Monday, 6 June 2016

The Picturegoers - David Lodge

Love and brute desire...cynicism and faith- a compassionate, realistic and even shocking novel of urban Britain today


PAN BOOKS G586
FIRST PAN EDITION 1962
LONDON, UK
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1960 BY MCGIBBON & KEE LTD
COVER ART BY OWEN

THE PALLADIUM, Brickley...

To this seedy Saturday night Mecca came:

MARK - who mapped out a girls's body and knew just how far she would let him go...but had, too, a burning need to regain his faith.

CLARE - who helped restore it...but found her own beliefs undermined by a new-found passion.

HARRY - who wanted power over gangs and tarts...yet wilted under insults of an old woman.

FATHER KIPLING - angered by the bosom flaunting crudity of modern life...but too ineffectual to influence his own congregation.

And so many others-each of them seeking, searching, questing...

Wednesday, 1 June 2016

The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles

Strange Romance in the Exotic Desert


SIGNET BOOKS 840
FIRST PRINTING JANUARY 1951
NEW YORK, USA
FIRST PUBLISHED BY NEW DIRECTIONS 1949
COVER ART BY HOOKS

Harem Bride

"The three wives of Belqassim strode into the room...They threw themselves upon Kit's prostrate form, wrenching the turban from her head and ripping her garments open by sheer force, so that all at once the upper part of her body was entirely unclothed...Then she felt the whip strike across her breasts. As she screamed, she reached out and grasped a head that bobbed in front of her...With all her might she pulled it downward and tried to rip the thing to shreds, but it would not tear; it merely became wet. The whip was making streaks of fire across her shoulders and back."

"The Sheltering Sky, it seems to me, is the finest lost-generation novel since the banks closed and the lost boys and girls began coming home from Montparnasse cafes to find themselves on the farms or in papa's factory."
-Lewis Gannett, New York Herald Tribune

PAUL BOWLES had achieved a distinguished reputation as a composer and a music critic before he turned to literature, in his early thirties. His first novel, The Sheltering Sky, published by New Directions, has been widely acclaimed by reviewers. Born in New York, he now lives in Tangiers.

Monday, 30 May 2016

Out Of The Burning - Ira Henry Freeman

THE SENSATIONAL, TRUE STORY OF FRENCHY, A TEEN-AGE GANGLEADER IN THE SLUMS OF BROOKLYN


CORGI BOOKS GG955
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING IN GREAT BRITAIN 1961

TORN SAVAGELY OUT OF THE SORDID BROOKLYN SLUMS, THIS IS THE EXPLOSIVE STORY OF FRENCHY JOYEAUX - GANG LEADER....

BRUTAL
Street fights, muggings, beatings, zip guns....

TENDER
When kids, even in this uncompromising world, manage to fall hopelessly in love....

SHOCKING
Junkies, cellar club orgies and pathetic child prostitutes....

INSPIRING
Because sometimes - out of the burning - one kid climbs towards a new future.

BIG M-G-M FILM coming soon!

"Reeks with squalor and ends in triumph. An astonishing, important, inspiring book."
New York Herald Tribune

Thursday, 26 May 2016

This Is It - Hal Ellson

A SHOCKING STORY OF AMERICAN TEEN-AGE GANGS


PEDIGREE BOOKS 
FIRST PRINTING MARCH 1958
LONDON, UK

Friday, 20 May 2016

Juvenile Delinquency And The Law - A. E. Jones


PELICAN BOOKS A 158
FIRST PRINTING 1945
MIDDLESEX, ENGLAND

THE AUTHOR

A. E. JONES is the son of a father and mother who were both elementary school teachers, he went first to the local council school where his parents believed-and he agrees with them-that the best available primary education was to be obtained. He acquired no special knowledge of juvenile delinquency there, though he does remember that one of his fellow pupils achieved some notoriety by graduating to a reformatory. At the age of ten he won a scholarship to the county secondary school; seven years later he won a university scholarship. He left King's College, London, with a first class honours degree, and after a short spell in a City office, entered the service of the law. For close on 20 years he has been a magistrates' clerk and during that time he has had special occasion to study the problems of juvenile delinquency. Opportunities to study the more normal side of childhood have been afforded by his two daughters. For some time he has made a hobby of writing articles of technical interest for legal journals. This is his first full length book.

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Send Me No Lillies - Paul Denver

A penetrating account of what makes a jazz musician tick


CONSUL BOOKS 1448
LONDON, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1965

"Send Me No Lillies" takes a hard look at what makes a dedicated jazz musician tick; in particular, the inner compulsion which drives him and in the end compensates even for the destruction of his personal happiness.