Paperback 981: Hangover House / Sax Rohmer (Graphic 78)

Paperback 981: Graphic 78 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Hangover House
Author: Sax Rohmer
Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6/10
Estimated value: $12-18

Best things about this cover:

• Dang. That's one bad hangover.
• The ever-so-delicate, blood red FEAR HAND
• The line and shape and color of her gown and gloves, truly exquisite
• Her molded plastic hair, however, yeeps.
• Fantastic eyebrows. She looks a lot like ... that actress ... from "Downton Abbey" ... Dockery? Mockery? Clockery? Yes, Dockery. Michelle Dockery. Tuesday Weld meets Michelle Dockery.
• Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you don't spend tomorrow in, well, the Hangover House.

Best things about this back cover:

• Usually gay. Screw your categories.
• Storm Kennedy LOL. Storm Kennedy, Porn Detective.
• Jeez, explain the plot more, why don't you? Ugh.

Page 123~

"Titles? Yes. Mrs. Muller was playing a published song of mine, last night—after the band had gone: Summer Is Winter When You're Not Around."

I Feel Like They've Taken My Dog to the Pound...
I'm Haunted by Demons Who Don't Make a Sound...
I've Run Your Dad's Company Into the Ground...

etc.

~RP

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Paperback 962: The Case of the Smoking Chimney / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 6014)

Paperback 962: Pocket Books 6014 (3rd ptg, 1960)

Title: The Case of the Smoking Chimney
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: [Charles Binger]

Estimated value: $8-10
Condition: 9/10

Best things about this cover:

• She's got something of the saloon about her.
• Those gloves are off-the-chart hot.
• So weird how they've given the curtains that hourglass shape. Actually, the longer I stare at the whole curtain scenario, the more it starts looking like ... something else entirely.
• Text is as if written on surface of invisible floating sphere. Strange.
• Most gigantic artist signature in cover art history and Of Course it gets cut off.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ooh, I like this. It's a great, simple, quick way of visually representing the Big Red Text.
• Sideeye!
• "The story they told was clear and obvious." No need to give you details. Your brain is doing fine providing those on its own.

Page 123~

"Well, you see it's this way," Gramps explained. "I've always been interested in crime stuff."

I feel you, Gramps.

~RP

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Paperback 937: Death of a Stray Cat / Jean Potts (Berkley G492)

Paperback 937: Berkley Medallion G492 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Death of a Stray Cat
Author: Jean Potts
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: $10-15 (condition: purrrfect) (sorrynotsorry)

Best things about this cover:

• Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, kitty kitty.
• I love how her chair is so dark you can't really see it, so it looks like she's kind of shimmying and dancing toward you in some kind of gothic version of The Twist. Let's call it the "Stray Cat Strut" (stillnotsorry!)
• What do you call that hairstyle, where it's a bouffant but with a kind of sinkhole up front? It's pretty glorious.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ooh, his and hers panting! You shouldn't have.
• Uh, safe word. We need a safe word up in here. Stat!
• Hmm, never heard of Jean Potts, or "Go, Lovely Rose," or this book. Anyone know if I'm missing anything?

Page 123~

"We gagged him because he kept talking dirty," said Gen.

This concludes the first meeting of "BDSM 4 Prudes"; please help yourself to mini-donuts and Sanka on your way out. See you next week.

~RP

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Paperback 896: Ecstasy Girl / Jack Woodford (Novel Library 2)

Paperback 896: Novel Library 2 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Ecstasy Girl
Author: Jack Woodford
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: ~$25

Best things about this cover:

• My armpits bring all the boys to the yard!
• Is that a cut-out or some kind of avant-garde necktie?
• "I'm hung down to here, baby." "Oh, Brad..."
• His hands are alarmingly tiny.

Best things about this back cover:

• I have decided that Handsome Gail Tanner's first name is Handsome so please don't tell me different.
• "Dropped an anatomic bomb!" That sounds both fun and grotesque.
• Ladies: if your earl does not provoke swoons, keep walking.

