 Of course you were the first. Geez. Why does every guy ask the same question? 
Above: a very nice Tom Miller cover for Stuart Friedman's novel Irina, from Monarch Books, copyright 1963. The maxim, “Don't ask don't tell,” would seem to apply here.
 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.
              
 Well, duh, of course we used you until you were sad and broken. What the hell do you think we learn in business school? 
Above, a cover for Carlton Joyce's campus sleazer Fraternity Row, 1963, about a charming sociopath named Chaz Graycen III, king of the hotshot Delta Mu fraternity, who knows no bounds of taste nor conscience when it comes to using people for his own benefit. So basically it's a deadly accurate take on entitled one percenters. The cover art is by Tom Miller, who we did a little feature on here.
 Well, its only fair. Your husband backed his car over my wife's rose bushes last year. 
There's no end to suburban misadventures in mid-century fiction. In Sam Webster's My Neighbor's Wife, a sales manager at a steel company develops an interest in an employee's wife, so he gives the employee a traveling position and tries out some positions with the wife. Webster was a pseudonym for author Ben Haas, and this is copyright 1963 with Tom Miller cover art.
 Actually, my husband already came home. But don’t worry. Except for getting fresh beers he might as well be in Mongolia until WWE Raw is over. 
Above, a nice Tom Miller cover for Suburban Lovers, Jay Carr’s tale of various married suburbanites bedding their neighbors, published 1962, for Monarch. Carr, who was in actuality James P. Duff, must have done okay with this theme, because he also published Crack-Up in Suburbia for Monarch, also in 1962.
 Okay, now you’re going feel a little prick. 
Did you ever see the movie Doc Hollywood? Well, 1962’s A Halo for Dr. Michael is the same sort of thing—i.e., a bright young doctor passes up a glittering career in the big city (Manhattan) and practices medicine in a small southern town. He learns a little about himself, and of course finds love. Author Dorothy Worley specialized in this stuff, churning out books such as Dr. John’s Decision, Dr. Jefferey’s Awakening (are you sensing a theme here?) Dr. Michael’s Challenge, and, for a change of pace, Cinderella Nurse. It’s cheeseball stuff, but sometimes only a medical romance will scratch that itch. The cover art, in all its overwhelming pinkness, is by Tom Miller, who did a lot of work for Monarch and Fawcett. You don’t hear his name mentioned with the top rank of pulp artists, but he was a first rate stylist who created more than a few classic images. We’ve collected a few below so you can see for yourself.        
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1964—Warren Commission Issues Report
The Warren Commission, which had been convened to examine the circumstances of John F. Kennedy's assassination, releases its final report, which concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. Today, up to 81% of Americans are troubled by the official account of the assassination. 1934—Queen Mary Launched
The RMS Queen Mary, three-and-a-half years in the making, launches from Clydebank, Scotland. The steamship enters passenger service in May 1936 and sails the North Atlantic Ocean until 1967. Today she is a museum and tourist attraction anchored in Long Beach, U.S.A. 1983—Nuclear Holocaust Averted
Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov, whose job involves detection of enemy missiles, is warned by Soviet computers that the United States has launched a nuclear missile at Russia. Petrov deviates from procedure, and, instead of informing superiors, decides the detection is a glitch. When the computer warns of four more inbound missiles he decides, under much greater pressure this time, that the detections are also false. Soviet doctrine at the time dictates an immediate and full retaliatory strike, so Petrov's decision to leave his superiors out of the loop very possibly prevents humanity's obliteration. Petrov's actions remain a secret until 1988, but ultimately he is honored at the United Nations. 2002—Mystery Space Object Crashes in Russia
In an occurrence known as the Vitim Event, an object crashes to the Earth in Siberia and explodes with a force estimated at 4 to 5 kilotons by Russian scientists. An expedition to the site finds the landscape leveled and the soil contaminated by high levels of radioactivity. It is thought that the object was a comet nucleus with a diameter of 50 to 100 meters.
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