The Flickr Signetpaperback Image Generatr

“The Case of the Beautiful Widow”

From the back cover:

HUSH MONEY

Riley Wadell, private eye, was broke – as usual. A beautiful woman, accused of murdering her husband, begged him to hide her for two weeks before turning her over to the police. She offered him $15,000 for the job – he needed the dough – so he took it . . . and was tossed head-first into the most dangerous game of his life, playing hide-and-seek with a ruthless killer and the Los Angeles police!
“Outstanding . . . relentless speed and suspense.” – New York Times

FLOYD MAHANNAH was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and has spent most of his life in California. Apart from writing, his favorite occupation is fishing. His first book “No Luck for a Lady” (The Yellow Hearse) is now available in a Signet edition (#879). The original edition of this book was published by Duell, Sloan & Pearce.

This edition of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" was published in the 1950s as Signet paperback. As all Signet edition, this one has a memorable and iconic cover.

"Don Birnam's five days, after his brother Wick leaves for a long weekend, are one long shocking revelation of the man himself -- his fantasies, his memories of childhood, and the promise of his youth, his persistent infantilism, his loneliness, his need to drink (always his need to drink), his alcoholic distortions of reality, his craftiness and remorse, splintered personal relationships with his brother and with his girl, and the solitary horror within himself . . ." [From the novel's introduction]

This novel about the devastating effects of alcoholism was the basis of an Academy Award winning film released in 1945, directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Ray Milland.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-tefK9hkuM

From the back cover:

NOTHING WAS TABOO

Foreign Correspondent Carla MacMurphy would do anything to scoop a headline -- lie, cheat or betray the men who confided in her. A tempestuous and beautiful woman working in postwar Germany she never missed an opportunity to turn a romantic interlude or a political incident to her own advantage.

This passionate tour of the newsfronts of Europe takes you behind the scenes of occupied Germany, into the bars and boudoirs of its conquerors. It is a revealing and disturbing glimpse of the opportunism and corruption which flourish in a demoralized land.

TONI HOWARD is an American eminently qualified to write about women correspondents abroad. As a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, she covered World War II from Normandy to the Nuremberg trials. Miss Howard is married and is now living in Paris.

From the back cover:

BIG TOP

This is a blistering, brilliant novel of the violent and abandoned life that goes on behind the tinsel glamour of a traveling circus. It is the story of a young circus cagehand, rejected by respectable society, who seeks refuge from the violence and brutality in his world of "winos" and freaks by forming a dangerous alliance with his cats -- the lions, tigers and leopards that he loves.

EDWARD HOAGLAND was born in New York and attended Harvard University. Like the hero of his book, he spent two summers as a cat man with a traveling circus. Cat Man, his first novel, won a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship award, and was published in its hardcover edition by Houghton Mifflin Co.

"A shattering novel about nurses, doctors, and patients in a state hospital where emotions readily explode, where lust leads to rape, hate to murder."

From the back cover:
"Dariel Telfer wrote THE CARETAKERS out of first-hand knowledge and passionate concern. She has herself worked in a large mental institution, been a witness to events such as those she so candidly describes."

From the back cover:

"I agreed to pay for you high. So I paid. . . .I became a liar, a cheat; a thief and a murderer. . . .That's enough for any man to pay. . . ."

The dramatic, suspenseful story of an honest cop who risked everything to get the only woman he wanted.

From the back cover:

A GOLDEN CORPSE LAY STRETCHED OUT IN THE ORCHESTRA PIT. . .

A beautiful body, inviting even in death. Alive, she had been Coffee Stearns, showgirl; and she had promised to reward private detective Barr Breed for his patient attentions. But that promise was never kept. Instead, Coffee Stearns lay in the orchestra pit of the Marlowe Theater, a long knife in her lovely, gold-painted back.

Breed went out after a killer, delayed briefly at intervals by the warm-blooded willingness of a bosomy redhead who stayed very much alive. Two more murders, a lot of unpleasant punishment for Breed . . . then a suspense-packed climax revealed a deadly tangle of vice and revenge.

From the back cover:

“Right Between the Eyes!” That’s the Way This New Mike Hammer Mystery will Hit You.

Over a million readers raced along with Mike in his first wild adventure with murder and women – “I, The Jury” (Signet No. 699). Now the tough guy that tops them all sets out again, this time to avenge the murder of a red-headed streetwalker who needed a friend. The chase takes him from slum-district alleys to a millionaire’s mansion, from glittering nightspots to seductively-lighted apartments. The trail is marked with blood and violent death, and ends only when Mike backs the killer into a corner from which just one of them can escape alive.

