Fawcett Horror Checklist

[dem bones]

As a taster for Paperback Fanatic #17 - and to give our bibliophiles something to sink their teeth into (it's been too long) - here, with his kind permission, is Justin Marriott's FAWCETT HORROR CHECKLIST.

Fawcett Horror Checklist

David Alexander (ed.) - Tales For A Rainy Night, 1962
William Appel - Water World, 1983
William Appel - The Watcher Within, 1983
Helen Arvoner - The Witches of Brimstone Hill, 1973
Charlotte Aimstrong - The Witch's House, 1963

Anne Blaisdell - Nightmare, 1962, 1963
Robert Bloch - Psycho, 1963
Robert Bloch - Night World, 1973
Robert Bloch - American Gothic, 1975
Gary Brander - The Howling 1977
Gary Brander - The Howling II, 1981
Gary Brander - The Howling III, 1985
Gary Brander - Walkers, 1980
Gary Brander - Hellborn, 1981
Gary Brander - Quintana Roo (aka 'Tribe Of The Dead'), 1984
Gary Brander - Carrion, 1986
Gary Brander - The Brain Eaters, 1985
Jonathan Betuel - The Dogfighter, 1976
Marie Buchanan - Anima, 1976
John Buell - The Pyx, 1960

M. L. Carter (ed.) - The Curse Of The Undead, 1970
M. L. Carter (ed.) - Demon Lovers & Strange Seductions: Tales of Lust and Terror by Masters of the Supernatural, 1972
C. Terry Cline. jnr. - Damon, 1976
J C Conaway - The Magician's Sleeve, 1979
Ronald Curran (ed,) - The Weird Gathering & Others, 1979
Ronald Curran (ed,) - Witches, Wraiths & Warlocks, 1974
Roland Cutler - The First Born, 1982

John Gordon Davis - Leviathan, 1975

Anthony Esler - Hellbane, 1975

John Farris - The Fury, 1977
John Farris - All Heads Turn As The Hunt Goes By, 1979
John Farris - Shatter, 1982
Pat Feeley - Best Friend, 1977
Betty Ferris - False Idols, 1975

Vic Ghidalia (ed.) - Eight Strange Tales. 1972
Pat Gravesen - Invisible Fire, 1981
Davis Grubb - 12 Tales of the Supernatural, 1963

Naomi A. Hintze - You'll Like My Mother, 1970
William Hjortsberg - Falling Angel, 1983
Gordon Honeycombe - Dragon under the Hill, 1974
Hans Holzer - Possessed! 1973
Robert Hoskins (ed.) - The Edge of Never, 1973
Susan Howatch - The Devil on Lammas Night, 1974
Susan Howatch - April's Grave, 1975
Michael T Hinkemeyer - The Dark Below, 1975

David St John - Diabolus, 1971
David St John - The Sorcerers, 1971
David St John - The Coven, 1973

Gerald Kersh - Nightshades and Damnations, 1968

Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives, 1973
Nora Lofts - The Little Wax Doll, 1972
Norah Lofts - Hauntings, 1977

Barbara Micheals - Prince Of Darkness, 1971
Barbara Micheals - Witch, 1974
Barbara Michaels - The Walker in Shadows, 1981
John Miglis - Killing Eyes, 1984
Marlys Millhiser - The Mirror, 1980

Bill Pronzini & Barry Malzberg - The Running of Beasts, 1976

Kit Reed - Tiger Rag, 1973

George Brandon Saul (ed.) - Owl's Watch, 1965
Doris Shannon - 22 Hallowfield, 1974
Doris Shannon - The Seekers, 1975
Walter J. Sheldon - The Beast, 1980
Ainslee Skinner - The Harrowing, 1980
Dan Sherman - Riddle, 1977
John Simmons - Lamplighter, 1984
Robert Arthur Smith - The Prey, 1977
Robert Arthur Smith - The Toymaker, 1984
Robert Arthur Smith - The Keeper, 1985
Robert Arthur Smith - Deadly Admirer, 1987
Robert Arthur Smith - Vampire Notes, 1989
Jerry Sohl - Death Sleep, 1983

Donald Thompson, The Ancient Enemy, 1979
Thomas Tryon - The Other, 1973
Thomas Tryon - Harvest Home, 1973