Page 123~

"Now, please, Miss Carter, please, don't excite yourself further." The station manager backed hastily away.

It's hard to back away hastily. You so often smash into things. Miss Carter's autoerotic adventures must have been truly startling.

~RP

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Paperback 892: Dark Laughter / Sherwood Anderson (Pocket Books 878)

Paperbacks 892: Pocket Books 878 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Dark Laughter
Author: Sherwood Anderson
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Her expression is somehow both lascivious and bored. It says "You … sure, you'll do."
• Maybe if you angle your boobs toward him just a little bit more, Lady Chatterley, he'll get the hint.
• The husband … is one of my favorite cover elements of all time. Without him, you've got a pretty typical paperback cover. With him, and his ham-sized pate and his spectacles and his "can't talk, reading" and his vibrant, shlubby boredom, this cover skyrockets to comedy. "What? Sure, fuck him, don't fuck him, whatever. I gotta check my stocks…"
• Reader Michael 5000 sent me this book. Since I hardly ever check my mail at school, I didn't discover this book until very recently. I had, very, very weirdly and coincidentally, checked out Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio that same week. Anyway, Michael sent along a nifty postcard with its own spot-on commentary:

And the back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• Who wrote that tagline, Douglas Sirk?
• Not "love as few men have ever loved," but "love as few men ever have time to love"—like that's the issue. "Damn my 6pm squash game! I could be LOVING right now, but nooooo…"
• "… when she saw Bruce Dudley  she knew physical desire for the first time." Uh … I challenge. That is simply not a plausible statement.

Page 123~

Being in Rose's apartment that night was, for all the people who had been there, a good deal like walking into a bedroom in which a woman lies naked. They had all felt that.

I really, really wish I … knew what the hell this meant.

~RP

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Paperback 887: Replenishing Jessica / Maxwell Bodenheim (Avon 191)

Paperback 887: Avon 191 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Replenishing Jessica
Author: Maxwell Bodenheim
Cover artist: [Phillips & Troeger / Troeger-Phillips]

Estimated value: $12-15

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• Let's see … how to replenish Jessica? Sure, I'd say FIVE MEN oughta do it.
• This appears to be the story of how the Flash got married, settled down, and got a steady job with an insurance company. "Is this what you wanted, baby?" he seems to ask.
• The most reliably informed reseller of vintage paperbacks on abebooks describes this book as a "SEX and HEROIN NOVEL," so … that's unexpected. And brings the total to two—two possible ways to replenish Jessica.
• The only reason I still attend crossword tournaments is so that Doug Peterson can slip me some vintage paperback contraband in a dingy little plastic bag. It's all quite (appropriately) sordid.

Best things about this back cover:

• Shakespeare looks dubious about the literary merits of the publishing enterprise to which he has affixed his mug.

Page 123~

"This new school does away with all of the old qualms and quandaries, and we can certainly accomplish more when we know that sex is, well, is only the violent servant that we've hired for purposes of recreation."

Actually, the violent servant you've hired is named Tony, and it'll be $300/hr.

~RP

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Paperback 879: Number One / John Dos Passos (Lion Library LL1)

Paperback 879: Lion Library LL1 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Number One
Author: John Dos Passos
Cover artist: Robert Schulz

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• When you start shooting up bourbon, your friends naturally get a bit concerned.
• He's right to be freaked out. If you look at her left hand too long, you too will begin to get the creeping sense that she's an ALIEN, MAN.
• Pee. This book is about pee. You don't want to read the sequel.
• Clever bit of publishing here on Lion Library's part. This is the first (i.e. Number One) book to come out under the Lion Library imprint.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Why is there a ladybug in here!? Who authorized this?! I'm gonna swat it, so help me …!"
• "There's no floor here! No floor! It just … stops." "Er, it's a stage, sir, that's what stages do." "I don't care, someone should've told me, Brian! You're fired!"
• John Dos Passos came to earth to study curious earthling types.

