#paperbacks from hell

[toomuchhorrorfiction]

1970s Lovecraft covers by Victor Valla

[mathieublz]

[vorchagirl]

I managed to buy a whole heap of vintage horror paperbacks a few days ago to add to my collection!

I'm so excited to own The Fungus!

[forthegothicheroine]

In John Shirley's Dracula in Love (1979) that old Transylvanian hillbilly was an inhuman fiend wielding a prehensile penis with glowing eyes, but he could still be tamed. In true sensitive-male fashion, he only had to meet the right lady. Halfway through the book, he falls in love with a woman who saves his life. At the climax it's revealed that she is the living embodiment of Mother Earth and Dracula goes to her, crawling up inside her cavernous vagina while glowing like a 100-watt light bulb.

Grady Hendrix, Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

[hail-to-the-pumpkin-song]

Art by Matt Cunningham

The Kill Riff

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Paperbacks from Hell | Author: Grady Hendrix | Publisher: Quirk Books Inc. (2017)

[fullmetalfisting]

Here is what I read in the month of April!

1. Heartwood by Amity Gaige

2. Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy

3. Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix

4. Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

5. Gothictown by Emily Carpenter 

6. Eat, Slay, Love by Julie Mae Cohen

7. Coram House by Bailey Seybolt

8. Deadstream by Mar Romasco-Moore

9. What Remains of Teague House by Stacy Johns

10. Jaws by Peter Benchley 

11. The Children of Red Peak by Craig DiLouie

12. Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

[trashmenace]

Chain Letter by Ruby Jean Jensen

Chain Letter by Ruby Jean Jensen 1987, Zebra

Little kid Brian loses his dog in the spooky abandoned nursing home which was also an asylum for the criminally insane. He and his friends find half of a chain letter, see a spooky derelict, and one of them, Shelly, vanishes. The other friend, Abby, sends the chain letter to an older boy she likes. He throws the letter away and ends up driving over a cliff. Abby and Brian make a half assed effort to figure out the chain letter's curse while members of the town are haunted by visions of the missing dog and child. Abby pushes another girl off a cliff and lures Brian to the nursing home. Something happens off-page and Abby drowns in a deep pool of water, the end.

In an epilogue it's explained that Shelly and the dog drowned in the pool, one that search parties somehow missed. Brian's older brother finds the other half of the chain letter, which reveals that sending the chain letter sells your soul to Satan.

I usually don't like to get hung up over the rules, but here being around the letter may or may not result in you mysteriously drowning, sending the letter turns you into a homicidal maniac, throwing the letter away gets you killed, burning it summons a mysterious figure, and holding on to the letter indefinitely has no discernable effect.

The ghosts, spooky bearded man, and haunted asylum don't figure into anything. The chain letter barely does, claiming exactly one victim. While Jensen didn't follow the expected cliché of the chain letter claiming a series of victims, she only replaced it with an ounce of evil child towards the end, spending more time on Brian's dad having an affair with Shelly's mom.

From Amazon

[duranduratulsa]

Now reading 📚... Paperbacks From Hell by Grady Hendrix (2017) #book #books #nonfiction #paperbacksfromhell #gradyhendrix #2010s

[danielstalter]

The Babysitter

The Babysitter remains one of R.L. Stine’s most notorious books outside of his Goosebumps and Fear Street titles, and rightly so. Jenny was a relatable and endearing protagonist. Stine did an excellent job with the pacing, slowly building the tension with some genuinely unnerving scenes. On the downside, I had some problems with the motives of the villain and there was some really shoddy police work that was presented as exceptional. I was also baffled by one particular action of Jenny’s mother, which I’ll save for the full review below because of spoilers. I’ll just say that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between bad/oblivious parenting and things that were still considered OK in the late 1980s. Overall, I really enjoyed this one in spite of its flaws.