Jack & Barbara Wolf (eds.) - Ghosts, Castles and Victims, 1974
Jack & Barbara Wolf (eds.) - Tales of the Occult, 1975

Hugh Zachary Gwen in Green, 1974

*********************

some additions

John Buell - The Pyx (1960). Demonic possession. Published in the UK by Quartet in 1974 to tie in with the film starring Karen Black and Christopher Plummer.
C. Terry Cline. jnr. - Damon (1976: "a novel of sexual possession")
Roland Cutler - The First Born (1982)
Barbara Micheals - Prince Of Darkness (1971)
Barbara Micheals - Witch (1974: referred to on the cover as "quiet horror" some years before Charles L. Grant applied it to his 'shadowpunk' collections)
Norah Lofts - Hauntings: Is There Anybody There? (1977)
Marlys Millhiser - The Mirror (January 1980) "On the Eve of Their Weddings, Two Women Are Caught in a Nightmare of Supernatural Horror..."
Barbara Michaels - Ammie, Come Home (1968. More Gothic thrills as a seance conjours forth a spectre. "A cry from the long-dead past brings evil and terror across the centuries to haunt an innocent girl". Cover later swiped by Five Star for Georgena Goff's The Black Dog. Five Star also seemingly lifted the cover artwork from Kyle Hunt (John Creasey)'s Kill My Love for Peter Saxon's Corruption!

Just to confuse matters, it's likely that some FAWCETT GOLD MEDAL titles have crept onto Justin's list - certainly the scan of the gorgeous cover illustration for Hugh Zachary's Gwen, In Green on p. 29 bears the GM logo) so we might be justified in adding:

Richard Matheson - I Am Legend (1954)
Robert Arthur Smith - The Collection (1985: "Greg wants to show you his collection. Before he puts you into it": our old friend the blonde's severed head in a hatbox on the cover)
Jere Cunningham - The Legacy (1977)
Jere Cunningham - Hunters Blood (1977: "Spine-chilling new adventure in the tradition of Deliverance")
Herbert Van Thal (ed.) - The Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1966)
Robert Bloch - Atoms And Evil (1962, usually filed under sci-fi, but we'll give it a break and say maybe sci-horror crossover would be more accurate)
Christopher Starks - Possession (1983)
B.W. Battin - The Boogeyman (1984)
Rogers Clemens - The Presence (1977)
John Simmons - The Sharing, 1984
Gary Brander - Cat People (1982)
Gary Brander - Doomstalker (1989)

[severance]

Can't add too much to this, I'm afraid, other than:

Stern, Philip van Doren (ed) - Strange Beasts and Unnatural Monsters, Fawcett Crest 1968.

contents:
May Sinclair - The Nature of the Evidence
Joseph Payne Brennan - Slime
Eric Williams - The Garden of Paris
Will F. Jenkins - Doomsday Deferred
John B.L. Goodwin - The Cocoon
H.G. Wells - Aepyornis Island
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Terror of Blue John Gap
Daphne du Maurier - The Birds
Bram Stoker - The Judge's House
Peter Fleming - The Kill
E.F. Benson - Mrs Amworth
Ray Bradbury - Skeleton
Sir Frederick Treves - The Elephant Man


Crest and Gold Medal were both imprints of Fawcett Publications, the latter for paperback originals and the former for reprints (mostly), so perhaps this thread should read 'Fawcett Horror Checklist'??

[dem bones]

thanks for introducing another new title, sev. and you're right about that heading. Fawcett Horror Checklist it is!

Margaret L. Carter (ed.) - The Curse Of The Undead: Classic Tales Of Vampires And Their Victims (Fawcett, 1970)

Introduction - Margaret L. Carter

Marquis de Sade - Justine (Excerpts)
M. G. Lewis - The Bleeding Nun (from The Monk)
John Polidori - The Vampyre
Edgar Allan Poe - Morella
J. S. Le Fanu - Carmilla (Excerpts)
Bram Stoker - Dracula (Excerpts)
F. Marion Crawford - For The Blood Is The Life
Evelyn E. Smith - Softly, While You're Sleeping
Robert Bloch - The Bogeyman Will Get You
Frederic Brown - Blood
Niel Straum - Vanishing Breed

Bibliography
Chronology

M. L. Carter (ed.) - Demon Lovers & Strange Seductions: Tales of Lust and Terror by Masters of the Supernatural (Fawcett, 1972)