From the back cover:

MICROCOSM

They were humans -- or so they believed -- the grotesque result of a grandiose experiment which had gone appallingly awry.

Trapped on a world that was hurtling through space at a fantastic speed, they sought the riddle of their heritage among the only companions they knew -- ghosts, mutants, giants and regimented rats.

This is one of the most extraordinary novels ever written, the spine-tingling story of lost beings who try to find themselves in a world gone mad.

From the back cover:

SAINT OR SINNER?
Elizabeth was timid - or bold.
Suspiciously good - or very wicked.
You may pity Elizabeth or she may fill you with horror, but you will never forget her, once you have explored the innermost reaches of her disturbed mind.

From Wikipedia:

Lizzie is a 1957 drama film directed by Hugo Haas. The film is based on the novel "The Bird's Nest" by Shirley Jackson and stars Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone and Joan Blondell. The popular songs "It's Not for Me to Say" and "Warm and Tender" were written for this film, and performed by Johnny Mathis, who played a piano player/singer in the film.

Elizabeth (Eleanor Parker) has recurring headaches and is plagued with insomnia. She is receiving letters from a woman called Lizzie, but Elizabeth can't remember knowing anyone named Lizzie. When Elizabeth is under hypnosis, her psychiatrist, Dr. Wright (Richard Boone), discovers Elizabeth has three personalities: The shy Elizabeth, the Mr. Hyde-like Lizzie, and the kind, well-adjusted Beth, the woman she always should have been. It is up to Dr. Wright to help Elizabeth to become Beth completely.

From the back cover:

What was the Secret of the Saxon Charm?

Matt Saxon, producer extraordinary, got by mostly on his wits and his charm. It was a fascination women couldn't resist . . . Although his enemies could be found by the score in any nightclub or casting office, even his detractors admitted that Saxon's talents involved more than his peculiar ability to make an overnight hit out of a play no other producer would touch, in the face of lack of funds and violent hostility of the critics. His major production was himself, and his dramatic flair was at its best this side of the footlights. You could hate his guts or be fiercely loyal to his shrewdness and his burst of generosity; you could excuse his rages or forgive him for making a pass at your girl . . . but you couldn't be indifferent to Matt Saxon.

From the back cover:

The Glass Menagerie. . .
A Streetcar Named Desire. . .
The Rose Tattoo. . .
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. . .
and now --
Baby Doll

Exploding with earthy, elemental passion, this is the latest dramatic hit by Tennessee Williams.

"Baby Doll" is the highly charged and striking story of a naive, desirable Southern girl married to a man twice her age, who falls in love with a vital young stranger.

Produced and Directed by Elia Kazan
Presented by Warner Bros. Starring
Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, and Eli Wallach

From the back cover:

"THE DOOR WAS MINE. On the frosted glass, in neat Roman letters, was my name: STEVE CONACHER and in smaller type, Private. But I stood there as jittery as a bug on a griddle . . . There was a woman inside. She was naked on the floor -- and she wasn't moving!"

We dare you to read the first page of this sizzling thriller. Because once you start, you'll want to go on to the end with Steve Conacher, the exciting detective who can't be shocked or stopped by the wiles of scheming women or the whine of screaming bullets.

From the back cover:

Woven into the adventurous, action-packed fabric of immortal d'Artagnan and his daring swordsmen comes the new and absorbing Tiffany Thayer saga of strange, seductive Milady de Winter, a branded beauty living beyond 17th century conventions; a hot-blooded hussy inescapably at the whim of her own unquenchable desires; a woman -- forever seeking surcease . . .

Here is the court of Louis XIII -- all the rioutous color, swashbuckling pageantry, and keen swordplay of a Dumas story with Tiffany Thayer's new and unusual understanding of a woman's soul -- and body; when slim steel held the key to survival by day and Milady's lush charms gave completion by night . . .

Here are all the attractions and antagonisms of exotic adventure -- England versus France, rags versus riches, convent versus bagnio, gallants and their courtesans -- all brought alive by the warm strokes of a knowing story-teller.

"High Water" is a realistic story of the Mississippi riverboat men of the 1940's and 50's and about a certain day when the narrator, Duke Snyder, was called to work during a horrendous rain. He and his crew struggle as they tow barges of coal while the water level rises. Along with the torrent of water, there is confusion, fighting among crew members and a girl to be rescued.