Site of the month

Books by Donald Hamilton: A Cover Gallery, a self- described work in progress, is a collection of classic Hamilton covers. My fave is the cover for the Gold Medal paperback original of Death of a Citizen. What a cover!

Site of the Month

Noirboiled Notes "Pulp poems, book reviews, and other tidbits from the noirboiled world"

  Maintained by David Rachels, Noirboiled Notes is a blog on the literary side of noir; pithy commentary along with some good cover scans. A highlight is the ‘pulp poem of the week‘ excerpt. 

Site of the month

At Elisa Rolle’s page page her Behind the Cover gallery has some nice vintage era cover scans accompanied by richly detailed commentary .... the posts include lesser known cover artists like Ann Cantor and Denis McLoughlin.

Site of the Month 2

  Pulp Curry. "Crime, hard-boiled and curried."
   Commentary on crime fiction and film which focuses on Asia and Australia. Maintained by Andrew Nette. Has a nice representation of Australian pulp covers from the 1950s and 1960s. One of my favorite posts is Executives behaving badly : sixties Australian pulp part 2.

Site of the Month

Familien Olsens web-sted 
  This is a fun site which features a Danish family’s various collectible stuff. My favorites include the pages on Danish hardboiled imprints from vintage era, and the collection of hot Carter Brown covers. Another plus is the exceptional quality of the cover scans. About the only criticism is that the organization is a bit of a mystery to me. Site map is here.

Site of the month

The Flickering Wall.
   A fun discovery for cinema buffs. Per the author's description, these are capsule films reviews expressed in the style of Leslie Halliwell, but without his talent for pithy prose. The site has been active since 2006, and seems to cover only currently released films.

Site of the month 2

BiblioPulp ("images from the underbelly of the rare book world") is Heldfond Books’ satiric take on vintage pulp.

Site of the month

A tasty - if selective - vintage paperback sampler is posted by Annie at LifeLounge (Dec 23, 2007), Satan was a Lesbian. The unlikely inspiration is a restaurant, Thai to Go, located in Melbourne, AUS : 

  "There is an amazing Thai restaurant near me that I eat at regularly for two reasons. One: it has tasty food. Two: it has a collection of vintage smut paperback covers on the walls. So I have to credit Thai To Go for inspiring this collection of coverart I pulled together from all the corners of the WWW. It's gold guys, absolute gold. Prepare yourself for gems like, The Sexy Saucer People, Trailer Park Trash ('Their love was as mobile as their home and just as carefree'), Ball And Chain and Evil Friendship." 

Site of the Month

  
Reading California Fiction : Perusing Stories of the Golden State. This site offers book reviews for fiction set in California and written between 1890 and 1959. There's strong coverage of crime fiction and vintage pb’s  & lots of high quality cover scans. But the site is possibly most noteworthy for its inclusion of offbeat and little known authors like Florence Stonebraker. 

Site of the Month

Fly-by-Night : Canadian Paperbacks of the 40s and Early 50s is quite the pleasant discovery -- a blog devoted to the Canadian take on the tough style.

Harlequin 45 (May 1950)

Harlequin 154 (1951)

Site of the month

Una Plaga de Espías. “Literatura de espías y otros agents en español.” Collection of spy fiction and especially cover art is an irresistible combination of splashy images and insightful commentary. Maintained by Johny Malone. Text and graphics in Spanish.

Site of the month

Steamy East. “The Orient was never like this.” The Mysterious East has long been one of the most enduring of vintage genres, and here’s a terrific site devoted to books with an ‘Oriental’ setting or theme. Two of the more interesting sections are : Resources and Image Studies.

The “Steamy East” site is by the same folks who who created the News Nishikie site, which catalogs, with many translations, woodblock prints used by Japanese newspapers in the 1870s to illustrate and tell many colorful and interesting stories.


“Do not, therefore, expect to find on this website the sort of consistency that is likely to be seen a monograph written and edited by a single mind in a single state of delusion. The states of confusion on this site are rivaled only by the dimensions of the Steamy East universe itself -- vast, warped, full of black holes -- and otherwise the sort of space no manner of matrix math magic could map into the flat, uniform world one will often encounter in writing that dwells on faulting Steamy East fiction for its tendency to portray Asia and Asians as strange, exotic, mysterious, inscrutable, sexist, cruel, or not quite human, if not mystical, otherworldly, superhuman. . . . What you see here will be what is out there in the natural world of Steamy East fiction -- with no apologies for the blunt and tasteless titles, cover art, and stories one sometimes encounters in the literary jungle.” – description of the Steamy East site, from : About Yosha Bunko and Affiliated Websites.

Site of the month

Sivupolut. A fun discovery, this. Quite the collection of paperback covers (including a nice cross section of vintage American covers from the golden age). Pin-up art and various other pulpy stuff, too, with the content leaning a little toward the softcore vintage sleaze. The site seems to be related to the author's bookstore, and I must confess that the organization is a bit of a mystery to me. But not to worry -- this is a highly entertaining resource, and the Finnish perspective is refreshing.