#Popular Library

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

The Editors of Everywoman's Daily Horoscope - Astrology and the Single Girl - Popular Library - 1970

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Jules de Grandin, Occult Detective - art by Vincent Di Fate (1976)

[mudwerks]

(via Killer Covers: And a Very Merry Christmas to All!)

The Corpse in the Snowman, by “Nicholas Blake,” aka Cecil Day-Lewis (Popular Library, 1945). Cover art by H. Lawrence Hoffman

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Paperback - Dragon's Island by Jack Williamson

Art by Earle Bergey

Popular Library (1952)

[paintermagazine]

‘Cupcakes?’

Original artist: Rudolph Belarski

[uwmspeccoll]

Steamy Saturday

"Flaring passions behind hospital doors."

". . . hospitals are sex-charged places full of the pressures of unfulfilled and unfulfillable yearnings. . . ."

". . . soldiers return bedridden . . . and women . . . were all too eager to supply what they missed."

". . . there are some who will read this book furtively, looking for the lurid passages."

". . . revealing the seamy side of hospital experiences."

". . . a dozen intertwined tales of love among the limbless."

Whoa, whoa, whoa!! What kind of steam is this?! Despite its lurid cover art with its inflammatory copy to entice readers, this pulp novel is not nearly as sordid as it is made out to be. But it is about the rehabilitation of soldiers disabled by war and the nurses who care for them. And, yes, there is some romance.

Ward 20 is by American military and Western writer James Warner Bellah (1899-1976). Despite writing for the pulps, a number of his stories were turned into films, such as John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy," Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950), and with Willis Goldbeck, Bellah wrote the screenplays for Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Bellah himself was a veteran of both World Wars, leaving the service with the rank of Colonel. As a veteran, he wrote his military stories with authority, and Ward 20 was heralded for its stark authenticity.

Ward 20 was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1946. Our copy is the first pulp-fiction edition published in New York by Popular Library in 1953.

View other nurse romance novels.

View other pulp fiction posts.

[bilibliophl]

Earle K. Bergey - cover art for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos. Paperback edition c. 1948.

[paperbackpurgatory]

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House (1959)

Edition from 1962 with stills from the film on the cover.

[retropopcult]

1950

[judgeitbyitscover]

The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells

Cover art by Richard Powers

Popular Library, May 1962

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path with a heat ray and spreading noxious toxic gases, the people of the Earth must come to terms with the prospect of the end of human civilization and the beginning of Martian rule.

[unrighteousbooks]

Sometimes we are unaware of the people around us. Now and then, they reappear unexpectedly. That is the case with Vivian Maier. This book, by John Maloof and the Howard Greenberg Gallery, contains an exceptional collection of Maier's photography. She passed away in 2009, and her work was all but unknown during her lifetime. This book was first published by Harper Design in 2014. Meanwhile, When the Gods Are Silent, by Mikhail Soloviev, which made an appearance in one of Maier's photos from 1954, can still be found in bookstores such as Aziraphale's Books.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

OCCULT (New Dimensions of Life in the Field of Psychic Phenomena), magazine, Popular Library, April 1975

[retrogirlsbooks]

To Love and Beyond by Therese Martini

ISBN 0-445-04092-0

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Popular Library 526 by Uilke Via Flickr: 1953; You can't stop me [.38] by William Ard. Cover art uncredited but it gives me a Rafael DeSoto feeling. Published by Popular Library 526.

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Paperback - The Big Eye

Art by Earle Bergey

Popular Library

[paintermagazine]

‘She left ‘em red, as well as sore!’

Original artist: Rudolph Belarski