Paperback 586: The Girl with a Secret / Charlotte Armstrong (Crest 382)

Paperback 586: Crest 382 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Girl with a Secret
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15

Best things about this cover:

• the girl who refused to use the 'shift' key.
• She'd be a lot hotter if they'd let her come out of the wall.
• Who knew Georgia O'Keeffe went through a femme fatale phase?
• Back-to-back "Dram" covers. Who says this blog isn't exciting!?

Best things about this back cover:

• Oakland Tribune makes Armstrong sound like a master thief or brilliant serial killer.
• "Very much a bride." What .. what? Is that part supposed to come with a [wink!]? "You know how brides are ..."
• Needless to say, the design of this back cover is unimaginative and joyless, down to the hackneyed, irrelevant tagline.

Page 123~

Ellen opened the door. "Oh, Mr. Tony! Oh ... Mrs. Paige!"

Nicely encapsulates the horror of accidentally walking in on your algebra teacher nailing your best friend's mom. I assume the next line is something like, "My eyes! My eyes!!!!"

~RP

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Paperback 568: Net of Cobwebs and The Unfinished Crime / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace Double G-530)

Paperback 568: Ace Double G-530 (1st ptg, 1963)

Titles: Net of Cobwebs / The Unfinished Crime
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: [Bob Schuller ??? see signature, running vertically on right, 1/2 in. from chair] / Uncredited

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

• Evil genius tests early prototype of the chairs seen on "The Voice."
• Evil genius savors his successful attempt to make fire burn green.
• Evil genius remembers when he used to play Eddie Munster.

Best things about this other cover:

• A frank tale about one girl's life-threatening addiction to cat-huffing.
• "The Girl Who Mistook Her Cat For Her Mouth"
• Mary found that they key to really realistic finger puppets was fresh animal corpses.

Page 123~

He went into the library and closed the door behind him, stood looking at Blanche, while she looked back at him, with her great, hollow dark eyes.
"I'm so dam' sick of her...." he thought. 

You can tell he's a tough guy by the way he drops the "n" when he says "damn" ...

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 53

Title: The Girl With a Secret (Crest d961, 1st ptg, 1960)
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6

• Love the eerie, vertiginous, slightly puke-green staircase. Worthy of dungeons or Dali-esque nightmares.
• Her "secret" appears to be that despite being a grown woman, she likes to slide down banisters. Or else she has a severed head in that bag. One or the other.

• Oooh, the Oakland Tribune. Well la-di-dah.
• "WEB OF TERROR" — get it? Author's name is CHARLOTTE Armstrong. And she has created a WEB OF TERROR. CHARLOTTE'S WEB ... OF TERROR! "Wilbur, no!!!!!"
• "Then on their honeymoon she stumbled on a deadly secret" — such a promising line. So disappointing to know that the secret is just a stupid scrap of paper.

Page 123~

Alice breathed in the reality of Tony-alive and Tony-here. She didn't much care about anything else at the moment.

"Tony-alive" was, of course, the very unsuccessful follow-up to Hasbro's "Baby Alive."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]