Jeff Jones cover art

Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan
Marion Zimmer Bradley - Wind People
Jerome Bixby - Can Such Beauty Be
Algernon Blackwood - The Glamour of the Snow
Robert Hichens - How Love Came to Professor Guildea
Robert Bloch - The Thinking Cap
Fredric Brown - Too Far
Winston Marks - Naked People
Theodore Sturgeon - A Touch of Strange
J.Sheridan LeFanu - Ultor de Lacy

Margaret L. Carter hit the ground running with Curse Of The Undead and Demon Lovers & Strange Seductions and she's barely paused for breath since. With two Fawcetts under her belt, Margaret moved on to literary criticism and academic titles like Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics (UMI, 2000: never seen a copy) and the useful although, sadly, unannotated The Vampire in Literature: A Critical Bibliography (UMI 1999). At the same time Margaret launched the gloriously ramshackle, fiction-heavy fanzine The Vampire's Crypt which ran to 25 issues between 1989 and 2002. Early contributors included Elaine Bergstrom, Nancy Kilpatrick (later to gain minor notoriety as 'Amarantha Knight' for her erotic takes on Dracula, Carmilla Dr. Jekyl & Co in the 'Darker Passions' series), Yvonne Navarro and Gemma Files. MLC is still hard at it, having now metamorphosed into a horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance novelist (eighteen to date, some co-authored with her husband). Another sideline: contributing stories like Tentacles of Love to such delightful propositions as Even Naughtier Nuptials (2009) published, as is much of her recent work, by Ellora's Cave. More info: Carter's Crypt!

[jamesdoig]

Jan 28, 2011 8:34:27 GMT dem bones said:

Robert Bloch - Atoms And Evil (1962, usually filed under sci-fi, but we'll give it a break and say maybe sci-horror crossover would be more accurate)

Funnily enough I picked this up yesterday driving back from the coast.



Robert Bloch, Atoms and Evil (1963)

Contents
Try this for psis
Comfort Me, My Robot
Talent
The Professor Plays it Square
Block that Metaphor
Wheal and Deal
You Got to have Brains
You Could be Wrong
Egghead
Dead-End Doctor
Change of Heart
Ediface Complex
Constant Reader

[dem bones]

Richard Wormser - McClintock! (Frederick Muller/ Fawcett Gold Medal, 1964)

Blurb:
He'd tamed a town - could he tame the flame-haired wench he'd married ?

McLintock was lord of everything he surveyed in the wild Texas cow country - everything but his hot-tempered spitfire of a wife. She was off gallivanting - at the governor's ball, anyplace, everyplace - just as long as she didn't have to live with him ...

A novelization by Richard Wormser of the screenplay by James Edward Grant
A Batjac Production starring JOHN WAYNE MAUREEN O'HARA Yvonne DeCarlo Patrick Wayne
Directed by by Andrew V. McLaglen

It's not like i've been waiting for the flimsiest excuse to post this since accidentally acquiring a copy at Zardoz last October (he says, all proud to drag such a bad taste gem into proceedings), but, overlooking the small matter of it not being a horror title, veteran pulp hack Richard Wormster's novelization of McClintock! is interesting in that it's a British edition of a Gold Medal original "by arrangement with Fawcett Publications." As you can see, it even carries their logo on the cover. Did Frederick Muller (or any other publishers this side of the ocean) came to similar arrangements over anything else from the Fawcett catalogue?

[dem bones]

Found this juicy pair on Paperback Fantasies, a site devoted to the artwork of Jeff Jones and just had to borrow 'em. Paperback Fantasies is well worth browsing. You'll find a handy checklist of Jeff's covers with scans of the majority of them (including, good clean copies of his Peter Saxon Guardians work)

[Will E.]

Such beautiful and hauntingly evocative Jones cover art. Modern paperbacks pale in comparison...

[dem bones]

Every once in a black moon, the bride trusts me to scan some of her paperbacks without setting fire to them in the process. Today was such an occasion. These might not be "horror" publications in the accepted sense, but with cover artwork of this calibre, who's complaining?

Charles & Louis Samuels - The Girl In The House Of Hate (Fawcett Gold Medal, undated [1953])

Baryé Phillips

Joseph Henry Jackson & Lenore Glen Offord - The Girl In The Belfry (Fawcett Gold Medal, July 1957)

Richard Powers

[severance]

I always suspected that the Bride must have good taste in something - turns out it's books!!

