Desmond Bagley

My collection of Desmond Bagley's novels is a pretty rag-tag bunch, although I'm pleased with the way the covers cleaned up for this gallery. I'm still missing one title, but I'll find it eventually [two, technically, as I have one only in an omnibus edition]. I liked Bagley back in the days I was reading thrillers and have re-read a couple recently: Night of Error was OK, one of two novels

Desmond Bagley: Bibliography and bonus cover gallery

(* I'm running the cover gallery/bibliography in reverse order so that I don't have to repost it... the main gallery will appear tomorrow.)

In 2009, Harper published a series of eight "2-in-1" omnibus editions, the covers of which I've appended to the following bibliography. Most (if not all) of the books contained additional stories or features by/about Bagley.

Bagley also wrote one short

Henry Kuttner: Cover Gallery

Henry Kuttner was one of the finest science fiction writers of the American pulp era, active from the appearance of his first story in 1936 until his death in 1958. The best of his work, much of which appeared under pen-names, notably Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell, was written to various degrees in collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore, herself a noted SF and fantasy writer.

I was

Henning Mankell: Cover Gallery

Henning Mankell has indirectly been responsible for some of the best television seen in the UK of recent years thanks to BBC Four showing the Swedish TV adaptations of his Kurt Wallander novels starring Rolf Lassgård and the TV series starring Krister Henriksson. However, the first Wallander I actually saw was the BBC production starring Kenneth Branagh which I thought was excellent. All three

Raymond Chandler: The Novels

Raymond Chandler is one of my favourite authors and I've been meaning to put together a gallery of covers from his books for some while. I have to admit that I don't think Chandler was best served by his British publishers. The movie tie-in covers make an interesting set, but I'd would love to have seen Chandler published by Pan or one of the other companies that did painted covers; I imagine

Raymond Chandler: Short Stories and others

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Trouble Is My Business
Penguin 741, 1950.
----, 2nd imp., 1951; 3rd imp., 1952; 4th imp., 1954; 5th imp., 1957.
----, 6th imp., 1960, 248pp, 2/6, [green].
----, 7th imp., 1962. Cover by John Sewell
----, 8th imp., 1964.
Penguin C741, 1966. Cover: photo
----, 9th imp., 1967.
Penguin 1400-0741-5, [10th imp.] 1972, 248pp, 35p. Cover: photo/des. James Tormey. *MTI.
(

Martin Woodhouse (1932-2011)

Thriller writer Martin Woodhouse died in May but the obituary I penned for the Guardian only appeared on Wednesday this week (and posted online on Tuesday). The paper only used one small cover as an illustration, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to post the four that I sent over.

Tree Frog (London, William Heinemann, 1966)
Pan X605, 1967, 191pp, 3/6. Cover: photo

Rock Baby (as Bush Baby,

Ken MacLeod cover gallery

Ken MacLeod is a Scottish SF author, one of the wave of British authors who began appearing in the 1990s that include Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter, Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds and Adam Roberts. A fine writer who deserves a gallery here. I also like cover artist Lee Gibson and ran a little gallery of the 'Engines of Light' trilogy hardcover jackets back in June 2008.

What actually

Hal Ellson at Pedigree

Mention a while back of Hal Ellson and Pedigree Books prompted me to dig out the few that I had. Ellson, one of the best writers of JD novels in the USA and highly collected these days, had seven of his novels reprinted by Pedigree in 1957-59. I wish I had them all... I noticed that someone has Reefer Boy for sale for a mere £854.53 + £12.23 postage.

