Angling for Extra Credit

While speaking last week with a teacher friend of mine, I was reminded that I’d intended to update my collection of back-to-school covers, originally posted on this page in 2015. With classrooms again filling across the United States this month, I wanted to add a dozen paperback fronts I have come across during 2021 to my already extensive collection, bringing the total to a whopping 108!

Included among those supplementary selections are the two covers posted here: Eve’s Apple, by Ronald Simpson (Monarch, 1961), with art by Harry Barton; and Campus Queen, by Ursula Grant (Midwood, 1966), featuring an illustration by the great Paul Rader.

Click here for an education in the entire, expanded set.

All Alone, with Trouble in Mind

Book titles containing the word “widow” suddenly seem to be everywhere on my radar. March brought the publication of Alma Katsu’s “gripping, authentic spy procedural,” Red Widow (Putnam), and earlier this month saw the re-release (by Cutting Edge Books) of Louis Lorraine’s 1961 sleaze classic, Commuter Widow. Soon after I downloaded the inarguably not-safe-for-work front cover of that new Commuter Widow edition, I had cause to search for it again in my computer files … and came up with a slew of attractive vintage novels also featuring “widow” in their names.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t know the name of the artist whose remarkable work fronts the 1958 Crest printing of Richard Wormser’s The Widow Wore Red, shown above. But I can identify the painters of most of the paperback covers below, from Bill George (Black Widow, 1954) and Harry Barton (both the undated Exciting Widow and the yarn from which it swiped its art, 1963’s That Kind of Widow) to Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka (Self-Made Widow, 1958, and 1963’s The Torrid Widow), Bob Hilbert (1953’s Night at the Mocking Widow), and Robert McGinnis (the undated Suddenly a Widow, by George Harmon Coxe, and 1966’s No Tears from the Widow, by Carter Brown).

Charles Copeland gave us the cover for Rick Holmes’ New Widow (1963), while Weekend Widows (1966) boasts a front painted by Al Rossi, and Paul Rader is credited with creating the image for Wayward Widow (1962). You’re looking at Clark Hulings’ work on 1957’s The Golden Widow, James Meese’s artistry decorating 1957 Pocket release of Ursula Curtiss’ The Widow’s Web, and the talents of Mort Engel showcased on the 1965 Ace version of that same Curtiss tale. Finally, Griffith Foxley was responsible for the painting that introduces the 1954 Dell release of Dolores Hitchens’ Widows Won’t Wait (a singularly Erle Stanley Gardner-ish title); Mitchell Hooks was behind the 1955 Bantam cover of The Widow and the Web, by Robert Martin; and the great Walter Popp imagined the candelabra-wielding redhead on Evelyn Bond’s Widow in White (1973).

Click on any of the images here for an enlargement.

READ MORE: “Review: The Widow,” by Steven J. McDermott (Mostly Old Books and Rust).

Just the Right Touch?

The Golden Touch, by Al Dewlen (Popular Library, 1959).
Cover art by Stanley Zuckerberg.

So this is how Killer Covers themed posts occasionally germinate: I was listening the other day to a National Public Radio broadcast, and this commentator came on to discuss the many downsides of our world’s present COVID-19 pandemic. One of the things she said she has missed most over the last year is touch—just the innocent, reflexive ability to reach out and touch somebody she knows, to make that common tactile contact. The coronavirus scourge, she observed, has stopped us from shaking hands, stopped us from patting each other on the back, taught us not to move too close to our fellow human beings, lest we contract or pass along the virus. In our efforts to save one another, she lamented, we have lost this valuable connection with each other.

She had a point, of course, and one that I’d heard expressed previously, if not as avidly. And it got me to thinking—but not about the gentle fingering of mortal flesh; rather, it reminded me that I had recently noticed more than one book cover, in my computer’s files, featuring the word “touch” in its title.

As it transpired, I found many more than one example. In addition to Stanley Zuckerberg’s cover—above—you will find fronts here illustrated by the likes of Saul Tepper (A Touch of Death, 1954, below and left), Rafael DeSoto (the gold cover from Don’t Touch Me, 1958), Paul Rader (1962’s Touch Me Gently and 1963’s The Cruel Touch), Robert Maguire (Touch Me Not, 1959), Rudy Nappi (A Touch of Depravity, 1960), Victor Kalin (Soft Touch, 1958), and Richard Cuffari (A Touch of Glory, 1964).

If you are aware of any other examples of vintage “touch” covers, I invite you to … well, get in touch.

FOLLOW-UP: Art Scott, the co-author of 2014’s The Art of Robert E. McGinnis, draws my attention to three additional “Touch” paperback covers, all of them carrying McGinnis artwork (and two of which have previously appeared on this page): A Touch of the Dragon, by Hamilton Basso (Popular Library, 1964); The Limbo Touch, by Jack Weeks (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1968); and an alternative front for MacDonald’s Soft Touch (Dell, 1962).

Another Look: “Again and Again”

Warning: Artistic inspiration drawn from book titles may vary.



Left: Again and Again, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1963); cover art by Robert Maguire. Right: Again and Again, by “March Hastings,” aka Sally Singer (Midwood, 1968); cover illustration by Paul Rader.

A Last Blast of Summer Delights

It seems there’s no end to the number of interesting, provocative, and downright amusing book fronts boasting a summertime or at least a beach theme. In June 2009, I posted in this blog a selection of more than two dozen such covers. Three years ago, I added significantly to that collection, bringing the total number of images up to 91. Today, I have 39 more to present, most of them suggesting that this season of sun is also a ripe season for sin.

Among the artists represented in this adjunct gallery are Robert McGinnis (The Limbo Touch, Dark Fury, and the recently talked-about Deadly Welcome), Robert Bonfils (Mix ’n’ Match Mates, Surfside Sex, Sex Is Like Money), Paul Rader (Blanket Party/Sultry Summer, Island of Sin), Glen Orbik (Scratch One), Fred Fixler (Two Way Beach Girl), Robert Maguire (Love Under Capricorn, Ah King), James Meese (The Dangerous One), Harry Schaare (Jungle Heat), Bill Edwards (Youth Against Obscenity), Robert Heindel (The Beach House), Mitchell Hooks (Hot Winds of Summer), Victor Olson (The Harem, Summer Set/Available), Michael Codd (The Last Night of Summer), and Richard Powers (Summer in Salandar).

Click on any of the covers here to open an enlargement.