Paperback 734: Fire, Burn / John Dickson Carr (Bantam A1847)

Paperback 734: Bantam A1847 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: Fire, Burn
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• So, uh, title: are you giving instructions to the fire (which I doubt it needs), or … are you Frankenstein's monster remarking up on what fire does, or …?
• "Oh, hi there, I was just fixing my hair and … my boobs? … oh yes, there they are. Whoops, how careless of me."
• Giant pink bookmark.
• Cape/cane frame.
• God, 19th-century interior decorating was dreadful.

Best things about this back cover:

• Least flattering author pic of all time.
• Amateurish bats are oddly charming.
• I hope that Lady Flora is either a rapper or has a sister named Lady Fauna.

Page 123~

If anyone had seen the pistol fall from Flora's muff, or seen him hide it under the hollow-based lamp, they might both stand in the dock on a charge of murder.

~RP

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Paperback 687: The Way of All Flesh / Samuel Butler (Pocket Books 8)

Paperback 687: Pocket Books 8 (3rd ptg, 1939)

Title: The Way of All Flesh
Author: Samuel Butler
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $21


Best things about this cover:

• "What're *you* lookin' at?"
• Her stockings are nuts. Horizontal red stripes? When was that a thing?
• This is the most pristine early Pocket Book I own—from the first year of the mass market paperback industry's existence. There are two signifiant scuff marks on the spine edge, but otherwise, it's shockingly pristine. Permagloss intact and everything. Trust me when I say 1939 paperbacks are rarely found in this state anymore.

Best things about this back cover:

• That Shaw quote is one of the best things I've ever seen printed on a back cover. The literary equivalent of "this is why we can't have nice things."
• "Now Ready." It's so adorable how *new* the paperback was at this point. 

Page 123~

One would have thought she had sowed enough of such religious wild oats by this time, but she had plenty still to sow.

"Religious wild oats" is not a phrase I ever expected to see.

~RP

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