Reefer Boy (aka The Golden Spike)
Pedigree

Pedigree's Satanic Selection

While looking through my folders for something suitable to post on a Friday the 13th, I dug out these three covers for cleaning up. Pedigree Books were active in the late 1950s and early 1960s, run by Edwin Self who had been active during the gangster boom a few years earlier as both an editor and publisher. He earned himself a little jail time when it was decided that some of his books were

Air Ace covers

About eighteen months ago I edited a book called Wings of Death (you can find the cover down the left-hand column), which came out from Prion last April. I pulled a copy off the shelf at the weekend to look up one of the strips that appeared and noticed that the covers to the six stories were reprinted in black & white at the back of the book. When I had a look at my folder of Air Ace covers I

Ron Embleton Cover Gallery

Ron Embleton was not a prolific paperback cover artist, but his cover work pre-dates the painted strips he produced for comics by some years. The subject matter may be straight out of the pulps in most cases, but they show Embleton's confidence in the use of colour even when the artist was still only in his early twenties (in fact, the earliest known cover listed here dates from around the age of

Mickey Spillane: Cover Gallery part 3

COLLECTIONS

Me, Hood! (London, Corgi, 1963)
Corgi Books SC1369, 1963, 125pp, 2/6. Cover by Renato Fratini
Corgi Books GN7605, 1967, 3/6.
Corgi Books 552-38698-3, 1971, 125pp.
Corgi Books 552-09710-1, 1975, 125pp. Cover by Michael Codd

The Flier (London, Corgi, 1964)
Corgi Books GC1536, 1964, 174pp, 3/6. Cover by unknown
----, 2nd imp., 1964.
----, 3rd imp., 1965.
----, 4th imp., 1966.
----,

Mickey Spillane: Cover Gallery part 2

The Deep (New York, Dutton, 1961; London, Barker, 1961)
Corgi Books SC1305, 1963, 142pp, 2/6. Cover by Renato Fratini
----, 1969.
----, 1974.

The Girl Hunters (New York, Dutton, 1962; London, Barker, 1962)
Corgi Books SC1454, 1963, 142pp, 2/6. Cover by unknown
Corgi Books GC7175, 3/6.
Corgi Books GV7610, 1967, 3/6.
Corgi Books 552-08267-8, 1969, 4/-.
Corgi Books 552-09336-X, 1973, 158pp.

Mickey Spillane: Cover Gallery part 1

I've long been a fan of Mickey Spillane's novels. My dad was a fan and had copies of his novels which I picked up along with dozens of others, leading to my early love of James Hadley Chase and John Creasey amongst others.

Spillane is the subject of one of the essays in Mean Streetmaps and I thought this was a good opportunity to put together a cover gallery of his work. There are quite a few

Robert L. Forward

Some years ago, in one of those mad moves you always regret, I sold off a lot of my SF collection. I simply didn't have the room to keep it and I was offered a fairly generous deal. We're not talking first editions in dustjackets but paperbacks I'd bought over the years, many of them purchased as they'd come out in the 1970s and 1980s which I'd kept in good condition.

Some I've regretted selling

W. R. Burnett cover gallery

 (* The following brief introduction is an extract from one of the essays in Mean Streetmaps.)

William Riley Burnett was born in Springfield, Ohio, on 25 November 1899, the son of Theodore Addison Burnett and Emily Upson Colwell Morgan. He attended grammar schools in Springfield and Dayton, then moved to Columbus where he spent two years at East High School; he graduated at the age of nineteen

James M. Cain cover gallery

(* The following brief introduction is an extract from one of the essays in Mean Streetmaps.)

If ever a book was filled with twisted hopes and crooked dreams, it is Double Indemnity. To James M. Cain, its author, it was a "piece of tripe," written to cash in on the startling success of his first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Cain, nervously approaching his second full-length novel

Fontana Cover Cavalcade: John Keay

I know little about John Keay and what is known is confused by the fact that there have been two artists by the same name. I think - but I'm not 100% sure - that the artist who contributed to Fontana was known as Jack Keay but was born John Edwin Keay in Kings Norton in 1907 and died in London in 1996. He was represented by Linden Artists and Thomson Artists.

Then there was a second artist by

Fontana Cover Cavalcade: John Rose

John Rose was a regular cover artist for Fontana, one of the most prolific in the early days of the company in 1953-56, although he continued to provide covers until at least 1961 and possibly 1962. He was responsible for providing covers to many of Fontana's major writers, including Agatha Christie, Peter Cheyney, Howard Spring and Eric Williams as well as the religious writings of C. S. Lewis.