Paperback 961: The Chocolate Cobweb + Who's Been Sitting in My Chair? / Charlotte Armstrong (Ace Double G-511)

Paperback 961: Ace Double G-511 (1st / 1st, 1962)

Title: The Chocolate Cobweb / Who's Been Sitting in My Chair?
Author: Charlotte Armstrong / Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Estimated value: $15
Condition: 7/10 (because of warp—else 9/10; square, shiny, unread)

Best things about this cover:

• "Come away from the cobweb, dearie. I'm saving that one for company."
• "It's chocolate!" "It's pica, dearie."
• This isn't the first time Charlotte (Armstrong) has been associated with Webs...
• Mystery writers are frequently praised for their "skill" (here, twice) as if they were performing a parlor trick as opposed to, you know, writing well. I just read a conventional mystery (by Helen Nielsen—Sing Me a Murder) and it was painfully contrived, as most puzzle-mysteries are (though Nielsen is a fine writer, in general). Chandler's "Simple Art of Murder" has made it virtually impossible for me to take the whodunnit seriously, or even enjoy it. Too much improbable nonsense and implausible, unprofessional, downright stupid gimmickry, all to make a complicated plot work out just so. Pass.

Best things about this other cover:

• I love her so much.
• She knows how to get comfortable. Kicked off the heels and curled up on the chair, just relaxing. Arm across the body says "Please &*%# off, I'm trying to enjoy my cigarette in peace, thanks."
• The Girl Who Dreamed of Some Square Guy Holding What is Clearly a Desk Mic
• "Authentic witches"?!—I don't know what you're on about, Anthony Boucher, but I'm intrigued.

Page 123~ (from The Chocolate Cobweb)

The little paw touched his tired head in a brief caress.

In a not-too-distant future, when dogs and humans have switched positions ... The Chocolate Cobweb!

~RP

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Paperback 960: Bedrooms Have Windows / A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) (Dell 0511)

Paperback 960: Dell 0511 (1st New Dell ed., 1963)

Title: Bedrooms Have Windows
Author: A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Darryl Greene

Estimated value: $15-20
Condition: 10/10 (a time-travel kind of copy, like it's 1963 again; unread, square, shiny, bright blue page edges, ridiculous)

Best things about this cover:

• She looks worried. Maybe she needs Yet Another Cigarette.
• How big is her bed? The headboard appears to start in the far corner of the room. Is her room just one big bed? That's pretty cool.
• This cover is exquisitely balanced and demonstrates a nice attention to detail. I'm somehow transfixed by the latches, like miniature sentries at the bottom of the sill.
• Gauzy curtain, also lovely. And that tension between the tightly enclosed, highly segmented left half of the window and the dramatic, animated, border-bursting right half—love it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ooh, close-up. Normally I don't like recycled back covers, but this one makes nice use of that window gridding, covering the horizontally-lined left pane with horizontal lines of text, while leaving the right half airy and open.
• God bless Dell for *clearly crediting* cover artists more than most other publishers.
• I've written about this book before, in an earlier (1952) edition. Here's the cover:

And the write-up (Paperback 211!)

Page 123~

The taffy-haired blonde who was standing in front of the mirror, surveying her partially clothed figure with quite evident approval, was the girl who had picked me up the night before as her escort, and had taken me to the motor court. 

Aw, how quaint. "Motor court." You can do all kinds of illicit things in a "motor court" and still feel pretty good about yourself. It's positively Arthurian. "Casual sex, m'lady?"

~RP

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Paperback 959: Fools Die on Friday / A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

Paperback 959: Dell R105 (1st thus, 1961)

Title: Fools Die on Friday
Author: A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Bob McGinnis

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 9+/10

Best things about this cover:

• It appears that either I hit some perfectly preserved AA Fair / Erle Stanley Gardner motherlode at some point in my collecting journeys, or someone sent me box of same. These books are exceedingly common, but no less glorious, art-wise. And in this condition, mwah!
• I love McGinnis's work, though I don't always share his, uh, aesthetic. There's often an icy, angular quality to his women, and the hair, dear lord, the hair. There be dragons.
• The shoes, though. The shoes. Gotta be the shoes.
• All covers are improved by martini.

Best things about this back cover:

• Math!
• Crazy calligraphic math!
• This back cover does nothing to convey how charming the Lam/Cool mysteries are.

