Shadow Over Mount Sharon by Frances Y. McHugh (Belmont Tower, 1968)

Yet another addition to my collection of ’60 / ‘70s gothic horror/romance paperbacks. I’ve pretty much given up buying these because they’re so interchangeable and there’s just so damn many of them, but the lovely cover illustration on this one won me over.

Nylon Nightmare by Clayton Matthews (Powell Publications, 1970)

  (Cover design by Bill Hughes.)

If I happened to see this posted somewhere on the internet, I’d be inclined to think it was a photoshopped piss-take or something. But I’m holding it in my hands right now and can confirm its reality: NYLON NIGHTMARE, ladies and gentlemen.






New life’s ambition: find a way to live in “an atomic age eyrie”.

GOTHIC ORIGINALS: Appendum.

Before we temporarily put the gothic horror theme aside, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw in a few choice examples of the seemingly never-ending supply of gothic pulp paperbacks that seemed to be flooding the market just as the accompanying cycle of movies was running out of steam in the late 60s/early 70s.

Largely forgotten by critics and collectors (possibly with good reason), these books seem to have been marketed at a presumably female readership lurking somewhere between the ‘horror’ and ‘romance’ sections (not that I’d imagine there was an actual horror section in most bookshops in those days, but y’know what I mean), decades before all that Anne Rice business took off.

Interesting that ‘Satan’s Daughter’ claims to be “in the tradition of ‘Burnt Offerings’”, suggesting that there was once a five minute window in which that was a big selling point. (I saw that movie recently – it was pretty good!)

‘Castle Garac’ author Nicholas Monsarrat is probably better known for his epic WWII novel ‘The Cruel Sea’, which I remember sat on my parents’ bookshelf throughout my childhood, never much tempting me to read it. (I’ve not seen the movie of that one - it looks alright.)

(Macfadden, 1970)

(Pocket Books, 1976)

(Pyramid, 1968)

Prize of Fear by Anne Nash (First Ace/Stoneshire Books, 1980)

And the prize for ‘romance paperback that looks most like the poster for a kung-fu movie’ goes to…

Recent Paperback Acquisitions # 1: Horror & Gothics

It’s been a while since I did any book cover posts, but in the past six months or so I’ve managed to build up a formidable backlog of material without taking the time to go to any particularly Herculean book-collecting efforts. Y’know how it goes I’m sure: just the odd psychedelic sci-fi paperback picked up here and there around London, a few trips further afield, a few donations from friends, all topped off with a mammoth haul from Baggins Bookshop in Rochester last weekend, and I’ve got pulp fiction coming outta my ears.

I’ve got some of the more interesting volumes earmarked for individual posts in the future, but in the meantime there’s more than enough left over for a few genre-themed gallery posts. First up: horror and suchlike.

As you might imagine, I find it eternally disappointing that the heyday of pulp paperback art (roughly early-‘50s to early-‘70s) never really coincided with the rise of horror as a saleable genre, and, as much as blogs like Too Much Horror Fiction might offer a convincing argument to the contrary, the slick graphic design of the post-Stephen King ‘black background / shiny text’ horror boom has never really appealed to me that much. There WERE plenty of odd horror-ish pulps from before that of course – New American Library big print gothics (see here and here for some great galleries of those), hippy era witchcraft shockers and post-Rosemary’s Baby cash-ins, even completely whacked out psychedelic Lovecraft/Weird Tales stuff (everybody’s favourite). But compared to the sheer volume of crime, sci-fi and romance novels that were hitting the shelves back then, they’re still relatively scarce items – hence finding a good one is always a treat.

(The first one here is borderline genre-wise, but it’s an awesome cover and clearly aligned toward the more overtly supernatural Ace/NAL gothic series, so let’s go with it.)

God, this getting a bit nerdy, isn’t it? Anyone’d think I actually did research on this stuff or something. On with the show!

(Ace Books, 1962)



(Ace Books, 1973)



(Fawcett World Library, 1965)



(New English Library, 1980)


(Corgi, 1963)



(Corgi, 1969)

(Thanks to my friend Kate for donating ‘Death Tour’.)

Suffer A Witch To Dieby Elizabeth Davis (Signet, 1969)

I absolutely love this cover illustration – such beautiful, weird symmetry, so resonant of all the imagery surrounding the post-‘Rosemary’s Baby’ witchcraft fad. The strangely gentle effect of the watercolours, those neat bars of colour and the faceless child at the bottom - could almost be something Ghostbox might have come up with in a slightly different world.



The book itself also seems a perfect snapshot of this peculiar moment in popular culture, mixing Ira Levin style suburban witch cult paranoia with a none-more-70s paranormal/new age-inspired approach that freely merges malignant witchery with ESP, meditation and probably reflexology for all I know.

It’s… pretty terrible to be honest, highly reminiscent of that awful Bert I. Gordon / Orson Welles witch movie, but it more than makes up for such failings in historical/aesthetic value.

It seems Signet were pushing “Gothic” pretty heavily back in ’69;