of this cover.

Best things about this back cover:

• You had me at "Vixen..."
• Please, will one of you, this Halloween, dress up as "the witch in the leotards and the red pumps" from "The Girls' Place." It will mean so much to me. Take pictures.

Page 123~

In her world, love was hard to come by, and even Lasky's brutalizing love was better than nothing at all—even if it took form only as sexual expression.

Yeah, that wasn't so hot; let's try this:

Page 80~

But Pat refused to stop, and after a moment or two of trying to push the nurse away, she succumbed to the rise of her passion a second time. Groping blindly, she managed to get the fat nurse to turn so that their love could be enjoyed simultaneously, and though her body was foul smelling, the lovely brunette could not resist the temptation to indulge herself in the one thing that roused her more than anything else. And so they clung together there for many minutes, giving themselves up to the mutual enjoyment of each other, until finally they both found the release they sought.

Walking the fine line between sexy (lesbian nurse sex!) and gross ("foul smelling!?") ... Just be happy I spared you the part about how Jeanne "rocketed over the cliff of climax to plunge into the canyon of satisfied passion."

~RP

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Paperback 316: The Man Who Disappeared / Edgar Bohle (Dell 1013)

Paperback 316: Dell 1013 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Man Who Disappeared
Author: Edgar Bohle
Cover artist: Bill Rose

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Did someone throw a bocce ball through her window, 'cause I'm not buying that as a bullet hole. It's massive.
• Not thrilled with how they've cropped her. What the hell is she doing? Dancing? Hanging laundry? How am I supposed to feel the, you know, suspense, when she looks like she's putting away groceries?
• The Man Who Alternated Font Color

Best things about this back cover:

• This better end with Dick and Steve getting married.
• I'm pretty sure the guy in the silhouette just snapped his left ankle. It hurts even to look at it.

Page 123~

"Miss Halsey and I are going out to get her gas tank filled," Rupple said to him.

Nice euphemism from the improbably named "Rupple!"

~RP

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Paperback 307: Payment Deferred / C.S. Forester (Bantam 816)

Paperback 307: Bantam 816 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Payment Deferred
Author: C.S. Forester
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• The hot new sequel to "Interest Accrued," from the publishers who brought you "Expenses Deducted"
• "They're after me, Gladys! I know they are. You defer *one* payment and they sic the dogs on you. That's why I've put my throne by the window, so I can keep my eye ... hey! What's that? Is someone going through our trash? Oh. No, just a raccoon. Here, get me some more Red Bull, would ya? Gotta stay alert ..."
• I love her face — happy, like she's imagining what she'll do with his money when he's inevitably bumped off.

Best things about this back cover:

• "... will keep you chained to your chair..." — That's pretty vivid. "This book will perform such degrading acts of bondage upon you that you'll be forced to acknowledge its awesomeness."
• Hey, looks like the original hardcover features a guy looking out a window, too. I'll take the cover with the sexily murderous strawberry blonde any day of the week.

Page 123~

For once he was neither the hotel prisoner nor yet was he at home with his father. It was the transition stage. He spent his time deliciously, luxuriously.

Ah, the transition stage from hotel prisoner to home with father. Such a heady time in a young man's life.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 49

Title: The Frightened Wife (Dell D154, 1st ptg, 1955)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: William Rose

Yours for: $6

• Little known fact: when frightened, wives produce mysterious jagged white auras.
• I think she's rather beautiful. I especially love her hair, even if it is that weird, champagne-pink color that could only come from a bottle. A bottle from the '50s.

• I get that she was kind of a big deal, but "acknowledged first lady of American fiction?" That's pushing it. Unless this "fact" was simply "acknowledged" by some drunk guy at a Dell Publishing New Year's Eve party.

Page 123~

The detective slid the bottle into his pocket and changed the subject abruptly.

Now that's a sentence.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 41

Title: Catch a Killer (PB 940, 1st ptg, '53)
Author: Ursula Curtiss
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $5

• "Don't go in there! My Beanie Baby collection is in there! NO ONE GOES IN THERE!"
• When Jim asks for "lemon," you better give him lemon and not fucking canary if you want to live to see another day.
• "Murder? Again? But we had murder yesterday, and the day before that. I'm sick of murder. I want fishsticks."
• I'm worried about her fingers.
• Fear hand!

• OK, this is the worst reprise of a front cover Ever. Now he just looks like a staggering drunk who's got a door glued to his palm.
• "Jap!" How racist earthy!
  
• It is a little known fact that kangaroo babies are hatched from gigantic red spheres.

Page 123~

Sentry turned his head fractionally so that he met Cy's eyes, steady, probing, in a waiting face that now held no easy good humor at all.

I wish there were a "Horrible Adverb" contest I could enter "fractionally" in. Yeesh.

