Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

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Years ago at a science-fiction convention, I was flipping through the dollar boxes at a dealer’s table when this Hector Garrido cover for The Little People brought my eyeballs to a screeching halt. I wasn’t a book collector—I didn’t even know who Hector Garrido was—but I knew what this was: the Mona Lisa of paperback covers. I bought it so fast my fingers blistered. I never expected to actually read the book…but three months later, I fished it out of my “To Be Read” pile and cracked it open.

I knew John Christopher’s name from his Tripods science-fiction series, which had been serialized as a comic strip in the back of Boys’ Life magazine. But this 1966 Avon novel was stronger stuff. In it, a gorgeous secretary inherits an Irish castle from a distant relative and converts it into a B&B to show her patronizing lawyer/fiancé that she can stand on her own. On opening weekend, the house is full of guests: an Irish dreamboat alcoholic, two bickering Americans with a hot-to-trot teenage daughter, and a married couple who met in a concentration camp, where he was a guard and she was a prisoner.

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