Score: 3.5 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter/

The Babysitter II

The Babysitter II was a very middle-of-the-road sequel. The characters were solid and by far the strongest part overall. But for every element I liked, there was something of equal measure that I didn’t. The book had some very dated depictions of mental health, which were hard to look past. I hated Jenny’s psychiatrist from the jump. It was immediately apparent he was a bad fit for a traumatized teenage girl. I suppose he sucked in a believable way, but I can’t help but cringe at unhelpful depictions of therapy. It’s OK to break up with your therapist, folks. Jenny certainly needed to. The dream sequences also got really tiring after the first one. Unless the book is about dreams specifically, they just feel cheap. The kid that Jenny babysits for in this round was presented as a menace to society. Eli Wexner is a child genius, he has mood swings, he likes tarantulas, and he can be straight-up weird. I think he read more as an autistic kid with inexperienced and overwhelmed parents than anything threatening. I don’t know if that’s what Stine was going for, but that’s definitely what I got as the story progressed. The other reason I’m being hard on this one is that I guessed the plot twist way earlier than I usually do. I suppose the book holds up as a competent mystery if you aren’t familiar with any other books R.L. Stine has written. For me, it felt like a partial rehashing of the first book and a mix of things I’ve seen repeatedly in the Fear Street books. The Babysitter II wasn’t the worst, and it wasn’t the best. It’s a mostly competent sequel that just didn’t bring anything particularly new to the table.

Score: 2.5 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter-ii/

The Babysitter III

The Babysitter III felt like a sequel in search of a story. I’ll start with the good; at least Jenny wasn’t taking on yet another babysitting job after her experiences in the first two books. It changed the formula by introducing Jenny’s cousin Debra as this book’s titular babysitter. Unfortunately, I still saw the twist ending coming from a mile away. It had too many similarities to other Stine books. Everything he did here, he’s done it before and he’s done it better. There were a bunch of B-plot elements that ultimately served no purpose other than to throw the reader off the real trail. The B-plots are great for this function, but they work best when they also tie back into the main storyline. Almost none of them did. Jenny is also very clearly dealing with PTSD, but no longer appears to be in therapy or have any sort of support system in place. I’m used to dated and problematic depictions of mental health in these books, but this one just felt hard to watch. It was like one long, sad cringe. The book also relied on some characterization changes that I just couldn’t buy into. It made me wish the whole Babysitter series featured a different protagonist in each installment. Because the first Babysitter book was great; I consider it one of Stine’s best. The Babysitter II was less so but not bad. This one just felt phoned in. The ending of The Babysitter III does hold some promise for the fourth and final installment, but I can’t say I have a ton of confidence in that happening.

Score: 1 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter-iii/

The Babysitter IV

I did not go into this book with high expectations, so I was very pleasantly surprised when this book took a fresh direction. The Babysitter III had squeezed every last bit out of using Mr. Hagan as a villain, so I was happy to see that he was barely mentioned all in The Babysitter IV. In a lot of ways, this book was about Jenny reclaiming the narrative for herself. The way that Jenny’s past experiences caused her to question her own sanity at every turn made for a unique perspective that a lot of sequels miss out on. I figured out some of the twist ending early on, but I wasn’t bothered by it. What did bother me was how rushed the ending was. There was a whole other story received in the last few pages that deserved its own spotlight. It was a shame because I really liked the story it was telling, I just wanted more than an eleventh-hour info dump. I can’t be more specific without dropping massive spoilers, but almost all of the issues I had with this book stem from how it ended. I still liked The Babysitter IV more than I didn’t, and I was happy to see the final installment in the series end on such a strong note.

Score: 3.5 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter-iv/

[cowboyhatesithere]

The Auctioneer book review

Pinterest

[toomuchhorrorfiction]

Early 1970s UK paperbacks by HP Lovecraft with cover art by Ian Miller

[mathieublz]

Happy coincidence: just one day after Ramsey Campbell ’s birthday, I put my hands on these beauties. Love the covers artworks, can’t wait to read them.

[kjudgemental]

My current high-end very important PhD research. This reading is what your taxes are helping to fund, so I think we can all agree I need more money from everyone. Including the pope. Maybe.

[dark-libraries]

I guess Barnes & Noble carries Valancourt's Paperbacks from Hell reprints now, which is good, bc it's wild to encounter a book that looks like Hell Hound by Ken Greenhall in a bookstore in 2024, but also in context it's funny to have the horror table right behind ones for romantasy and Sarah J Maas. It's 2024 and there's one step between Heartstopper and Let's Go Play at the Adams'

[hail-to-the-pumpkin-song]

Artwork by Steve Crisp for Spectre by Stephen Laws