Pulp International - Arthur+Adlon

Jun 2 2022

There are a lot of members, but they all come away satisfied.

Arthur Adlon's Key Club Girl is pretty limp for a sleaze novel. If we planned to resell it we'd be depressing its value by saying that, but we can't lie—it has no spark. It's about a virginal woman named Lena who's unable to consummate relationships with a series of men, including her husband. She solves the problem with the help of an eager man named Lee and the behind the scenes action at the Golden Key Club. She doesn't end up with Lee, though. Her husband Quentin, who was so disappointed when he learned on the wedding night that Lena abhored sex, and has since divorced her, ends up with her after all. We won't bother with more of a plot summary. Life's short, we have these sleaze novels coming in all the time, and most of them are better than Key Club Girl. The art on this, however, is sublime. It's what enticed us to buy it. Paul Rader painted it, and if you look closely you'll see a topless reflection in the vanity mirror, and in the background, way back, a man straddling a chair. Nice work.

Chariot Books Arthur Adlon Paul Rader cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Mar 4 2022

Oh, I heat up quite nicely, trust me. It just happens when my husband is away.

Above: a cover for Cold Wife by sleaze vet Arthur Adlon, aka Keith Ayling and other peudonyms, from Chariot Books. This came from Flickr, and it was uploaded without a copyright date, which was unfindable at first. But we figured we could deduce it. We went right to the serial number, but it didn't help because all the Chariot paperbacks we found had numbers in the 100s. This book is numbered 1602, which meant, near as we could figure, it would be published sometime in 2024 or 2025. Or maybe not. Actually, later we did find one Chariot with the number 1612 and that was from 1962. Figure this one is too. We've read Adlon before, and we have another on tap, so we'll see him again in a bit.

Chariot Books Arthur Adlon Keith Ayling cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Nov 29 2017

That isn't the place where kisses make me go crazy. Think lower. A lot lower.

In The Place protagonist Bill Martin is a novelist whose sexual adventures have earned him the nicknames the Goat of Gotham and the Monster of Manhattan. He's separated from his wife Betty, but they're happy to get together for sex. Enter Rika Balsemis, founder of STAIS, which stands for the Society to Abolish Instant Sex. Bill sees her as another conquest, but try as he might he can't get in her pants. He even resorts to force at one point and gets judoed for his efforts. Rika explains, “I realized that in certain situations our members might encounter violence such as yours, so I took a course in judo. It's admirably suited for female use. Karate is too violent. I might have kicked you and ruined you for life. I know how.”

At this point thought we had Rika Aoki on our hands. We thought we had a character that was going to unleash martial arts madness across the storyline. We were looking forward to it. But there are no more ass whippings. Rika instead gives in to Bill, but sex is just a prelude to hypnotizing him into being totally unresponsive to further sexual stimuli. Yes—she eunuchs him with the power of her mind. It's hilarious, though not to Bill. You know this state of affairs won't last, and indeed Rika can cancel the spell when she wants to make use of Bill's goatly talents. But the point of the wider narrative becomes getting him back together with his wife Betty. Written in 1966, The Place is a middling effort by Arthur Adlon, aka Keith Ayling, written with some style but virtually no sex. With sleaze, we recommend you prioritize the latter over the former.

Softcover Library Arthur Adlon Keith Ayling cover art literature

Vintage Pulp

Jul 28 2016

When girl meets girl sparks fly.

Above and below is a small percentage of some of the thousands of lesbian themed paperback covers that appeared during the mid-century period, with art by Paul Rader, Fred Fixler, Harry Schaare, Rudy Nappi, Charles Copeland, and others, as well as a few interesting photographed fronts. The collection ends with the classic Satan Was a Lesbian, which you’ve probably seen before, but which no collection like this is complete without. Hopefully most of the others will be new to you. Needless to say, almost all were written by men, and in that sense are really hetero books reflecting hetero fantasies (fueled by hetero misconceptions and slander). You can see plenty more in this vein on the website Strange Sisters.

Vintage Pulp

Mar 14 2015

An equitable exchange of services.

Are you old enough to have experienced the swinging craze? We aren’t, and we wouldn’t have taken part anyway (are you reading this, Pulp Intl. girlfriends?), but it does look kind of fun on vintage paperbacks (you aren't reading this are you, Pulp Intl. girlfriends?). We’ve shared a few covers in the past dealing with the subject of swapping, and you can see a few here, here, and here. For today we decided it was finally time to do what every pulp site must—put together a large, swap-themed collection of sleaze paperback covers. So above and below is a vast assortment for your enjoyment. The trick with these was to make sure they weren’t all from Greenleaf Classics, which is a company that through its imprints Companion, Candid, Adult, Nightstand, et al, published hundreds of swapping novels. That means we had to look far afield to avoid having the entire collection come from that publisher. We think we’ve done a good job (though we will put together a Greenleaf-only swapping collection later—it’s mandatory). Want to see even more swapping books? Try the excellent sleaze fiction website triplexbooks.com.