 I'm pretty sure she doesn't even like me. I think the lockdown is making her do this out of sheer boredom. 
Above, The Girl Takers by Don Holliday, for Greenleaf Classics' Midnight Reader line, published in 1961. Holliday is, as you probably know by now, a house pseudonym used by many. This time it's being inhabited by Arthur Plotnik, who wrote nine other Greenleaf novels. This one deals with a man who descends into increasing depths of so-called depravity in order to experience bigger and bigger thrills. The cover art is by Harold W. McCauley. We'll have more from Greenleaf soon.
 It looks amazing, baby. Er... aaaand should look even better on my lovely wife. Thanks for letting me test it on your neck. 
Sometimes when you're caught you're caught. You can try and brazen the moment out, but it usually does no good, at least in mid-century fiction. From there it's just a short distance to mayhem, murder, trials, prison, and all the other fun stuff that makes genre fiction worth reading. From James M. Cain's iconic The Postman Always Rings Twice to J.X. Williams' ridiculous The Sin Scene, infidelity is one of the most reliable and common plot devices. What isn't common is cover art that depicts the precise moment of being caught. Of all the cover collections we've put together, this was the hardest one for which to find examples, simply because there are no easy search parameters. We managed a grand total of sixteen (yes, there's a third person on the cover of Ed Schiddel's The Break-Up—note the hand pushing open the door). The artists here are L.B. Cole, Harry Schaare, Tom Miller, Bernard Safran, and others. And we have thre more excellent examples of this theme we posted a while back. Check here, here, and here.
              
 Remember I said you needed to spice up your act? Mr. Sweet and Mr. Young—meet your new lead singer Miss Wanton! 
Is it just us or does Sweet, Young & Wanton sound like the name of a ’70s disco band? Miss Wanton can't seem to get out of bed, but that makes her like pretty much every lead singer in history. Trust us we know—your Pulp Intl. creators were in a band together for years back during our misspent youth. Too bad Sweet, Young & Wanton has nothing to do with music. It's actually about a man who embarks on a tawdry affair with a girl from the corner café where he drowns his sorrows. Standard sleaze from pseudonymous author Don Holliday, copyright 1965, with art by Robert Bonfils.
 That’s just my name for them. Everyone else still calls them men. 
Above, another winner from Greenleaf Classics, Don Holliday’s The Lust Pigs, 1962, for the Midnight Reader line. The real author behind this one was David Case, who wrote ten books total for Greenleaf, including Lust Circuit and Luster’s Lane. Clearly he had a thing about lust. As do we all. The art is unattributed.
 Any educator will tell you the same, my dear—the key to learning is excellent teacher/student relations. 
Above, a cover of the 1959 sleaze paperback Sin School, brought to us by Midwood and its house pseudonym Don Holliday. This was actually written by Hal Dresner, according to Vintage Sleaze, and if you want to see an alternate cover check their website here.
 It was an Affairs to remember. 
Above is a cover scan of Victor Jay’s 1964 novel The Affairs of Gloria, a book that is significant because it’s the first from the LGBT author whose real name is Victor J. Banis. He happens to be the person who, writing under Leisure Books’ communal pseudonym Don Holliday, gave the world the mystery series The Man from C.A.M.P., as well as many other books that are classics in the gay pulp genre. Some of those unforgettable and decidedly un-PC titles include Blow the Man Down, Man into Boy, Homo Farm, and Rally Round the Fag. Gloria isn’t what you’d call a gay pulp. Banis hadn’t yet taken that direction with his fiction (which was all short stories up to that point), but he was literarily bi-curious, you could say, so what he did was create a protagonist whose sexual appetite allowed him to experiment with lesbian themes. The book sold well, and despite an obscenity indictment in Sioux City, Iowa, Banis came away from the experience more convinced than ever that an untapped gay market was waiting. In 1966 Greenleaf Classics published Banis’s first gay mystery The Why Not, which resulted in the go-ahead for similar novels. Banis is still churning out books today, and is well reviewed by entities as middle of the road as Publisher’s Weekly, who, according to the author’s website, called him a literary icon who made a difference. All of that began to take shape with his first novel, The Affairs of Gloria. You can read Banis’s own account of writing Gloria and get the skinny on that obscenity trial here.
 There's nothing like a long soak in the tub. 
Don Holliday was yet another 1960s sleaze author who existed only as a pseudonym. This one was inhabited by Hal Dresner, Lawrence Block, John Jakes, Victor Banis and other sometime sexploitation writers. We don’t know which one wrote The Sin Conspirators for Greenleaf Classics' sleaze imprint Leisure Books, but with a cover this brutal, it’s probably good he distanced himself. Unless the man is only demonstrating how in high school the other kids used to give him swirlies, it isn’t going to be just a bad hair day for his companion, but a bad air day. We’re working up a more comprehensive post on these Greenleaf paperbacks, so keep an eye out.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
2003—Hope Dies
Film legend Bob Hope dies of pneumonia two months after celebrating his 100th birthday. 1945—Churchill Given the Sack
In spite of admiring Winston Churchill as a great wartime leader, Britons elect
Clement Attlee the nation's new prime minister in a sweeping victory for the Labour Party over the Conservatives. 1952—Evita Peron Dies
Eva Duarte de Peron, aka Evita, wife of the president of the Argentine Republic, dies from cancer at age 33. Evita had brought the working classes into a position of political power never witnessed before, but was hated by the nation's powerful military class. She is lain to rest in Milan, Italy in a secret grave under a nun's name, but is eventually returned to Argentina for reburial beside her husband in 1974. 1943—Mussolini Calls It Quits
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini steps down as head of the armed forces and the government. It soon becomes clear that Il Duce did not relinquish power voluntarily, but was forced to resign after former Fascist colleagues turned against him. He is later installed by Germany as leader of the Italian Social Republic in the north of the country, but is killed by partisans in 1945.
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