Page 123~

She pushed back her stenographic chair, walked over to a shelf, whipped out a map, and placed it on the counter.

OK, I don't know who she is, but I'm in love.

~RP

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Paperback 958: Top of the Heap / A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) (Dell D309)

Paperback 958: Dell D309 (1st thus, 1959)

Title: Top of the Heap
Author: A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

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

Best things about this cover:

• Well, *not* the hair. That's some full-on Cruella Deville nonsense.
• If you stare at her boobs (and why not?) it's like you're looking at a very fancy black cat waiting to pounce on the spinning ball.
• I've seen some opera gloves in my time, but those are the operaiest.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh, there she is again.
• "Was" ... and the reason we dropped the "Was" was ...?
• Is this a poem. This feels like a poem. I mean ... it's not Roethke, but it's OK.

Page 123~

"How was the money secured for the development work?"

I swear to you that that is the most exciting line on this horribly boring page. It was that or "Something about the name appealed to the investing public." Or, "Permission was given to sell the stock at par value zzzzzzzz..." etc.

~RP

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Paperback 953: Spill the Jackpot / A.A. Fair (Dell R117)

Paperback 953: Dell R117 (1st thus, 1962)

Title: Spill the Jackpot
Author: A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 9.5/10

Best things about this cover:

• So. Great. It's like a rogue's gallery of hot and shady '60s people.
• Redhead's cigarette is freaking me out. Like some sixth finger that got horribly bent backwards.
• Just genius to use the margins of the cover this way. The encroachment of text, to the point of total visual dominance, is of course one of the most lamentable trends in paperback history. This cover responds to that trend not by shrinking the art (which often happened) but by incorporating the text into the art, making the margins the place of real action. It's superior cover design.

Best things about this back cover:

• Man, that "VEGAS" font is god-awful—totally out of sync, period-wise, with the cool-modern front cover.
• Oh wow, that's a rake. I had to look at that visual element very closely to figure that out. This back cover is the Bizarro version of the front cover, i.e. it's Terribly designed.
• "Jaded pleasure seekers"! I relate to these people. JPS4LIFE!

Page 123~

Somehow, looking at her, you felt she hadn't been to bed and that she wasn't accustomed to going to sleep before daylight.

Coincidentally, Vampire Weekend was playing on the radio when I typed this out.

~RP

P.S. I found this immaculate Detective Book Club offer card sleeping safely in the pages of this book.

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Paperback 944: The Shadowy Third / Marco Page (Pocket Books 537)

Paperback 944: Pocket Books 537 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: The Shadowy Third
Author: Marco Page
Cover artist: Harvey Kidder

Estimated value: a pittance
Condition: 2/10 (read to death, i.e. beautiful to me)

Best things about this cover:

• "Now *where* did I put my little dead man? I know he's around here somewhere..."
• This dude has QWD face (i.e. Quintessential White Dick). He's ... perfect / generic.
• The man above our hero's left ear is either playing "got-your-nose!" or putting that guy's eye out with a lit cigarette. Choose a scenario to fit your mood!
• P.S. a violin

Best things about this back cover:

• "Oh, no! Not Igor *Krassin*!" I exclaimed, reflexively.
• "What kind of knife was it, Doc?" "Thin. It was thin. It's a technical term. I don't expect you to understand."
• It took more than a game of eeny-meeny-miney-mo to finger the killer. You also had to buy him a drink first.

Page 123~

"All right, if that's how you want it. I trusted you, Calder, I gave you every break so you could grab a fee on that violin. You're turning out to be a heel."

I love hardboiled man-feelings drama. "After all I've done for you, couldn't you just once hold me and tell me I'm pretty, Calder, you heel!"

~RP

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Paperback 925: The Thin Man / Dashiell Hammett (Perma Books M4202)

Paperback 925: Perma Books M4202 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: The Thin Man
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Estimated value: $15-20 (perfect, square, bright)

Best things about this cover:

• Nick looks like I feel these days. "Fuck all this. Where's the bar?"
• The color shading on this is all kinds of weird. Conventional figurative art that looks like it's been cut out of a magazine by an 8-year-old and then glued into the white rectangle.
• Joey Backwards chair is explaining certain anatomical facts about himself to Millie Sweetgams, much to her amusement.
• ASTA!

