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 815: This Is Elaine / Jason Hytes (Midwood F229)

Paperback 815: Midwood F229 (PBO, 1963)

Title: This Is Elaine
Author: Jason Hytes
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Whoa. I was never a big "Seinfeld" fan, but maybe I need to reconsider …
• I love how happy is to be warming her bare bottom with the flame of a single candle. It's the simple pleasures…
• I am laughing so hard imagining the sad person sitting on the broken Merry-Go-Round of Sex.
• Hmm. Define "Bestseller."
• "Sex Before Six," the best-selling follow-up to "Fucking Before Five Fifteen."

Best things about this back cover:

• I'd like to speak to the mayor.
• "Jason Hytes has exposed their wanton merry-go-round of sex…" Wait, is this non-fiction? Did he go undercover, as it were?
• At this point, if there is not an Actual Merry-Go-Round Of Sex in this book, I will be very, very disappointed, Jason Hytes.

Page 123~

Clay Brackett moved out of a group of men to block her path, his darkly handsome face flushed and lusting.

"Flushed and Lusting: The Clay Brackett's Face Story"

~RP

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Paperback 721: Operation: SEX / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F181)

Paperback 721: Midwood F181 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Operation: SEX 
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Operation: LACK OF IMAGINATION
• I have an alternative title for this book: Naughty Pine.
• This cover manages to be both deeply disturbing and super hot. Indirect evidence of nudity = very effective.
• You have to love the absurdity of the pull-down window shade in the foreground—it's architecturally impossible, of course, but does a cool job of implicating us in the voyeurism.

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa. Ruby? Tell me more about Ruby. The cover said nothing about Ruby.
• "Anything!"
• Talk about burying the lede—how is the front cover not more lesbianified? I mean, I love the cover, but if lesbian pulp has taught me anything (and it Has), it's that when your book has lesbian sex in it, some visual/textual indication of that goes on the cover. No beating around the bush. As it were.

Page 123~

She visualized the tiny droplets striking the shoulders and then draining down in liquid rivulets, down over those peaked breasts. Down. Across that smooth belly and down into—

End of paragraph. I assume the next words were going to be the aforementioned bush, but who knows?

~RP

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Paperback 560: The Lowest Sins / Joe Castro (Midwood F125)

Paperback 560: Midwood F125 (PBO, 1961)

Title: The Lowest Sins
Author: Joe Castro
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $25

Best things about this cover:

• Nothing sexier than a barmaid kneeling on a frozen lake, I tell you what ...
• You can't look at this too long because, man, below the waist she looks kind of twisted and broken. It's like she's trying to stand up after a very bad fall. Either that, or she is taking a knee / preparing to do some Tebowing.
• I love the cleavage and the glimpse of garter and all, but this pose is so random and unnatural that most of the sexiness is drained right out of it.
• Can a sister get some context up in here?
• The condition on this book is astonishing. Square, unread, uncreased, gorgeous.

Best things about this back cover:

• Um, yes, same girl. Same picture, even, I'm pretty sure. Is that all? I've got other cases to solve.
• LOVE the existential terror inspired by the question "WHAT WAS SHE?"—"We need to label her, stat!"
• Frank!!!!

Page 123~

It took only a few minutes before Jenny placed her two hands over her ears to shut out the loud snoring of John's slumber.

"That tears it!" she thought. "I'm going lesbian."

~RP

PS thanks to Doug Peterson for sending me this book—and three more books, which I'll feature in the upcoming weeks.

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Paperback 469: Sally / Alan Marshall (Donald Westlake pseud.) (Midwood 62)

Paperback 469: Midwood 62 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Sally
Author: Alan Marshall (Donald Westlake)
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $75

Best things about this cover:

• If I looked like Sally, that's probably what I'd do all day long, too.
• Sally spent nearly every waking moment seasoning her bullfighting skills...
• She was Willing to Try Anything Once, but in the case of letting her five-year-old niece paint the bathroom, just once.
• I love the way she is drawn rather realistically while the bathroom fixtures are barely sketched. Makes it seem like she's going to go through the looking glass and have great adventures. Great, naked, lesbian adventures.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Wow," thought Marie. "That was shockingly easy."
• "It's the cleanest thing in the world. Here, put on this latex suit covered in Purell..."