Gold Medal produced twelve of these volumes in their Classic Murder Trials series between 1951 and 1957. All twelve had the word Girl in them, even if the girl in question was the protagonist in the case or the victim.

Fred J. Cook - The Girl in the Death Cell par severance_23, on ipernity

1 - The Girl in the Stateroom by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (1951). The Girl was Gay Gibson, murdered by James Camb on board the S.S. Dublin Castle in 1947. Camb was dubbed "The Porthole Killer."

2 - The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing by Charles Samuels (1953). The Girl was Evelyn Nesbit, whose husband, Stanford White, shot and killed Harry Kendall Thaw at Madison Square Garden in 1906 to, in his words, protect her.

3 - The Girl in the Death Cell by Fred J. Cook (1953). The Girl was Ruth Snyder a.k.a. "The Granite Woman." In 1927 she, along with her lover Henry Gray, murdered her husband for the insurance money. Both went to the electric chair.

4 - The Girl in Lover's Lane by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (1953). The Girl was Eleanor Mills, found dead in a field in New Jersey in 1922 alongside the body of an Episcopal Priest, Edward Hall. The three main suspects, including Hall's wife, were all acquitted at trial.

5 - The Girl in Poison Cottage by Richard H. Hoffmann, M.D. and Jim Bishop (1953). The Girl was Mary Creighton. In 1935, Alongside Everett Applegate, Creighton poisoned Applegates's wife, Ada. Both went to the Electric chair. Creighton had years earlier been acquitted of two similar poisonings.

6 - The Girl in the House of Hate by Charles and Louise Samuels (1953). The Girl was Lizzie Borden, tried and acquitted of the axe murders of her father and step-mother in 1892.

Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson - The Girl in Lover's Lane par severance_23, on ipernity

7 - The Girl with the Scarlet Brand by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (1954). The Girl was Florence Maybrick. In 1899, Maybrick was poisoned by her older husband, James, in Liverpool.

8 - The Girl on the Gallows by Q. Patrick (1954). The Girl was Edith Thompson. Thompson and her lover, Frederick Bywaters, stabbed her husband to death in London in 1922.

9 - The Girl on the Lonely Beach by Fred J. Cook (1954). The Girl was Starr Faithfull, whose body was found on a beach on Long Island in 1931, She was just 25 at the time, but subsequent inquiries discovered that from the age of 11 she had been abused by U.S. politician Andrew James Peters.

10 - The Girl in Murder Flat by Mel Heimer (1955). The Girl was Patsy Lonergan. A wealthy heiress, Lonergan was murdered by her husband, Wayne, in New York in 1943.

11 - The Girls in Nightmare House by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (1955). The Girls were the female victims of H.H. Holmes, dubbed "The American Jack the Ripper. At his Chicago hotel, Holmes killed dozens, possibly hundreds, between 1886 and 1894. At his trial he confessed to the murder of 27.

12 - The Girl in the Belfry - by Joseph Henry Jackson and Lenore Glen Offord (1957). The Girl was Blanche Lamont. In 1895 Lamont went missing. After the discovery of the body of Minnie Williams in a San Francisco church, subsequent searches found Lamont's body in the belfry. Thoedore Durrant, the last person seen with both women was arrested and hung in San Quentin.

Richard H. Hoffmann, M.D. and Jim Bishop - The Girl in Poison Cottage par severance_23, on ipernity

[dem bones]

Thanks for that, Sev. A Paperback Fanatic article in the making, I reckon.

Oct 11, 2015 17:24:21 GMT severance said:

7 - The Girl with the Scarlet Brand by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (1954). The Girl was Florence Maybrick. In 1899, Maybrick was poisoned by her older husband, James, in Liverpool.

James Maybrick being the "author" of what has been published as The Diary Of Jack The Ripper, though the original document is possibly a hoax perpetuated by former scrap merchant dealer, Michael Barrett, who has a history of owning up to the deception only to retract his confessions soon afterwards.

[severance]

Q. Patrick - The Girl on the Gallows, Gold Medal (397), May 1954

Barye Phillips

On the night of October 3, 1922, death came suddenly to Percy Thompson on a dark, quiet street in suburban London. His assailant stabbed him viciously several times about the head and neck, severed his carotid artery with a single blow, and then fled into the sheltering night.