 Best things about this back cover:

• Bah. Same.
• Cover is cropped weird. Very close to lopping off lettering on the left.
• "When you were wrestling with Mimi [!?] didn't you get excited." "Oh, a little." Man, between front and back covers, you'd think "The Thin Man" were subtitled "All About Boners."

Page 123~

"Good God, no! She hates men more than any woman I've ever known who wasn't a Lesbian."

Sorry, fans of movie-Nick. Didn't mean to startle you with book-Nick's dickishness. Mix a cocktail and drink until you forget you ever read the above quote.

~RP

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Paperback 923: Crime-Craft / ed. Anthony Boucher (Corgi S488)

Paperback 923: Corgi S 488 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Crime-Craft—as demonstrated in fifteen topline stories by The Mystery Writers of America
Editor: Anthony Boucher
Cover artist: Oliver Brabbins

Estimated value: $30

Best things about this cover:

• My kingdom for a corgi who fetches books
• That is possibly the most generic hard-boiled face of all time
• Angry Military Dude's Face, brought to you by Nike
• This book is gorgeous, bright, square ... and English. How it ended up in the US, at a university book sale, I do not know.

Best things about this back cover:

• That is ... pretty low-frills
• The one thing this bland back cover does is highlight how nice that Corgi logo is
• Look for the Corgi dog ... which you will be able to identify as a Corgi only by the proximity of the letters "C O R G I," so ... look for those too.

Page 123~ (from "The Fuzzy Things" by D.B. Olsen)

"Keep the child's ears covered," Miss Rachel told Dorothy. She met Mr. Thackley's frantic stare. "The sea cliff," she said softly.

This is some creepy, gothic stuff. Also, that last sentence is pretty, in a lilting, iambic kind of way. "'The sea cliff,' she said, softly...."

~RP

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Paperback 911: Darkness at Noon / Arthur Koestler (Signet 671)

Paperback 911: Signet 671 (2nd ptg, 1950)

Title: Darkness at Noon
Author: Arthur Koestler
Cover artist: [jonas?]

Estimated value: $7-10

Best things about this cover:

• This looks like me at roughly 9:30am on the days I don't teach. Minus the cigarette, I mean. Ladies ... liquor ... mystery dude in a hat ... these are where my thoughts wander.
• This is a classic, but I haven't read it. I am surprised to find it is about a lazy dude fantasizing about Parisian booze and broads.
• It's a prison novel, but this doesn't really evoke prison. Faint hints of "brick" in the walls, but that robe looks too comfy for prisonwear.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, the era of the author-smoking photo. So ... debonair.
• But also so tiny, what the hell's with the picture shrinkage?
• That cover copy does not offer much in the way of breathing room. Yikes.

Page 123~

Woe to the fool and the aesthete who only ask how and not why.

This is in the middle of a dense philosophical section that is all italics and also a bummer.

~RP

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Paperback 909: Music out of Dixie / Harold Sinclair (PermaBooks P203)

Paperback 909: Perma Books P203 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Music out of Dixie
Author: Harold Sinclair
Cover artist: Uncredited :(

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• "Well you ain't no John Tesh, I know that."
• There are 31 flavors of Disappointment on that woman's face.
• I like this painting a lot. Perfectly positioned burning cigarette is a nice touch.
• I love his shirt. I want his shirt. I also want to wear a sleeve garter for no good reason.

Best things about this back cover:

• Dade Tarrant! LOL, sure, that's a plausible name, why not?
• I hope his business cards read: "Dade Tarrant / Slum-Bred Pianist"
• Raffish! Is that like "rakish"? [looks word up...] Hey, look at that: first synonym. So I *kinda* knew what it meant...

Page 123~

"Oh, Jesus lover, let's don't have that routine at this time o' day. I can't take it."

This expresses a sentiment I feel on a regular basis.

~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 895: Flame / Joan Ellis (Midwood 61)

Paperback 895: Midwood 61 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Flame
Author: Joan Ellis
Cover artist: [Paul Rader]

Estimated value: $17-20

Best things about this cover:

• I don't know what you're about to do with the cigarette, lady, but please stop.
• She looks like if Lauren Bacall and Satan had a baby.
• I am on fire with burning ambition and a smouldering need for CHAIR.
• Font!
• Heels!
• Scare quotes!
• This book is, like, the reddest thing I own.
• I don't know if this is a Paul Rader cover, but it feels that way, so ... partial credit!

