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

Saturday 23 April 2016

Rockabilly - Harlan Ellison

Stag Preston, idol of millions- whose private life was wilder than any of the songs he sang


Publisher: Gold Medal Books (Frederic Muller Ltd)
Number: 598
Publishing Year: 1963
Printing: First (A Gold Medal Original)
Cover Price: 2'6
Cover Artist:

THIS IS A PICTURE OF HARLAN ELLISON

and Rockabilly is a picture of his world. A world populated by The Hungry Ones - the beautiful women and talented guys who leech off one another - and the populace in general - to make their fast buck. It's a universe in which a kid who knows the angles can become a national institution, where talent doesn't count as much as a good press and a C-note under the table.  The acetate arena where a long-playing bum can sing gibberish and coin a fortune.

Rockabilly is written in the hip, contemporary manner of a brilliant young writer who will shock and amuse you, and who sees beyond the neon glitter of the image merchant's dreamworld.

THIS IS A GOLD MEDAL BOOK

Friday 22 April 2016

Hot Rod Gang Rumble - Meyer Dolinsky

Teen-age Tigress - She Drove Boys To Juvenile Delinquency!
with photos from the powerful motion picture - Hot Rod Rumble


AVON 783
NEW YORK, USA
FIRST PRINTING 1957
MOVIE TIE-IN 

SHE GREW UP TOO FAST...

She was young, blonde and beautiful-a smouldering package of feminine dynamite in a body too mature for her years...

She was one of the crowd who grew up too fast, who defy death for the casual "thrill" of it, who are out for "kicks" at any price...

Disturbing and boldly realistic, HOT ROD GANG RUMBLE is an incisive portrait of a "hot rod club" -and the slick chick who stirred it to violence and destruction!

Read the Avon book.

See HOT ROD RUMBLE, an Allied Artists
release starring
LEIGH SNOWDEN
RICHARD HRTUNIAN
and WRIGHT KING

Thursday 21 April 2016

Run Baby Run - Nicky Cruz


HODDER AND STOUGHTON 340 10700 6
LONDON, UK 
FIRST PRINTING 1969
JACKET DESIGN BY BERNARD BRETT

Nicky Cruz was a key subject in the four million copy best-seller THE CROSS AND THE SWITCHBLADE

In Run Baby Run Nicky tells his own story of gang warfare in the streets of a big city and of his dramatic conversion.

'I reached up to the shelf and took down my revolver. By force of habit I started to put the shells in the magazine so I could sleep with the gun on my night stand. But suddenly I remembered. Jesus loves me. He will protect me. I took the bullets and placed them back in the small box and put the gun back on the shelf. In the morning I would turn it in to the police.

That night, for the first time in my memory, I put my head on my pillow and slept nine beautiful hours. No fear of sounds outside my room. The nightmares were gone.'

'Run Baby Run, the story of Nicky Cruz, is remarkable. It has all the elements of tragedy, violence, and intrigue - plus the greatest ingredient of all ingredients:the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The adult population can no longer ignore the youth with their staggering twentieth century problems. They search for meaning. They are not enamoured with our time-worn social taboos. They press for sincerity in religion, for honesty in politics, and for fairness for the underprivileged.

Run Baby Run is a thrilling story. My hope is that it shall have a wide reading, and that those who read shall come to know Christ who changed the empty, restless heart of Nicky Cruz and has made him a Christian legend in his time.'

BILLY GRAHAM

'Nicky Cruz is only a very colourful representative of a vast number of people who, in the past few decades, have been delivered from crime, alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, homosexuality, and almost every kind of perversion and degeneration known to man.
Psychiatric care, medical treatment, and spiritual counselling had failed to affect these people, when with astounding abruptness, they were set free from their bonds by the power of the Holy Spirit and led to a life of useful service.'

Prof. Edward D. O'Connor,
University of Notre Dame

Wednesday 20 April 2016

The Real Gone Goose - George Bagby

Fast, crackling, crazy, it screams of the quick and the dead


CONSUL BOOKS 1078
LONDON, ENGLAND
FIRST PRINTING 1961
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY T.V. BOARDMAN

George Bagby has always appreciated New York City as a place in which a person can live for years without ever knowing his nearest neighbour.

But not every New Yorker had 'a girl next door' like Sabra, a goofy kid whose unwashed Beatnik friends seemed to spurn everything - soap, bourgeois morals, privacy - everything, that is, except Sabra's unlimited supply of cash. Suddenly Sabra, the 'goose that laid the golden eggs' was gone...real gone. And that was when George Bagby, trying to clarify his relationship with Sabra to the pressm and to his friends at Police Headquarters, decided Sabra had been far less trouble when she was alive.

THE REAL GONE GOOSE is an exciting mystery story that is unusual in that it has the background to murder, the weird and unrealistic world of the 'Beatnik Generation'.

Tuesday 19 April 2016

Teen-Age Mobster - Benjamin Appel

Teen-Age Violence - and Adult Vice


AVON T-468
NEW YORK, USA 
SECOND PRINTING WITH THIS TITLE AND NEW COVER ART - NO DATE
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BY AVON IN 1955 AS "LIFE AND DEATH OF A TOUGH GUY"

YOUNG HOOD

Out of the slum back alleys and the violent sandlots of Hell's Kitchen came young Joey Case-

an ordinary, decent kid who might have been your neighbor's son one year...suddenly turned vicious mobster, "lady's man," and brutal killer the next.

With unflinching honesty, yet depth and compassion as well, one of the truly big writers about the New York underworld tells his story-as timely and terrifying as tomorrow's headlines-the story of a kid who made murder his chosen career.

"THE BEST ACCOUNT YET IN THE FORM OF A NOVEL OF A DEBASING PHASE OF OUR HISTORY..."

-N.Y. Journal-American