Page 123~

As he looked out through the glass doors of the phone booth at the bustle of dressy people, men in sportsclothes with cigars, frilly stoutish women with skittish hats, pretty girls in long evening dresses, young men out to have themselves a time, he felt an invisible sour smoke swirling between them and him.

I mistyped several words while transcribing this. Every time I looked to see what I'd screwed up, I was like "Yeah, that's better." This passage crystallizes noir—"good times" seen at a sad, knowing, alienated remove. Deromanticized. Surface appearances all revealed as desperate posturing. This is Don Draper just before he goes "fuck it" and just takes off across the country in his Caddy.

~RP

PS check out that "SCHULZ" signature, etched right into the side of the damned table. I always did love how he made his signature part of the three-dimensional world of the painting.

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Paperback 810: The Intimate Stranger / William Lynch (Lion Books 25)

Paperback 810: Lion Books 25 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Intimate Stranger
Author: William Lynch
Cover artist: Woodi (Ishmael)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "No … not the dress strap … alright, alright, I give. I'll murder someone."
• Melissa's lessons in "how to use furniture" were long and grueling.
• I genuinely like her whole get-up. 
• The Erotic Awakening of Ward Cleaver.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, there's your first problem, lady. You gotta offer yourself to one of them there sane guys.
• "He was an artist … you know how they are."
• Green polka dots are my new favorite back cover design concept.

Page 123~

The underbrush scraped her bare legs, leaving torn, painful weals, sometimes tearing away filings of flesh and her hands were sore and torn with the constant grasping of bushes for support.

That is a manifestly terrible sentence, on several levels, and yet I kinda wish the book were titled "Filings of Flesh."

~RP

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Paperback 807: Night Has 1,000 Eyes / William Irish (George Hopley) (Cornell Woolrich) (Dell 679)

Paperback 807: Dell 679 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Night Has 1000 Eyes
Author: Cornell Woolrich, writing as William Irish, writing as George Hopley
Cover artist: Tommy Shoemaker

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Pretty classic stuff here—from the highly regarded suspense / crime writer so prolific his pseudonyms had pseudonyms, to the sensational paranoid title, to the panicked sideglance of our barefoot bridge walker. This book is the broken, bruised, beating heart of the vintage paperback era.
• Book is warped and well read, but tight and complete. The collector in me likes a fine copy, but the pulp enthusiast in me loves a book in distress.
• I really want to capitalize "has" and put a comma in that "1000."
• I see your "Thriller" and raise you to "SUPER-THRILLER"!

Best things about this back cover:

• Mostly dull, but I like the way the left margin follows the contours of the moon.
• Whoa. "1000" has become "a THOUSAND"! This *is* super-thrilling!
• Everything in red is balderdash. Fantastic, turgid, red balderdash.

Page 123~

I don't know what my lips said, but my heart said to him, it's human not to be able to bear knowing when you are to die.

I often don't know what my lips said.

~RP

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Paperback 751: The Oddballs / Stacey Clubb (Softcover Library B853X)

Paperback 751: Softcover Library B853X (PBO, 1965)

Title: The Oddballs
Author: Stacey Clubb
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: Not For Sale—part of the Doug Peterson Collection


Best things about this cover:

• "I don't think they're so odd," he said, self-consciously.
• So many questions. Such as, where has her right arm got to? Or, why their bed is a parallelogram?
• Remember the fad of wearing two differently colored stockings!? Me either.
• "You awake? … tickle tickle! … alright then, I'm just going to remove your head with my jaws now, OK? Just relax."
• "The only practical sex was unnatural sex!" — Having trouble understanding the use of the word "practical" here. "Well, see, I would just put my penis in your vagina, but … it's really not practical for me ... right now … at this juncture … you know? So, let's just bring in the elephant and the mustard and see how it goes, mkay? It's just easier that way."

