Above: a Bill Johnson cover for the Charles Williams thriller Dead Calm, originally published in hardback in 1963 with this Avon paperback coming in ’65. We love this cover. It gets more interesting the more you look at it. As for the story, it deviates from the 1989 Nicole Kidman movie in several important ways, including the number of characters, the approach the heroine Rae takes toward being stranded on a sailboat in the middle of the South Pacific with a madman, and the climax. The movie is excellent, of course, but it's interesting the choices screenwriters make. In the movie Rae uses sex as part of her arsenal but Williams has more imagination than that—or less, depending on your point of view. In any case, Dead Calm is a recommended read. 

Have you guys seen this cover before? It’s by Bill Johnson, from 1965. The piece is considered a bit of a classic, and that was even before all our ideas of what might be happening at a moment like this shifted thanks to Sharon Stone. You cannot help but see her in Basic Instinct here. The point-of-view is the same, the defiant expression, and the pose too. And we all remember what happened next. Pretty cool, right? By the way, the book is interesting. There is a lesbianism theme just like in Basic Instinct.

Submitted by Mike Lewis

No, we hadn’t seen this before. Yes, it’s great. And yes, all we can see in our mind's eye is Sharon Stone flashing the kitty kat. But that's pretty much all we saw in our mind's even before you sent us this cover. Thanks for the awesome share.