~RP

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Donations to the Collection: Lust Lodge

Title: Lust Lodge (Nightstand Books NB1621, 1962)
Author: Don Holliday
Cover artist: that guy who did so many of their covers ... whatsisname!

Happy Halloween! You're welcome.

• The Hand!! "Nice to meet you Mrs. ... I ... uh ..."
• X marks the spot, dang!
• Did they even plan to draw a guy into this shot originally? His sliver of head and Random Hand look like total (awesome) afterthoughts.
• I like her underwears. I choose to ignore the fact that she has Ronald McDonald hair.

• Yet another classic from the Absurd Two-Word Intro .../... Outro school of back cover writing.
• To say this is bad writing is really to give bad writing a worse name than it already has.
• Three "wantons" (counting front and back)! Plural, adjectival, possessive. That's gotta be a record.

Page 123~ (brace yourselves ...)

"Don't be melodramatic," she said, blowing smoke once more. It hung in a grey cloud above her, as though prognosticating a storm at the cloud. How symbolic I've become, Beverly thought, looking at the cloud.

As though doing a what at the where now?

~RP

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Paperback 291: The Maltese Falcon / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 268)

Paperback 291: Pocket Books 268 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Maltese Falcon
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Leo Manso / Stanley Meltzoff

Yours for: Hell no

The following is so self-evidently awesome that I refuse to sully it with my usual commentary:

Here's the original 1944 cover:



And now here's the cover of the DUST JACKET (you heard me) they issued several years later (this image went on to grace the cover of a later Permabooks edition)



Page 123:

"Morning, Sam. Set down and bite an egg." The hotel-detective stared at Spade's temple. "By God, somebody maced you plenty!"

~RP

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Paperback 288: Bianca in Black / Elizabeth Sax Rohmer (Airmont M3)

Paperback 288: Airmont Books M3 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Bianca in Black
Author: Elizabeth Sax Rohmer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: not for sale (gift of Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• First of all, if the cover is to be believed, then the bride wore navy. Second, it appears the bride also wore a wig the color of pink lemonade.
• If Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Sax Rohmer and Cornell Woolrich wrote a book together, it would be this book. In fact, I'm not convinced "Elizabeth Sax Rohmer" is a real person. Who gives his first name to his daughter as a middle name? Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was very big at the time this pb was published, and many of her book covers have this rain-streaked, pseudo-gothic look to them. Cornell Woolrich wrote "The Bride Wore Black," a great revenge story (though his greatest was probably Rendezvous in Black, one of my favoritest works of crime fiction of all time).
• "Bianca" means "white" in Italian. Cute.
• God, her neck is a hot mess. Looks like a colorful, irregular UPC (i.e. barcode).
• Doug Peterson gave me a bunch of campy old paperbacks when I saw him at a recent crossword tournament I attended. I'll be showcasing them all week. This is the first of four.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Now they're just patently, blatantly, shamelessly ripping off Cornell Woolrich (who wrote "The Bride Wore Black")
• "Internationally famous mannequin"!? More famous than that chick from the movie "Mannequin?"
• I wish the front cover had more "daring black swimsuit" and less "startling red-gold hair."

Page 123~

"Normally, Natalie has a very good brain."

~RP

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Paperbacks 284-287: The work of Clark Hulings

Sorry for missing Wednesday. First week of school had me a bit overwhelmed and I completely spaced. To make up for it — a glut of paperbacks. Four, to be precise, all featuring the cover art of Clark Hulings. I culled all the Hulings covers I had and scanned them at the request of someone producing an article on Hulings for Illustration magazine. Sadly, upon perusing the covers I have, there's no signature style that I can see, and no one cover that really makes you go 'wow.' They are all very typical mid '50s covers, but only "Savage Holiday" really gives Hulings a broad enough canvas to have a real artistic impact. The others crowd the cover with text and offer only tiny pictures — mostly free-floating heads. Cover for "Winesburg, Ohio" is about as dull and generic as they come. The clear WINner here is "The Brave, Bad Girls." Bold, bright design with fantastic background use of the familiar fedora'd and trenchcoated detective. Coincidentally (I assume), two of these covers deal with interracial themes.

Paperback 284: Lion Library 47 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Strange Barriers
Author: J. Vernon Shea (ed.)

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "Strange Fruit" + "Racial Barriers" = "Strange Barriers"
• Given the tagline, this cover is *very* disappointing. Where's the tumult, I ask!?
• These heads are drawn in different styles, to different scales, with different textures ... we get it, they're different! There's a "barrier." etc.
• Mark Schorer?

Best things about this back cover:

• "I'm enthralled by his jazz trumpeting, but his shirtless gun-toting just makes me howl with laughter."
• Man, I really, really wish I knew what was going on in that last panel.

