Saturday 30 April 2016

Going To Meet The Man - James Baldwin


MICHAEL JOSEPH
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1965
COVER ART BY DAVID BATTLE

As a novelist, an essayist and a playwright, James Baldwin has proved himself a writer of beautiful and powerful prose. In Going To Meet The Man it is possible for the first time to read a collection of his short stories, a collection which can only add to his stature.

Although it is not Baldwin's aim in writing fiction to be an apologist of the Negro cause, nor of any cause other than that of literature, the racial conflicts which are tearing at the lives of so many Americans today are never far from the surface. The traditions of Negro and white are forcefully evoked and examined, and the pain which the author feels at the plight of his fellow Negroes never once blurs his deep compassion for the frailties of mankind.

Running through his stories like a theme is the role of inherited prejudices in shaping man's destiny. There is the child in The Rockpile who can never be forgiven by his God-fearing father for his illegitimacy; the child in This Morning, This Evening, So Soon who has grown up in France, free of guilt that his father and mother are of different colours, but who will be brought to awareness of this fact when his parents return with him to the States; the child in Sonny's Blues who learns to understand his father through being told of the death of an uncle he never knew; and, in a horrifying finale, the man in Going To Meet The Man whose hatred has its roots in a scene from his boyhood where his parents and other white people watch with jubilation the mutilation and lynching of a Negro 'criminal'.

Friday 29 April 2016

Soho Spiv - Ben Sarto


MODERN FICTION
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1949
COVER ART BY PERL

Million-Sale Ben Sarto Shocks London with his new "SOHO SPIV"

Thursday 28 April 2016

The Deadly Sex - Jack Webb


BOARDMAN 303
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1960
COVER ART BY MCLOUGHLIN

Sammy Golden, police-detective, and Father Shanley, the astute but kindly parish priest, are involved with murder and delinquents-among other things-in Jack Webb's most exciting mystery to date.

Sammy is told to acquire a hangover and then report for duty. This is an unorthodox order, but on it hangs the catching of a cop-killer, the murderer of one of Sammy's friends. Sammy does as he is told. Perhaps he is overzealous because his head aches so that he can hardly think, and when he turns up, still on orders at a roadhouse called The Seven Club, he is ready for both beer and trouble. He has plenty of both before the evening ends.

The excitement starts when Sammy meets a blonde-a girl whose looks are one-in-a-thousand-and saves her from a fracas that starts in The Seven Club. Father Shanley tries to reach Sammy, but Sammy is moving so fast that their paths seldom cross in this suspense-filled story.

Wednesday 27 April 2016

The Tiger Aamong Us - Leigh Brackett


BOARDMAN 200
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1958
COVER ART BY MCLOUGHLIN

Walter Sherris - successful, happy, good husband and father-made just one mistake: he took a walk along a dark road one night. Without warning, a car raced toward him and screeched to a stop; out piled five young men intent on violence. To the accompaniment of wild brainless laughter, Walter Sherris was beaten to the ground.

He awoke in a hospital nine days later. And from that moment his pleasant life became a nightmare, more horrible than those he had wrestled with in those nine days of unconsciousness.

Walter Sherris wanted revenge: for the broken leg and the pain; for the doubts he now had about his pretty, gay wife; and for the countless and nameless others who had been mauled by the thrill seekers, the sadists, the compulsive slayers.

The police were evasive, almost disinterested. There were no witnesses. So Walter Sherris set out-alone-to trap the tiger.

Tuesday 26 April 2016

Hooked - Edited By Phil Hirsch

JUNKIES, POTHEADS, PUSHERS - THE PRIVATE HELLS OF MEN AND WOMEN SELF-CONDEMNED TO A LIVING DEATH


PYRAMID BOOKS X-1760
NEW YORK, USA
FIRST PRINTING MARCH 1968
COVER DESIGN BY HENRY BERKOWITZ
PHOTO BY STEVE SHAPIRO FROM BLACK STAR

"THESE ARTICLES WERE FIRST PUBLISHED IN CHALLENGE FOR MEN MAGAZINE AND MEN'S MAGAZINE"

HOOKED
-the addict who made his wife a prostitute for the money to feed his habit

HOOKED
-the hopped-up kids who shot and stomped an old man to death for kicks

HOOKED
-the junkie who turned dope peddler, with death as his first sale

HOOKED
is the searing, authentic story of the dope addict, the pusher, the narcotics cop, and the vicious, nightmare world they live in.

Monday 25 April 2016

Jazz Boy - William Gwinn

 A EVIL WOMAN DROVE HIM INTO AN UNDERWORLD OF DARK PASSIONS

BANNER BOOKS 76
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1959

JAZZ BOY

Vic Ravenna was a guy who had everything-the jazz that burned fiercely through his brain and body, the best booze, plenty of dames, everything-

-everything except Zora, the brazen beauty who teased him, laughed at him, and then fed her ambitions on the offerings of other men. Zora wanted fun and money and fame-but she wanted them without Vic.

Vic knew what Zora was. But he didn't care. He had to have her, and he vowed to do anything, anything at all, to get her...

Sunday 24 April 2016

Quadrophenia - Alan Fletcher

A GREAT ROCK ALBUM • NOW A STUNNING FILM


CORGI 0 552 11183 X
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1979
MOVIE TIE-IN

REMEMBER THE MODS?

This is the novel behind the WHO's conceptual rock album "QUADROPHENIA", the story of the mods and rockers of the early sixties, now a stunning new film.

QUADROPHENIA

They were dedicated to fashion, music and pills. They created the 'Style', followed the WHO, the SMALL FACES and the STONES, rode polished Lambrettas and assembled in their thousands to fight.

By 1964, the year of the Brighton riots, the mods had revolutionised a whole generation...

The Who Films present
A Curbishley-Baird Production
"QUADROPHENIA"
Musical Directors:PETE TOWNSEND, ROGER DALTREY, JOHN ENTWISTLE, KEITH MOON
Screenplay by DAVE HUMPHRIES, MARTIN STELLMAN and FRANC RODDAM
Produced by ROGER BAIRD and ROY CURBISHLEY
Directed by FRANC RODDAM
A Polytel Film, Executive producer
DAVID GIDEON THOMSON