 *sigh* I'm still confused how I was charged for not having something. 
They say possession is nine tenths of the law, but that last tenth can get mighty interesting if the thing you don't possess when the cops come along is, for example, identification, or clothing, or, apparently morals. Paul Hunter's 1961 novel Morals Charge deals with an eighteen-year old named Nancy who is lusted after by her mother's boyfriend, falls into the clutches of a big city racketeer, is jailed on a morals charge and abused by cops intent on using her to snare bigger prey. Paul Rader handles the cover work here, and it's a typically excellent effort. Mid-century paperback art would be far less entertaining without him, and though everything he does is great, if you want to see some of our favorites, check here, here, here, and here. We also have a mini-collection here.
 She's not the sharpest ho in the toolshed.  
Lana, by Joan Ellis, is sleaze fiction about a fifteen-year-old girl with poor critical reasoning skills. Which is to say she's D-U-M. Basically, she falls for an older guy who pimps her out. Her rationalizations around this are hilarious. Prostitutes often form co-dependent bonds with their pimps, so we hear, but Ellis didn't handle that aspect with sufficient skill, instead making poor Lana flat-out superficial. But hey—it's a sleaze novel. You don't go into it expecting Les Miserables. This is copyright 1960 with Paul Rader cover art (of a figure that looks a lot like Elsa Martinelli). By the way, if for some reason you don't know the term “ho,” look here.
 We'll play the corporate merger game later. Just this once I actually need you to type something. 
Above you see a cover for Sin Now, Pay Later, which was written by Allan Horn, the keen literary mind behind such books as Molester's Trap and Whore from Maupin Street. And you wonder why all these guys wrote under pseudonyms. Sin Now, Pay Later is 1967 with cover art by Paul Rader.
 You'll need to use some deodorant before I do anything like that again. 
1964's The Mark of a Man tells the story of a mill worker in a dead end town who has simple desires, but whose girlfriend wants him to show more ambition. You know that's a recipe for trouble. Collier's prose is better than normal for Midwood, according to one review we read, but we're more interested, as usual, in artist Paul Rader, who was showcased on scores of Midwood covers and is great here as well. We've featured him often, but if you're unfamiliar with his work we suggest you behold his genius here, here, here, and here. You'll be glad you did.
 You know what? Don't worry about it. The first time wasn't that great anyway. 
Above, a Paul Rader cover for Twice with Julie by Jason Hytes, aka John Plunkett. The lesson here? Every man has his limitations. Copyright 1962.
 Once you go down there's no turning back. 
But isn't Third Street in the other direction? We're gonna go down the third street. You mean the third street from here? If you wanna think of it that way. Why are you holding my hand? The third street gets slippery. You'll see.
Super rare Joan Ellis authored Midwood-Tower lesbian sleaze novel about a female painter and female model who come together over more than just art, 1964, with Paul Rader on the cover chores.
 Why don't you get undressed and we'll have a coming in party instead. 
It's mandatory to occasionally share a cover from Midwood-Tower, so above you see Coming Out Party by Kimberly Kemp, who was a pseudonym, in this case occupied by Gilbert Fox. The story involves a homeless beauty picked up on the street by a wealthy NYC couple who give her a place to live but turn her into a plaything—topless chores, nude photographs, sexual duties with the heads of house. You know—the usual maid stuff. They may be dirty people but at least everyone ends up sqeaky clean. The cover art is by Paul Rader, and the copyright is 1965.
 It's not the size of the caucus that matters. It's what you do with it. 
This one is self explanatory. Nick Vendor's Sabrina and the Senator, published in 1960 by Midwood Books with cover art by Paul Rader, is billed as a behind the scenes story of the private lives and public affairs of politicians and their playmates. Thanks to the current U.S. president, this sort of thing is on people's minds in a way it hasn't been since Bill Clinton. As fans and collectors of pulp fiction, we've always gleefully wallowed in political sleaze. Well we're up to our comb overs in it now.
 *sigh* Okay, lesson learned—new sexual orientation, same old crushing regret. 
Above is a piece of classic Midwood sleaze, The Drifter, by March Hastings, aka Sally Singer, 1962, with Paul Rader cover art and the staggeringly funny tagline: Any port in a storm—and one of the ports was Lesbos. In the story, a woman has an impotent but deviant husband who seems to be sexually inspired only by his sister, so wifey flees and the drifting begins. As does the slumming, self-hating, and everything else. Since lesbianism is universally understood in mid-century sleaze to be a mental disorder, it's no spoiler to reveal that our heroine doesn't stay docked in Lesbos permanently, but rather learns the usual dubious lesson imparted by these books: the love of a good man fixes everything. It's a sex conversion fantasy written for a male market, and not to be taken seriously in any way. As a side note, since Lesbos is a Greek isle, that means we have a bit of a theme today (see below).
 I had new shocks installed, so theoretically nobody outside should be able to tell we're in there humping like beasts. 
In Sin on Wheels a virgin moves into a trailer park with her new husband and discovers he and most of the other residents are swingers. He's cheating on her within a week, she's cheating back days later, and pretty soon everyone wants a piece of her wedding cake. Of course, it was always the husband's plan to share his bride, which means the friction, so to speak, derives from her attempts to resist being turned into a trailer park plaything. It's all written from her point of view, so it's basically a male fantasy of a woman's descent into the sexual gutter. This is credited to Loren Beauchamp but it was written by Robert Silverberg. If you're thinking this is somehow a diamond in the rough we'll tell you bluntly it's not distinguishable from most other light sleaze. It's fun and quick, though, with lots of heavy drinking, strip poker, and round robin intercourse. It's 1962 copyright, with Paul Rader cover art of one of his best temptresses, an aspect that contributes to the book's collectibility.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1964—China Detonates Nuke
At the Lop Nur test site located between the Taklamakan and Kuruktag deserts, the People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon, codenamed 596 after the month of June 1959, which is when the program was initiated. 1996—Handgun Ban in the UK
In response to a mass shooting in Dunblane, Scotland that kills 16 children, the British Conservative government announces a law to ban all handguns, with the exception .22 caliber target pistols. When Labor takes power several months later, they extend the ban to all handguns. 1945—Laval Executed
Pierre Laval, who was the premier of Vichy, France, which had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, is shot by a firing squad for treason. In subsequent years it emerges that Laval may have considered himself a patriot whose goal was to publicly submit to the Germans while doing everything possible behind the scenes to thwart them. In at least one respect he may have succeeded: fifty percent of French Jews survived the war, whereas in other territories about ninety percent perished. 1966—Black Panthers Form
In the U.S., in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther political party. The Panthers are active in American politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but eventually legal troubles combined with a schism over the direction of the party lead to its dissolution. 1962—Cuban Missile Crisis Begins
A U-2 spy plane flight over the island of Cuba produces photographs of Soviet nuclear missiles being installed. Though American missiles have been installed near Russia, the U.S. decides that no such weapons will be tolerated in Cuba. The resultant standoff brings the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. The crisis finally ends with a secret deal in which the U.S. removes its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing the Cuban weapons.
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