When does a growth spurt occur in a typical business? In mid-century sleaze fiction, it happens whenever secretary and boss agree, as suggested in this brilliant cover by George Gross for John Hunter's 1957 novel Office Hussy, previously published in 1951 as The Loves of Alice Brandt and credited to Gene Harvey. We like to interpret this as the woman being the boss, having just told her subordinate to pour a couple of tall bourbons, and be damned quick about it. But it can be seen the other way if you wish. Doesn't matter, because when consenting parties get together everybody gets a bonus. You already know George Gross was close to the best paperback artist ever, but if you're unfamiliar with him, check here, here, and here. 

Above, a truly excellent Rudolph Belarski cover for Shack Road by Hallam Whitney, aka Harry Whittington, for NYC-based digest publisher Star Novels. What you get here is a hayseed sharecropper named Juba who is surrounded by highly sexual hayseed women, including a soon-to-be runaway daughter, a wife that draws men like flies, and a mother-in-law only fifteen years older than Juba’s wife and who was once the fastest girl around. Juba owned a car once, but sold it twenty-six years ago to pay maternity ward bills. He finds another one by the side of the road and decides to hitch his mule to it, pull it home, and get it running. If he can manage it life will be sweet again, but complications, of course, arise. Simple people and countrified prose, in a book that was part of a popular sub-genre of mid-century hick novels.