Page 123~

She remembered the strange things Marie had said, and all at once she wanted to talk about it, she wanted to know what had made Marie say such things, she wanted to talk it into understanding, and from there to oblivion.

"From There To Oblivion," of course, the poorly reviewed sequel to "From Here To Eternity."

~RP

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Paperback 468: Anybody's Girl / March Hastings (Midwood 33-870)

Paperback 468: Midwood 33-870 (2nd ptg, 1967) 

Title: Anybody's Girl 
Author: March Hastings
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $30

Best things about this cover: 

• "Do these pajama bottoms make my boobs look big? Be honest." 
•  Margo found that no one could resist her charms once she lured them into her Teal Chamber. 
• And the Strategic Sheet Placement Award goes to ... Paul Rader for his "Rear End of a Reclining Brunette"! 

Best things about this back cover: 

• Cliff, Ha ha. Good luck explaining the Skid Row bums to Cliff. 
• "And there were others." Yeah, that's implied, idiot. God, nothing is unhotter than terrible writing. 
• "The User and the Used" — once again, publishers miss a golden book-naming opportunity. 

Page 123~ 

Addie wanted to voice her disappointment but she held it in, moving silently beside Margo, trusting Margo to lead her to the sights and the activities forbidden to normal human beings.

So ... Addie wanted Margo to take her to a Renaissance Faire?

~RP

Paperback 464: Campus Kittens / Joan Ellis (Midwood 32-417)

Paperback 464: Midwood 32-417 (PBO, 1964) (CANADA)

Title: Campus Kittens
Author: Joan Ellis
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: [SOLD! 10/10/11]

Best things about this cover:

• The scintillating story of a buxom young redhead, her gravity-defying towel (or her extremely adhesive nipples), and her collection of remarkably life-like store mannequins.
• Seriously, there's no way that blonde is a living breathing human being.
• Shouldn't it be an "unblushing exposé"?—if it's blushing, then it's gonna be all coy and its sex scenes are going to be all vague and elliptical and annoying. "Blushing" is not "frank," is what I'm saying.
• "Our once-respectable collegiate sorority houses," ha ha. "In my day, we spent our days performing community service and singing songs that expressed pride in our alma mater. Nowadays, it's all cunnilingus this and cunnilingus that!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Spiteful sexual sprees are the best kind!
• What is the "worst possible moment" to be caught in a motel with a married man? You'd think any moment would be pretty bad.
• "Elementary education at the hands of her roommate" made me laugh. Yes, hands are elementary. Later, you might move on to tongue. Only the truly talented graduate to vagina. Hence Andrea's need for personal tutoring.

Page 123~

"Same place, you sexy little wench," he crooned [1]. "If you're still willing to go out with a decrepit old character like me." [2]

"Oh stop it," she laughed. Owen was one of the handsomest men she had ever encountered, and no older than a lot of movie stars [3]. "You'll make me bring along a pair of crutches if you keep up that talk." [4]

• [1] If you are trying to get laid, I suggest that you not croon anything, let alone that particular line.
• [2] This guy is like a bottomless pit of bad come-on lines.
• [3] This is an odd benchmark: "Why, you're no older than Edward G. Robinson or Joseph Cotten." "I'm only 41." "Shhh, I'm pretending our relationship is normal ..."
• [4] Why, so you can reenact scenes from "Double Indemnity?" I think you mean "wheelchair." He said "decrepit" and "old," not "suffering from a sprained ankle."

~RP

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Paperback 418: Tender Torment / Randy Salem (Midwood F172)

Paperback 418: Midwood F172 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Tender Torment
Author: Randy Salem
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• "Next time on 'The Bachelor': The Most Dramatic Rose Ceremony Ever!"
  
