Paperback 666: Dark Quarters / Stella Hampton (Fabian Z-117)

Paperback 666: Fabian Z-117 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Dark Quarters
Author: Stella Hampton
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "Uh, yeah, I got a letter here addressed to "Sidewalk"—that you?"
• "... newspapers were her bed; her hair, a badger pelt." 
• "Dark niches" HA ha. Subtle.
• "As a child, dancing for her grandparents earned her shiny pennies ... but as a young woman, she earned naught but DARK QUARTERS."

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmm, early Fabian books had such an awesomely low-rent, DIY vibe. 
• Victims of their own success—"So many of you want the sleazy, badly written books we produce that we can't keep up w/ your orders! Long live barely literate perverts!"
• This is from the era before publisher Sanford Aday got convicted of trafficking in obscenity—when the end matter of his books was chock full of long disquisitions on free speech and obscenity laws, and clippings of news about Supreme Court decisions, etc. Also, he occasionally documented his own legal struggles: "... the jury acquitted as to the book Rambling Maids and voted nine to three in favor of The Strange Three and Turbulent Daughters!" Take that, Ulysses!

Page 123~ (nah ... way too boring ... here's p. 27)

"Put your hand on my breast, Steve. You want to, don't you?"

"Yes, but ..."

"Just a little,—feel it like it's something you've never felt before."

"Squeeze it like a pastry bag, you cowardly bastard!," she cooed.

~RP

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