This cover for Paul Cain's long neglected but rediscovered pulp classic Fast One fronts the 1952 edition of the book, the second printing, following up the 1948 first paperback edition we showed you a few years ago. This was painted by Victor Olson. The book is interesting, well worth a read, as we describe at this link. 

This is an interesting nightclub style cover painted by Victor Olson for Donald Henderson Clarke's A Lady Named Lou. It would be amazing if it were actually about an entertainer who began life as a male, like mid-century trailblazers Coccinelle, Abby Sinclair, or Roxanne Alegria (if you've followed Pulp Intl. for a while you know we've written about all three—links supplied). In any case, the book is actually about a woman named, not Louanne or Louis, but Lulu Finn, who tries to make it big but marries a racketeer and gets into heaps of trouble. The cover blurb makes reference to her specialty, and you may be wondering what that is. Lulu has that intangible quality that makes people believe she can dance brilliantly, though she can't, and sing like a thrush, though she's average at best, and converse like a great wit, though she's not that bright. In short, Lulu is a woman who manages to fail upward, but—unlike in the hundreds of real world examples out there—only for a while before it falls apart. This was originally published in 1946 in hardback, with this Avon paperback coming in 1952. 

This is a cheery cover for Maxwell Bodenheim's Georgie May, which is actually a mostly dark story about a prostitute trying to survive in the pre-Depression American south. The art is uncredited. Bodenheim was a literary light in his prime years, but he isn't widely known today, though his books remain in circulation. During his turbulent life he became destitute, was homeless, panhandled for cash, and finally was infamously the victim of a double murder along with his much younger wife in 1954. Maybe we'll get back to that story a bit later. Georgie May was originally published in 1928, with this Avon edition coming in 1948. 

Ann Cantor once again does excellent brushwork, this time with a sinister cover for Avon Publications and the 1949 novel Night Cry by William Stuart. We talked about this one a while back. It's the story of a cop who kills a suspect, does to the body what you see in the art, then struggles to keep proof of his crime concealed. It's an atmospheric tale capped with an unexpected ending. We haven't watched the movie based on it, the 1950 film noir Where the Sidewalk Ends, but we'll get to it. See more art from Cantor here and here,

Above, an amusing cover for 1954's Forbidden by Leo Brattes, painted by an unknown artist. Brattes was a pseudonym for Leslie Raddatz, and this seems to have been his/her only book. 

Hard to the hole? Of course we went there. Why wouldn't we? The sport of basketball—which is what Fletcher Flora's The Hot-Shot deals with—has loads of sexual terminology. We could have gone with, “I hear you're an amazing ball handler,” or, “I hear you perform best coming off the bench,” or, “I hear you go back door with the best of them,” or, “I hear when you get in a zone you can really stroke it,” or—

*catching breath and taking a sip of water*

“I hear you like to work it inside,” or, “I hear you're a great penetrator,” and so forth.

But while Flora did write some mildly sexual novels, such as Strange Sisters and Park Avenue Tramp, this one is actually a classic rags to riches to corruption tale of the sort you've probably read before. The main character, Skimmer Scaggs, finds that his basketball talent offers a way out of nowheresville, but soon finds himself in the middle of a big time point-shaving racket. The story comes with extra credibility because Flora was a basketball coach before turning his talents to fiction. We have three of his novels, so we'll try to get back to him a bit later.