A few days later, police arrested Frederick Bywaters, a strikingly handsome twenty-year-old boy, and charged him with the willful murder of Percy Thompson.

Among Bywaters' belongings police found nearly sixty letters couched in passionate and sinister terms, written to him by Edith Jessie Thompson, glamorous twenty-eight-year-old wife of the murdered man.

The letters burst like a bomb over dustily moral Britain. For the first time the English newspaper audience was give a head-on look at a love affair stripped naked. A love affair between an Older Married Woman and a Virgin Youth. A love affair stained from its very inception with the appalling, bloody hand of homicide.

Long before Edith Thompson appeared, with Bywaters, for trial at the Old Bailey, all England had condemned her as the most pernicious female monster ever to have been exhibited before the public eye.

Here is the story of the most poignant, controversial, terrifying love affair in the annals of murder, reconstructed by Q. Patrick, true-crime authority and celebrated novelist. It is the eighth in Gold Medal's Classic Crime Series, the previous volumes of which have so delighted America's most famous critics.

[severance]

Seeing as how Dem has morphed this into a true crime checklist as well as a horror checklist - here's another one. Not sure why Gold Medal didn't include this one in their series of Classic Murder Trials but it would've slotted in there quite nicely.

Lillian de la Torre - The Truth About Belle Gunness

Lillian de la Torre - The Truth About Belle Gunness par severance_23, on ipernity

First published by Gold Medal in 1955. This U.K. edition published by Frederick Muller in 1960.

Cover art by Barye Phillips.

"Change all the cash you have into paper bills, and sew them real good and fast on the inside of your underwear. Be careful and sew it real good, and be sure do not tell anyone of it, not even to your nearest relative. Let this only be a secret between us two and no one else.

Probably we will have many more secrets, do you not think so?"

Less than six months after this letter was written, diggers on Belle Gunness' farm uncovered in the earth a human arm.

Then one by one, the Gunness earth gave up its other secrets, corpse after rotting corpse, dismembered - and all indisputably murdered.

This is the story of Belle Gunness, the mail-order Circe, the lush, magnetic Amazon who first bound her victims to her with a naked sex drive, then slaughtered them brutally and pocketed their money.

THE TRUTH ABOUT BELLE GUNNESS - a compelling study in lust and death.

[severance]

Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson - The Girls in Nightmare House

Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson - The Girls in Nightmare House par severance_23, on ipernity

First published in the U.S. by Gold Medal in 1955

This U.K. reprint published by Frederick Muller in 1959

Cover art by Clark Hulings

By his own confession, the man who called himself H.H. Holmes murdered twenty-seven people.

More - or less - generous estimators have revised that number considerably upward - in the neighbourhood of a hundred.

Whatever the sum total of his victims, this suave, urbane Casanova bears the dubious glory of having been America's most prolific mass murderer.

Women were attracted to him like flies to flypaper, and often met the same end.

To his weird Chicago murder castle - a veritable abattoir strewn with cadavers - he lured dozens of pretty, well-heeled girls destined for his cellar limbo. A two-time bigamist, he maintained mistresses on a wholesale level, with the comfortable knowledge that, when he tired of them, they would depart belowstairs without a whimper - and maybe even show him a profit.

A genius at arranging sudden death, H.H. Holmes finally blundered. It was during his trial for the murder of an accomplice that he won a kind of immortality. For America, astonished, fascinated, rapt, hung on every gory revelation and accorded him the attention reserved for great men - bizarre though Holmes' greatness might have been.

With the wit and style that have kept the critics applauding, Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson give you a beguiling, full-length portrait of the man who called himself H.H. Holmes - the man who made murder his life's work.

[dem bones]

IS BLUE BOAR STABBER SEX SLAYER?

Not sure it's "horror" but I picked this up at the recent pulp fair ...

Sebastian Blayne [Janet Huckins]- Gay Ghastly Holiday (Fawcett, 1951)

Phillip Barrye

Blurb

Every embrace of love had the shadow of death over it. Every time Moira tried to flee from the past there was that paralysing terror, the spectre of evil to torture her. Every kiss became the last, every touching of hands a signal for disaster.

A great first novel by an author you will want to read again and again.

[helrunar]

Hysterical. I feel obliged to make a smart comeback but can't get beyond the innate greatness of the title.

H.