Paperback 826: Haunted Lady / Mary Roberts Rinehart (Dell 361)

Paperback 826: Dell 361 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Haunted Lady
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for : $11


Best things about this cover:

• Drunk bat photobomb!
• Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Seriously, stop. It's weird.
• This is what happens when you keep bats as pets, lady. WTF?
• Seriously, Drunk Bat's like "What up, bitches! I'm all up in your fotoz!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmmmm …. mmmmapback!
• "Porte-cochere" is a hilarious word to me. You find them mainly on rich people's houses in mid-century crime novels (see esp. Chandler). Still, sounds like an hors d'oeuvre to me.
• This novel must be heavy on interior detail and in-house action, because that is one superabundantly labeled map.

Page 123~

It took her by surprise. She stared at him. Then a look of horror spread over her face. She looked wildly about the room, at Hilda, at the door. She even half rose from her chair. "I don't know what you mean," she managed to gasp.

What's the opposite of "poker face"?

~RP

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Paperback 580: The Black Angel / Cornell Woolrich (Avon Murder Mystery Monthly 27)

Paperback 580: Avon Murder Mystery Monthly 27 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Black Angel
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $30

Best things about this cover:

• She-Bat!
• I do love Skeleton Warhol.
• This book's kind of beat up, but it's complete, it's intact, and a 1944 Woolrich is a 1944 Woolrich (this was part of a stash of books I pulled out of a coastal Oregon bookstore this past summer—the rest of the stash to be covered in the books that follow)

Best things about this back cover:

• That's a pretty rare Chandler right there. I don't really have anything else to say about this back cover. You can see the foxing and tanning near the spine there ("foxing" and "tanning" being fun words I learned in the process of collecting).

Page 123~

"Don't ever call me that name," I said shakily. "Don't even say it over a second time now to remind yourself what ti was. Don't use it again, Ladd, or I'll — you'll never see me again. Call me any other name, anything you want. Anything but that."

Rejected lyrics from Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al."

~RP

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