Best things about this back cover:

• HA ha, more scare quotes for all things "school"-related. We get it. It's a racket.
• They're pushing this "FLAME" motif a little hard.
• No cooked facts! Only raw! This is "Talent School," ladies!
• If not a band, Hardened Harlots is at least a roller derby team name.

Page 123~

"Let 'em get all hot and bothered. Do 'em good," he insisted, sliding her robe into a heap on the floor, and then the bikini pajamas she wore underneath.

Google image search of "bikini pajamas" yields mostly ... well, neither bikinis nor pajamas. Is "bikini pajamas" what hep cats used to call "underwear"?

~RP

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Paperback 894: Death Has Many Doors / Fredric Brown (Bantam 1567)

Paperback 894: Bantam 1567 (3rd ptg, 1st thus, 1957)

Title: Death Has Many Doors
Author: Fredric Brown
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Estimated Value: $20-25

Best things about this cover:

• Gah, stupid late-'50s covers with their newfangled love of "text," crowding out the good stuff. Painting is great, but more of a smudge-sketch than a fully realized painting. I like covers that give the art Real Estate.
• She's like a suggestion of a sexy backlit lingerie lady. Like, I get it, but I don't feel it. His pasty enigmatic leering face is wonderful, but that tower of Fuchsia Letters is crowding him.
• Fredric Brown could Wrrrite. He has bouts of hackneyed sucking, but when he's on, he's sharp and dark and hilarious.

Best things about this back cover:

• HA ha. Arrows! That gave me a genuine laugh. When in doubt--->arrows.
• So … it's warm then?
• I read "The Screaming Mimi" this past winter. Recommended.

Page 123~

I said, "This is John Smith. I want Charlie's address." "You mean my brother-in-law? I don't know where he is, Mr. Smith." I said, "Fine. I'll send a couple of the boys out some evening to see you. I won't mention which evening. We wouldn't want coppers around." He said, "Huh?" and sounded properly scared and excited.

See. Good.

~RP

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Paperback 883: The Case of the Shapely Shadow / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 4507)

Paperback 883: Pocket Books 4507 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: TCOT Shapely Shadow
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Uncredited [Robert McGinnis]

Estimated value: $8-15

[Donation to the collection from L. Gagne]

Best things about this cover:

• Ladies and gentleman, the greatest BitchFace™ in human history.
• If you want to know what it feels like to be a chump / sap / sucker, just stare at this cover.
• The sexy assassin was able to get very close to her targets by dressing as the Michelin Man.

Best things about this back cover:

•  Wow, this is as terrible as the front cover is fantastic.
• "Let's reduce her head to a single color tone, cut it in half, sever it from her body, and just ... sorta ... oh, I don't care, put it anywhere."
• I like the second Mrs. Theilman. "Look, Mr. Mason, stop being such a condescending prick and get the fuck out. Thank you."

Page 123~

"Now look here, Janice. If you were having an affair with Mr. Theilman, I want you to tell me about it and tell me about it now."

Look here, Janice, Perry needs dirty talk and Perry needs it now. Jesus, Janice. Come on.

~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 869: N Or M? / Agatha Christie (Dell 187)

Paperback 869: Dell 187 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: N Or M?
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• Norm!
• The cigarette is puzzled. "What the hell does 'NORM' mean?" it wonders.
• Design on this is so bizarre. Everything's laid out at odd angles, the cigarette ashes have an eerie, vermiform look to them, and the whole thing kinda looks like a white whale with "NorM" tattooed to the side of its face is trying to fight the scourge of smoking by devouring all related paraphernalia in its sight.
• Gerald Gregg is a cover artist god. As early, non-sexy paperback covers go, his weird abstractions are my favorite.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mappington! Backington! These never get old.
• If you call your place "Smuggler's Rest," the cops *are* going to find you.
• "Road." LOL. Thanks, map!
• If the devil doesn't live at Sans Souci, he will soon.

Page 123~

"Friends of friends of yours, I think you said?" Tommy suggested mendaciously.

Tommy always was a mendacious little bastard. I've always said that about him.