Paperback 285: Avon T-86 (PBO!!!?, 1954)

Title: Savage Holiday
Author: Richard Wright

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Oh no, why is bed-headed Anthony Perkins attacking Lena Horne!?
• "I was just borrowing your Dick Tracy trenchcoat! I swear I was gonna put it back!"
• Love the random pseudo-japonesque pattern on those curtains.
• "I've made my decision, Steve. I choose the roses — not you."
• Her hands look very wrong — like she's got extra fingers or stubby fingers or fused fingers or something.

Best things about this back cover:

• The first and last time "The Yale Review" was used as a blurb on a paperback book.

Paperback 286: Signet 1304 (2nd ptg, 1956)

Title: Winesburg, Ohio
Author: Sherwood Anderson

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Breathe, damn you, breathe! Oh, why won't that doctor stop staring wistfully into the distance and get over here and help me!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Why is there no picture of "The girl who walked naked in the rain"!? Booooo!
• Thank god my neighbors "completely hide their private lives from" me. Barely repressed anger + miniature fainting couches (!?) = some crazy-ass !@#@ I don't need to know about.

Paperback 287: Perma Books M-3089 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Brave, Bad Girls
Author: Thomas B. Dewey

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Damned sticker pull!
• Red-on-yellow Totally makes this cover pop. Beautiful.
• Looove the expression on Girl 1 — nice, smug F@#$ You expression to complement the (in order) Just Woke Up, Meek and Scared, and Suicidally Depressed expressions of the others.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A Man! A Man, I say!"
• "A large pea?" — wtf? Like ... a marble? A dime? How big is a "large pea?" Are we talking freakishly, County-Fair-ribbon-winning large or what?
• Things Not To Say To A Lady You Just Met: "Just for tonight ... I wish you were seventeen."

Page 123~

• I was a friend of Karl Kadek's ("The Brave, Bold Girls")
• He took a cheap revolver from the case and began to wave it about. "You get out of here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any collar fasteners here!" ("Winesburg, Ohio")
• "On a Sunday morning?" There was a trace of scorn in his voice. "And what would he be doing barefooted?" ("Savage Holiday")
• Then he saw the hole in Jenny's side, right between the ribs. It was round, wet, red. ("Almos a Man" by Richard Wright —from "Strange Barriers")

Jenny is a mule, for the record.

~RP

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Paperback 280: The Female Man / Joanna Russ (Bantam Q8765)

Paperback 280: Bantam Q8765 (PBO, 1975)

Title: The Female Man
Author: Joanna Russ
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "See, you thought I was a woman, but under these boobs ... no, wait, under these boobs ..."
• You decide: crazy red hair that conveniently hides her (apparently faux) vagina? or monstrous red pubic hair that is attempting to eat her head?
• "Dad, this stripper is scaring me. Can we go home now?"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Reality Times 3" — sounds like a very bad educational / religious rap act.
• Passive voice cavalcade in that fourth sentence is setting my teeth on edge.
• Apparently a reference to Philip Wylie's "The Disappearance" meant something to someone at some point.

Page 123~

I want love. (she dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with her hands.)

Wow, they really screwed up her order.

~RP

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Paperback 272: Home Is The Sailor / Day Keene (Gold Medal 225)

Paperback 272: Gold Medal 225 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Home is the Sailor
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best thing about this cover:

• Someone needs to tell him that a captain's hat really does not go with pajama bottoms.
• She is hot in a tawdry bar slut kind of way. The upthrust boobs and hand-on-ass are particularly nice touches.
• I worry that his aggressive and thorny-looking patch of chest hair is going to chafe her delicate boob skin (I am now giggling aloud at the phrase "boob skin")
• She looks lusty, while he looks like he's going to vomit his last daiquiri right in her face.

Best things about this back cover:

• Why aren't guys named "Swede" anymore? Maybe because being named Swede has been shown to cause a remarkable increase in the likelihood that you will die in some miserable, noirish fashion (see Hemingway's "The Killers," for instance).
• Copy writer here is clearly a graduate of the Crappy Metaphor Institute. He seems to have minored in Redundancy (when you've already called her a "tempest," "hurricane" should not be your next go-to image).

Page 123~

That had been in the bar, in a booth, with Corliss sitting opposite me, looking cool and fresh and virginal in white, eating prime ribs au jus, urging me to eat; me unable to eat, nursing a fresh bottle of Bacardi.

Nothing more virginal than a white-clad lady daintily slurping her blood-red meat.

