Paperback 866: African Poison Murders / Elspeth Huxley (Popular Library 100)

Paperback 866: Popular Library 100 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: African Poison Murders
Author: Elspeth Huxley
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $12-17

Best things about this cover:

• "Here, African. Put this on. That's better." Hashtag racist.
• Actually, maybe the green guy is a sick European. He looks like a 17th-century actor who has eaten some bad mutton.
• If you stare too long at that foreshortened thumb, you will begin to get queasy. It's… not right. Kind of like the relationship between green head and blue body. Not right at all.

Best things about this back cover:

• Read that second sentence as "Feces were smashed." Was briefly intrigued.
• A "native boy" wrapped in "baling wire." Hmm. That's a bit on the nose, as Slave-Trade metaphors go.
• This book should've been called "Leopard Trap!" That, or "All's Veld That Ends Veld."

Page 123~

"It is the way of Europeans," the house-boy said philosophically.

"You gotta read a lot of Kant to deal with these motherfuckers," he added.

~RP

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Paperback 848: Appointment with Death / Agatha Christie (Dell 105)

Paperback 848: Dell 105 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Appointment with Death
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Estimated value: $15-25


Best things about this cover:

• "Where have you been? You're late. We had an appointment. [Sigh]. I guess we can get coffee and wait for the next tour to start, but … I really wish you'd called." #PassiveAggressiveDeath
• Killer Gerald Gregg cover. KILLER.
• "AN Hercule Poirot Mystery"—I like that the cover knows the "H" is silent.

Best things about this back cover:

• O, man, jackpot. First off, MAPBACK!
• Second off, check out the 1946 map! Predates existence of Israel by a scant two years.
• Third, check out the insert map from "Star Wars." You can see a Jawa camp and everything.

Page 123~

"None of the servants seemed to be about, but I found some soda water and drank it."

You'll thrill to the tale of the intrepid rich guy who risked all to survive in … A House Without Servants.

~RP

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Paperback 804: The Grass is Singing / Doris Lessing (Bantam 1045)

Paperback 804: Bantam 1045 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Grass Is Singing
Author: Doris Lessing
Cover artist: Fletcher Martin

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• OK, there are several remarkable things about this cover, but I'm somehow most struck by the "Painted by" credit! Attribution! Credit! So useful! Why aren't all paperback covers like this!?
• If you want an iconic picture for "The White Gaze," Here You Go!
• Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature, so I assume the writing quality here is a grade or two above "Mandingo."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Mounting tensions" WINK WINK
• "The one sin no white woman in Africa dares" … based on the cover, I'm betting on "Sloth."
• Technically "Brave New World" had already come, twenty years earlier. Still, I love how excited this book is.

Page 123~

Then followed a time of dull misery: not the sharp bouts of unhappiness that were what had attacked her earlier. Now she felt as if she were going soft inside at the core, as if a soft rottenness was attacking her bones.

The horrible days before Boniva.

~RP

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Paperback 398: Sinful Cities of the Western World / Hendrik De Leeuw (Pyramid 27)

Paperback 398: Pyramid Books 27 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Sinful Cities of the Western World
Author: Hendrik de Leeuw
Cover artist: Frederick Meyer

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• Touchdown! The Giantesses win again! Suck it, Lilliputians!
• Few people know that the Aurora Borealis is actually caused by a giant radioactive woman named Aurora. Here she is in the little Canadian fishing village where she grew up (before being bitten by that spider...).
• I love how nonchalant the little people are: "Ugh, her again. What a drama queen."

Best things about this back cover:

• Look at you, Hartford Courant, working the paradox angle. Look out, big city papers, there's a new kid on the blurb block, and he's hungry!
• The U.N. had a committee on "White Slavery???"
• Berlin, why must you be excessive in your sadism and homosexuality? Why can't you just be moderately sadistic and homosexual, like Luxembourg?
• Memo to copywriter re: last line—"arouse" and "alert" are not synonyms. So unless you really mean to encourage people to engage in the "horrible barter of human flesh," maybe a rewrite's in order.

Page 123~

Even the breath of the woman in my arms, as we danced again, was honey flavored.

"Hey, buddy, why do you keep licking the air around my head? ... well, you sound like a dog, so cut it out or I ain't dancin' with you no more."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 30 and 31

Don't ask me why, but these two seemed to go together...

Title: The Old Man and the Boy — Crest d555 (1st ptg, 1962)
Author: Robert Ruark
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: $5

• Imagine a simpler time ... when a book with a title like this wouldn't scream "pedophilia"
• Hey, look, it's the highly unasked-for and unauthorized sequel to "The Old Man and the Sea"
• "Long story short, I shot that boy and his head now hangs over my fireplace."
• "Straight from the exciting experiences ..." — please, please don't tell me.
• The real title of this book is "Tomatb Hlanho Edndey," which is Swahili for "White Man In Silly Clothes Thinks He's a Hunter"

• Please tell me that the guy with the spear is not "The Boy"
• Two things I don't want my reading material to be — "homespun" and "salty"
• "Smells?"
• "Everyday living" — imagine the kind of balls you'd have to have to use that phrase above that picture.
• Deciding his quarry was too fat and stupid to bring him honor, the warrior turned and walked slowly home.

Page 123:

The Willie was about half coaled out, and he was flopping and spluttering in the water.

I don't even know where to begin ...

*****

Title: How to Work with Tools & Wood — Pocket Books 1057 (1st ptg, April 1955)
Author: Fred Gross (ed.)
Cover artist: photo (Meyer Studios)

Yours for: $10

• I believe this is the sequel to "The Old Man and the Boy," wherein the old man takes the boy to see his dunge-... I mean, workshop.
• "Have you ever ... worked with wood, Billy?"

• This back cover is a relief, as it is mercifully dull instead of nightmarishly suggestive.

Page 123~

As the bottom is accessible from the end, it may be sawed out and then trimmed to line with the chisel if necessary.

That's some good handyman porn.

~RP

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Paperback 60: Naked Ebony / Dan Cushman (Gold Medal 158)

Paperback 60: Gold Medal 158 (PBO, 1951)

Title: Naked Ebony
Author: Dan Cushman
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: SOLD 5/22/08

"Hey, baby, be careful! This is my good pirate shirt!"

Best things about this cover:

• These people are neither "naked" nor "ebony." Total rip-off.
• I do love a woman-with-gun cover painting. Here, the gun is a kind of nipple-extension. In other cover paintings, it will stand in for ... other things. You'll see.
• Could he be any closer to her? I'm not convinced her eyes can even focus on him when he's that close.
• Is he going to hit her? Kiss her? Is he showing her his stigmata? Pulling a coin from behind her ear? The possibilities are endless, and every one of them justifies her shooting him.
• Please notice the greatness of the fully painted cover. Edge-to-edge coverage - a complete painting where the graphic element is the real attention-grabber. This art-centered style of cover is why I started collecting in the first place.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Not the punctuation, that's for sure.
• "Chari" - how do you pronounce that?
• "Package of hell!" - somebody was still cutting his melodramatic teeth when he laid down that gem. Yikes.

RP