~RP

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Paperback 827: It Ain't Hay / David Dodge (Dell 380)

Paperback 827: Dell 380 (2nd ptg, 1949) (reprints Dell 270)

Title: It Ain't Hay
Author: David Dodge
Cover artist: [Gerald Gregg]

Estimated value: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Kind of a big deal.
• Not just the best Gerald Gregg cover, but one of the best covers of all time.
• The book that answers the question: why was Dartmouth always coming in last in crew?
• Also the book that answers the question: is it hay?
• It's hard out there for a ferryman. So Charon devised himself a backrest.
• The ferry is also a coffin that is at least partially powered by weed that creates smoke art of hot naked ladies. I dare you to find a weak link in this cover.

Best things about this back cover:

• Of course it's San Francisco. Would've been a real surprise to turn this book over and find a map of downtown Orem.
• "Mexican Waters" … which are somehow on land.
• This map is super awkward. Why is the "California Coastline" part even here? Do we really need all that coastline just to have a tiny number pointing to mysterious "Mexican Waters?" It's like the map designer was, I don't know, high or something.

Page 123~

The main building, perched at the tip of the spit, was surmounted by a huge painted sign: THE BREAKERS—Coca Cola, Beer, Mixed Drinks, Sandwiches, Chili Beans, Sea Food Dinners—DANCING—Cottages For Rent—Souvenirs—Fishing Tackle—SWIMMING.

~RP

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Paperback 821: Tiger Street / Trevor Elleston (Lion Books 207)

Paperback 821: Lion Books 207 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Tiger Street
Author: Elleston Trevor
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Richie: "Whaddya think of my left thigh, lady? See this tendon on my inner thigh, here? It's been gettin' a pretty good stretch in my yoga classes. This is kinda how I do Warrior 2. I got good form, don't ya think? And my sweater's pretty nifty too."
• Richie: "Jimmy, she ain't sayin' nothin.'" Jimmy: "Hey lady, he's showin' ya his yoga thighs. Tell him he looks nice. That's just common courtesy. Hey, you got a light? These matches don't work so good."
• She doesn't have "fear hand" so much as "backing away as far as I can hand."
• The original version of this painting just had the one trashcan, but then the art director was all, "Needs more trashcan." And thus the viewed-through-the-legs trashcan was born.
• Tiger Street! The Musical! "Walk up a staircase / Make out in a doorway / Pick fruit from a trashcan / Show off your firm thighs … Tiger Street!"
• Love the background. Street design is pretty stylized, but still has tons of nice detail. I especially like the awnings and fire escapes.
• This cover features ten people. Find them all. Go!

Best things about this back cover:

• This was their HOUR of HELL!—that one time they interrupted "Real Housewives" for some stupid Presidential Address. Worst Hour Ever!!!
• Sorry, no, I am not buying that a human being has the name of "Vosper." Maybe he's literally an "animal," 'cause I might buy "Vosper" as a pet's name. Maybe.
• First there were dark rumblings, then there were quiet rumblings. What other kinds of rumblings might this novel contain!? Start reading at once, before you stop caring.

Page 123~

"Quietly, mate—push the door to—you saw the blood, yes, where?"
"Over there by—"
"All right, stay there will you … yes, I see, and this in the crack, too, eh? What else, Cliff?"

First, this guy's super-bossy. Second, there's something painfully anticlimactic about "Cliff."

~RP

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Paperback 817: Hero's Lust / Kermit Jaediker (Lion 156)

Paperback 817: Lion Books 156 (PBO, 1953)

Title: Hero's Lust
Author: Kermit Jaediker
Cover artist: Lou Marchetti

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• "The Quick Brown Fox wants you should shaddup!"
• That tie has a mind of its own.
• I like the puffy letters.
• Miss Axilla, 1953
• Seriously, though, she's pretty damned hot and I enjoy what she is wearing.  I can't recall seeing a top quite like that on paperback covers before. Spaghetti straps!

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, +1million points for the juxtaposition of "the City stank" with her armpit.
• Aw, I was sad to see the writer give up on the alliteration there in the first paragraph. I can think of at least one double-hard-C phrase that could substitute for "harlot's smile"...
• "Damnfool" is a first-rate adjective.

Page 123~

"No prostitute walks our streets."

The whole page is a delightfully delusional newspaper editorial.

~RP

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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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