~RP

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Paperback 262: Too Hot to Hold / Day Keene (Gold Medal 931)

Paperback 262: Gold Medal 931 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Too Hot to Hold
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited, tho' there's something very McGinnisesque about that woman

Yours for: SOLD (7/23/09)


Best things about this cover:

• I Love This Cover. It's unusual and enigmatic and just oozes sophistication and coolness and mystery. I *want to know* what she is doing, where she is going, who's in the cab with her, all of it.
• Great Girl Art that isn't hyper-sexed. Great gams, great gloves, and Great Hair.
• "Death" is kind of anticlimactic after "torture." Not really shocking. Kind of the next logical step. Now "... leading men to soup ... and death!" That would be shocking.
• Sadly, this title has put the theme to Ghostbusters II in my head: "Too hot to handle / Too cold to hold / They're called the Ghostbusters and they're in control!" — Oh, Bobby Brown, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Best things about this back cover:

• If you like green/brown, or off-center typography, this is the cover for you.

Page 123~

Linda Lou stopped pretending and ran her hands over her flat body. She could be carrying the first of them now. The thought made her blush. After the way she'd acted, if it was possible for a woman to conceive more than once in a night, she probably had a whole family inside her.

You'll be relieved (maybe) to know that this passage is not directly related to the scene of abuse and torture (possible rape?) on the book's back cover. Still, though ... I'm kind of creeped out. "A whole family?" OB/Gyn: "Hey, there's a mom and dad, three kids and a dog in here. How'd that happen?"

~RP

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Paperback 252: Decisive Years / Marsha Bates (Fabian Z-100)

Paperback 252: Fabian Z-100 (PBO?, 1959?)

Title: Decisive Years
Author: Marsha Bates
Cover artist: uncredited (same guy did a LOT of the Fabian stuff — don't know his name)

Yours for: unavailable (property of "Paperback 250" Contest winner)


Best things about this cover:

• Check out their matching cigarette-holding stances, wrist baubles, and broken left ankles! Double your pleasure!
• "Just don't tell our dad, OK? The runny eggs have caused him disappointment enough for one morning. I mean ... well, just look at him."
• This title is Terrible — like a bad coming-of-age dramedy. "M*A*S*H" : "AfterM*A*S*H" :: "Wonder Years" : "Decisive Years"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Stop! Depression Time!"
• Those girls on the cover are 12 and 13 on what planet?
• AUDYNE = newest entry into "Laughable Names" Hall of Fame
• Oh, man, I can't wait to show you "EACH WON TWO": if you love clownish tales of drunk men dancing in drag at their wives' behest, then yes, "EACH WON TWO" "promises to be a story you'll want to read."
• I've just decided to move "EACH WON TWO" to the top of the list. Look for it as Paperback 253.

Page 123~

"Fine!" Charley said, angering me more. "Now, there's one other little item to take up here. It's about the relationship between Audyne and me. I'm only a foster uncle to her, and my responsibility's been only verbal and charitable."

Yuck. This book is starting to make "Lolita" look family-friendly.

~RP

Paperback 249: A Bit of Fluff / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F256)

Paperback 249: Midwood F256 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A Bit of Fluff
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $60


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the word you're searching for is "Dang ..."
• Paul Rader is possibly the best sleaze cover artist that ever was. He and Robert Maguire are like gods to me.
• I love how "Lesbian" is capitalized, like "Mason" or "Scientologist."
• Strategically placed towel means that I cannot see any bit of fluff.
• I absolutely love this cover — the color, the design, the steam, the casual nudity, all of it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh lesbians. Always with the careful soaping.

Page 123~

There it was again. Only it wasn't a slip this time. She was practically informing me that she was a Lesbian. But her tone was meek and humble — and I wasn't afraid of her any more, now that she knew her place.

Again, I say: Dang.

~RP

Announcement: Paperback 250 will go up on Wednesday. To celebrate this milestone ... a contest. It will be Twitter-related, but I will add a Luddite option for those of you who can't be bothered with Twitter. You'll see. I'm off to conscript some other people to help me judge the contest. Oh, the prize will be the book itself — Paperback 250. And it doesn't suck, as my paperbacks go.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 248: Murder Won't Out / Russel Crouse (Pennant Books P24)

Paperback 248: Pennant Books P24 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Murder Won't Out
Author: Russel Crouse (... and somewhere, a letter "L" runs free ...)
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• That's the French whoriest French whore that ever French whored her way from here to French Whoretown. Not sure how she ended up in NYC.
• "Tiny trashcans for sale! ... who will buy ze tiny trashcans? ... I call zem 'Can Cans' ... yes, zat is why I'm dressed like zis ... clevair, no?"
• After "Nights in Rodanthe," Diane Lane decided to start taking much darker roles.
  
• "Murder Will Out" is an old phrase — Chaucerian old — in case you weren't sure what the title was going for here.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Yes, but what's the book about?

Page 123~

It was no longer the Broadway of the Lombardy poplars and the convivial taverns. The trees had long since given way to lamp posts to light its darkest corner. The Great White Way, to coin a phrase, as somebody had once upon a time.

That passage starts out OK, but the wheels really come off in that last "sentence." "... as it were, so to speak, as they say ..."

~RP