• This is a shocking cover—usually with lesbian sex paperbacks the sex angle is played way up, along with the pathology angle. Bodies on display, lust in the air (see here, for instance). But here, aside from a nice wide chunk of ass in the foreground, it's all horror show. Looks like the movie poster for a late-70s slasher flick.
• That tagline really gets to the point. Succinct. No-frills. You know where you stand with this tagline.
• You gotta love a sleaze paperback pen name like "Randy Salem." If you anagram his last name, you describe his ideal audience: Randy Males.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR!"—awesome ominous warning. "No one will be seated during the harrowing Rose Scene!" "Bring your own vomit bag!"
• The best phrase on the whole back cover is "We are proud..."

Page 123~

He looked like any other swish in too tight pants and a checkered shirt open at the throat.

Damn swishes, ruining the checkered shirt for the rest of us regular blokes. I want my checkered shirt back, swishes! And my rainbow flag, too!

~RP


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Paperback 344: 5 Beds to Mecca / Rod Gray (Tower 43-944)

Paperback 344: Tower 43-944 (PBO, 1968)

Title: 5 Beds to Mecca (The Lady from L.U.S.T. #4)
Author: Rod Gray
Cover artist: Uncredited [Paul Rader]

Yours for: Nope—staying here (another gift of the generous Doug Peterson)

Best things about this cover:

• As Doug can testify, this one left me completely speechless—or, rather, it left me saying "Oh my god" repeatedly until I took it all in. I mean ... I've seen the gun/crotch motif before, but scimitar/crotch! That's a new one.
• Well, that's *one* way of taking care of unwanted hair ...
• I am guessing that you were so blown away the vagina dentata that it took you a while to notice that this lady is also carrying a gun (!) in her completely useless garter (!!?).
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. spawned a number of these kinds of parodies in the '60s. "L.U.S.T." is one of the better acronyms I've seen, in that the literal explanation is completely plausible.
• I think this cover is designed to make you (man) wish you were that sword. Legs spread, hands wrapped around hilt ... etc. Fans of subtlety will have to look elsewhere.

Best things about this back cover:

• Not just white slavery—Milk-white slavery!
  
• "Hypodermics hiss" is my favorite part of this nonsensical paragraph.
• Kama Sutra? Huh. I guess east is east is east.
• "Shiekh" is apparently a brand of shoes. I've never seen that spelling otherwise.

Page 123~

"Unbelievable," she whispered. "There is no sag, despite their size. It is as if they were equipped with springs."

Other randomly pulled quotes include:

"My vaginae constrictor muscles were the only part of me that moved."

And

"You have a couple of cannons yourself," he quipped, eyeballing my female-female breasts, all 38 inches D cup of them, where they stood at attention, brown nipples saluting. They were rock hard as they aimed themselves at his broad chest."

"Let's shoot each other," I suggested.

~RP

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Paperback 249: A Bit of Fluff / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F256)

Paperback 249: Midwood F256 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A Bit of Fluff
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $60


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the word you're searching for is "Dang ..."
• Paul Rader is possibly the best sleaze cover artist that ever was. He and Robert Maguire are like gods to me.
• I love how "Lesbian" is capitalized, like "Mason" or "Scientologist."
• Strategically placed towel means that I cannot see any bit of fluff.
• I absolutely love this cover — the color, the design, the steam, the casual nudity, all of it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh lesbians. Always with the careful soaping.

Page 123~

There it was again. Only it wasn't a slip this time. She was practically informing me that she was a Lesbian. But her tone was meek and humble — and I wasn't afraid of her any more, now that she knew her place.

Again, I say: Dang.

~RP

Announcement: Paperback 250 will go up on Wednesday. To celebrate this milestone ... a contest. It will be Twitter-related, but I will add a Luddite option for those of you who can't be bothered with Twitter. You'll see. I'm off to conscript some other people to help me judge the contest. Oh, the prize will be the book itself — Paperback 250. And it doesn't suck, as my paperbacks go.

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