Sunday 17 July 2016

Strike Heaven On The Face - Charles Calitri


FREDERICK MULLER LTD
FIRST PRINTING 1959
LONDON, UK

In this novel of tremendous impact, Charles Calitri tells the story of a courageous man, a typical American small town...and a discovery that threatened to blow the town off its staid foundations.

It started with rumours about what was going on in the high school-talk of clandestine love affairs, violence, whispers of a sex club.

Walter Davis, the new dean of Barthorne High, determined he would find out about it and do what he could to correct it, to protect the students. He felt as responsible for them as he did for his own daughter and sons. But when he assembled the shocking facts, he ran into a stone wall of opposition from those whose attitude was: "It's none of our business; they didn't do it in the locker-room....We're not a social welfare organization."

With the lines drawn, the conflict exploded, and before it was over, parents, teachers, students, school and county officials had taken sides. The roots extended deep into the heart of Barthorne itself and in one way or another almost everyone was involved.

The story of how Dean Davis brought the town together out of a situation that almost tore it apart is thrilling and inspiring. It is filled with people you come to know and like or dislike, just as you do their counterparts in your own town. For Barthorne is much like any other community-composed mainly of decent, fair-minded people with the same educational problems as your own.

Here at last is a positive, hopeful novel about a generation in anguish-the parents as well as the children. The story of Walter Davis's battle with bad jnfluence, ignorance, fear and indifference, dramatically told by an author who has devoted his life to teaching, bears the authentic and sometimes terrifying stamp of truth.

Monday 11 July 2016

Opium - Jean Cocteau


ICON BOOKS B1
NO DATE
LONDON, UK
FIRST PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY PETER OWEN LTD 1957
COVER DESIGN BY FISK

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In December 1928, Jean Cocteau entered a clinic near Paris hoping for a cure from opium addiction. He remained there some months and during this time wrote the main body of notes which form this book.

Cocteau himself describes OPIUM as the Diary of a Cure; but it is not a diary in the conventional sense for this is no mere record of day-to-day treatment, and it is  as different in style as it is in content from that other famous testimony of an opium eater by Thomas De Quincy.
Here then is an account-totally free from self-pity-by one of the greatest of living writers, of a deeply harrowing experience.

This first paperback edition of OPIUM includes many drawings that Cocteau made during his treatment which convey, even more graphically than the text. the splendours and miseries of drug addiction.

Sunday 10 July 2016

Blood In My Eye - George Jackson


PENGUIN BOOKS 01400.38787
MIDDLESEX, UK
FIRST PRINTING 1975
FIRST PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY JONATHAN CAPE 1972
COVER PHOTO BY PAUL POPPER LTD

George Jackson completed the manuscript of Blood in my Eye just a few days before he was shot and killed while, it is alleged, attempting to escape from the maximum-security prison at San Quentin. His story became known to millions with the publication of Soledad Brother.

Blood in my Eye takes up where Soledad Brother left off - it is a devastating and passionate critique of American society and a programme for destruction.

'Whether or not George Jackson's analysis proves prophetic, the power and despairing clarity of his writing makes him one of the great voices of the American Left.'
- Sunday Times

Saturday 9 July 2016

The Young Wolves - Hank Janson


COMPACT BOOKS F345
FIRST PRINTING 1968
LONDON, UK

the young wolves

They hunted as a pack, terrorizing the town with looting, fire-raising and rape...

A chance meeting with an old friend, whom he finds distraught and angry, puts Hank Janson on the trail of a gang of youths who appear to have been trained by some mysterious background character in all the ignoble arts of terror and extortion.
Joe Radinski had good cause to be angry; because he had refused to "co-operate" with the gang his 12-year old daughter had been brutally imprisoned and raped by these boys, for whom a conveniently arranged alibi had served to prevent any effective police action against them.
Gradually but remorselessly, Hank moves in on the gang's home ground, vowing to tear it apart, with his bare hands if necessary. When he starts showing results, the hidden power hits back in predictably ruthless fashion; but by this time Hank has the assistance of the very attractive and nimble-witted Cilla, with her own good reasons for hating the gang. She not only saves him from a very tricky situation, and helps him in his quest for the identity of his mystery quarry, but also manages to excel in the more intimate arts of which hank is something of an expert and connoisseur.

Friday 8 July 2016

In Hot Blood - Mercer B. Cook

The grim story of a trio of young bloodthirsty hoodlums who swept across the country leaving a trail of robbery, mayhem and finally a brutal mass murder! As electrifying as today's headlines!


CHALLENGE BOOKS CB 201
FIRST PRINTING 1966
CALIFORNIA, USA

in hot blood

Will make your blood run cold as the gripping story of three young hoodlums, their contempt for society and the final senseless murders of six innocent people unfolds. But this is more than a story of chilling tragedy. It's an inside look at the hearts and minds of killers and victims alike, a raw slice of life itself!

Thursday 7 July 2016

Streets Of Sin - Mark Ryan

A powerful novel of wild delinquents on the prowl...delving into the fruits of forbidden desires and violent passions!


BEDSIDE BOOKS BB 813
INITIAL EDITION 1959
NEW YORK, USA
COVER ART BY LOU MARCHETTI

WILD DESIRES...

and untamed passions were the driving forces that made the Barons street gang the mob of delinquent sinners that they were. With no respect for morality, these shameless hoods and their gang-girl debs killed, raped and lusted for love. Their twisted lives in the gutter led them to further dangerous crimes and...

SINFUL AFFAIRS!

Friday 17 June 2016

Play It Cool - Jack Gerstine

Wild Days and Nights of a Young Hoodlum...


DIGIT BOOKS R295
FIRST PRINTING - NO DATE
LONDON, UK

The teeming streets of Brooklyn were a battle-ground for fifteen-year-old Joey Vanne. A bright personable kid, he might have gone far once, but he was already marked down as a 'Juvenile Delinquent'.

You've read before about boys like Joey-good kids gone wrong. But never before has there been such a blazingly real story-one that is utterly true to life-about today's teen-agers on the prowl.