Sunday 30 April 2017

Drummer - Richard Carlile

Brilliant and thought-provoking: a hallucinatory trip into a savage, amoral, rock-horror nightmare


TANDEM BOOKS 426 13231 9
1st PRINTING 1971
LONDON, UK

A wild, neon-lit, stereophonic experience, too out-of-this-world to be fact, too true to life to be fiction.

...at the first moment of their appearance in the stadium the screaming of the fans swelled to a chaos of sound. Malk held up his arms and appealed for quiet, shouting into his mike in a futile attempt to make himself heard. He gave a shrug and turned to the others.

Okay, here we go. A-four, a-three. a-two, a-one! 

They launched into the act. No one heard them. Like figures in a silent movie they plucked their guitars, mouthed and gaped, stamped, shook, gesticulated. The pace grew wilder and wilder and when Sonny smashed his instrument to pieces and hurled away the bits, began to tear off his clothes and scratch his face, the audience took it all as part of the performance. They smelled blood, and howled for more...

Saturday 29 April 2017

Rule Of Night - Trevor Hoyle

Kenny is savage, sensitive, menacing and unpredictable. This is his story - a haunting novel of teenage violence, crime and kicks.


FUTURA BOOKS 0 8600 7175 8
1st PRINTING 1975
LONDON, UK

Kenny Seddon exists. He's as real as you are. This documentary novel explores the sub-world of teenage violence in the northern town of Rochdale - with real people, true events, and disturbing consequences. Only the names have been changed to mask the identities of Kenny and his gang.

You see them any day of the week, hanging round street corners, telling dirty jokes, kicking in bus shelter windows (and sometimes peoples's faces). Charging across football pitches to grapple with rival fans. You read about his kind in books, see him portrayed in films and on television.

But in Rule of Night you're not reading fiction - but fact. Trevor Hoyle spent four months researching the background to this book. He toured the pubs, stood on the terraces, talked to the parents, and through notes and tape-recordings has reconstructed a documented case-history which tries to answer the one question that seems to baffle everybody - what makes Kenny tick?

Friday 28 April 2017

Too Far To Walk - John Hersey

THE TURNED-ON NOVEL OF THE L.S.D. GENERATION
"The sequel to LORD OF THE FLIES and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE"
THE NEW YORK TIMES


CORGI BOOKS 552 08001 2
1st PRINTING 1968
LONDON, UK
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY HAMISH HAMILTON 1966

Written by one of the major writers of our time, this is a novel about the new generation. The boys and girls who have everything, and nothing; who have tried it all-and still want more. It is a novel of lives filled with a new kind of desperation, and of kicks that mount to the greatest, most dangerous kick of all-a searing trip straight to heaven...or hell!

Thursday 27 April 2017

Teen-Age Vice - Courtney Ryley Cooper

This book exposes: The Vice Racket, Dope Addiction, Juke Joint Binges, Cabins For The Night, Prisons That Pervert, The Smut Peddlers, Lonely Hearts Clubs


PYRAMID BOOKS G43
1st PRINTING 1952
NEW YORK, USA
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY LITTLE, BROWN & CO MARCH 1939 AS 'DESIGNS IN SCARLET'

JAILBAIT!

They hold orgies in cellar clubs, go on juke joint binges and motel "honeymoons." They get hopped up on liquor and dope, then rob and rape and murder. They are the young people under 21 who commit more than half the major crimes in the U.S.A.

What makes them do it? Who is to blame? Courtney Ryley Cooper gives you the grim and tragic answers in this brilliant and blistering expose of teen-age vice.

This book is a harsh dose, but a vitally necessary one. It was not written for children, morons, or sensation seekers-but only for the purpose of giving you the facts. If you are squeamish and choose to ignore them-even while the teen-age trouble in your town is running wild-then this book is not for you!

Wednesday 26 April 2017

The Devil's Churchyard - Ted Willis

DIXON OF DOCK GREEN in a NEW full-length thriller


MAX PARRISH
1st PRINTING 1957
LONDON, UK
COVER ART BY HENRY FOX

The DEVIL'S CHURCHYARD...
is no routine patrol - not by a long chalk!

It is the first full-length story of P.C. DIXON of Dock Green, out on one of the grimmest beats of his life.

Once you start reading this new thriller, there's no holding back. You are immediately up to the neck in enthralling detection with Dixon himself and young Buster. And Buster has an added problem of his own: the gang of Teddy Boys. They include Ginger Noakes, 'a boy with a meaningless, almost permanent grin,'and Danny, with his 'warm,peppermint-scented breath'.

This new, dramatic mystery story has been specially written by the author of Dixon Of Dock Green (top of TV's popularity poll), and the famous police film The Blue Lamp.

As Jack Warner says, 'I know you will enjoy this thrilling story' - and he ought to know!

Tuesday 25 April 2017

Strike The Father Dead - John Wain


WORLD BOOKS
1ST PRINTING 1963
LONDON, UK
FIRST PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN & CO 1962

The 'hero' of John Wain's latest novel is a young man called Jeremy, who rebels against the stuffy future envisaged for him by his father, an upright Professor of Classics in a 'red-brick' university. He runs away from school at the age of seventeen and becomes a jazz pianist in a low dive club in one of the seamier haunts of London. The year is 1942.
It is during this wartime period that Jeremy meets an American negro horn-player called Percy Brett, a huge, gentle, delightful character who dominates the rest of the story. Percy teaches Jeremy what jazz can really be, and much else about life besides.
The thrill and rhythm of jazz music pervade the greater part of this extremely interesting novel. Running through it, too, is another theme : the bitter relationship between Jeremy and his austere father. Jeremy's choice of a way of life has been a terrible shock to the ageing professor ; communication between them has ceased, and the only news that filters through comes by way of occasional paragraphs in the tabloid newspapers. Yet we learn gradually that the father had himself rebelled against his father; we follow his agonies as he in turn tries to come to terms with a younger generation. 

Monday 24 April 2017

Penguin Modern Poets 5 - Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg


PENGUIN BOOKS D78
1ST PRINTING 1963
MIDDLESEX, UK
COVER ART BY ROGER MAYNE

This series is an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader by publishing some thirty poems by each of three modern poets in a single volume. In each case the selection is made to illustrate the poet's characteristics in style and form, Penguin Modern Poets 1, 2, 3, and 4, have already appeared and further volumes are in preparation.