Best things about this back cover:

• Shadowy = Lesbiany. In case you're unfamiliar with paperback code.
• INA, ha ha! Calling all crossword constructors, we got a live one!
• I want a business card that reads "Encourager of odd rites and practices."

Page 123~

The sting of his blow had not penetrated.

Nope, sorry, that was just the first thing I opened to. Hang on … OK, here we go:

"Bernice," he called out.

But the bikini-clad goddess who appeared casually at the top of the mezzanine stairs in response to his blithe summons was not, of course, Bernice.

If ever there was a name custom-made for softcore porn, that name is Blithe Summons.

~RP

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Paperback 750: Exotic Sinner / Shep Sheppard (Bedtime Books 953)

Paperback 750: Bedtime Books 953 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Exotic Sinner
Author: Shep Sheppard
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: Not For Sale—part of the Doug Peterson Collection

Another crossword puzzle tournament, another generous paperback donation from Mr. Doug Peterson. Let's see what he brought:


Best things about this cover:

• Because domestic sinners are not in season.
• Welcome to … The Purplest Room.
• "And introducing … antique chair!"
• I can't believe a woman that hot could talk that stupid to a guy that gee-whizzical.
• I love her dress so much I can't even tell you. 
• This exotic sinner has a cute, girl-next-door vibe that I am finding quite adorable. 
• I think Shep Sheppard *might* be a pen name.

Best things about this back cover:

• Um, I think you mean "locale." 
• Um, I think you mean "wastrels." No, wait—a "wastel" is "a kind of white and fine bread or cake," so … maybe "wastels"?

Page 123~

Suddenly out where the barracuda had last jumped she saw the dorsal fin of a requiem shark.

Just in case you thought you knew what this book was about.

~RP

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Paperback 741: Lady in Peril / Lester Dent // Wired for Scandal / Floyd Wallace (Ace Double D-357)

Paperback 741: Ace D-357 (PBO /PBO?)

Title: Lady in Peril / Wired for Scandal
Author: Lester Dent / Floyd Wallace
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• Nice, ominous, off-kilter, killer-POV shot. 
• She has incredibly good posture for someone about to be brutally murdered. Style points for erect bearing and dramatic hand placement.
• This painting is like a giant metaphor for "No Means No"—What part of "Do Not Enter" do you not understand!?
• Lester Dent helped create the pulp hero Doc Savage.

Best things about this other cover:

• LOVE the design on this one. Strategic bursts of red against a semi-abstract green/white background. Nice variation on the floating head motif. Green rectangle with the tagline "Tune In And Die" brings balance and drama. 
• Those guys are amazing dancers. Shake those hips, boys!
• I kind of dress like the victim but I secretly aspire to dress like the killer.

Page 123~

"Can I look around?"
"Look, but keep your prints to yourself."
"I left some last night."

"If you know what I mean…"

~RP

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Paperback 715: TCOT Perjured Parrot / Erle Stanley Gardner (Cardinal C-379)

Paperback 715: Cardinal C-379 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: The Case of the Perjured Parrot
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Ric Grasso

Yours for: $8


Best things about this back cover:

• Woman distraught over loss of parrot attempts suicide by costume jewelry, gets tired, quits.
• "Maybe if I just lean here sultrily, my parrot will just fly back in the window."
• I unironically love her dress.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wait, I can't see Perry, WHERE'S PERRY!? Oh, there he is. Phew. Thanks, Giant Red Arrow.
• Not often you see the phrase "collection of guns at the public library." At least not where I'm from.
• Remember when people watched scripted television on Saturdays!? Good times.

Page 123~

"You're putting me in a very difficult position, Mason," Bolding said irritably.
Mason's voice showed surprise. "I am? Why, I thought you'd put yourself in it."

Perry Mason, Smug Dickhead-at-Law

~RP

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P.S. This is one of 97 paperbacks I bought yesterday at the University Book Sale. "Bingeing" doesn't really get at it.