Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

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Copyright © 2017 by Grady Hendrix

All rights reserved. Except as authorized under U.S. Copyright law, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication number: 2016957818

ISBN 9781594749810

Ebook ISBN 9781594749827

Ebook design adapted from printed book design by Timothy O’Donnell

Production management by John J. McGurk

Full publisher and artist credits appear here. All illustrations in this book are copyrighted by their respective copyright holders (according to the original copyright or publication date) and are reproduced for historical purposes. Any omission or incorrect information should be transmitted to the author or publisher, so it can be rectified in any future edition of this book.

Quirk Books

215 Church Street

Philadelphia, PA 19106

quirkbooks.com

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Cover

Title Page

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

HAIL, SATAN

CHAPTER 2

CREEPY KIDS

CHAPTER 3

WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK

CHAPTER 4

REAL ESTATE NIGHTMARES

CHAPTER 5

WEIRD SCIENCE

CHAPTER 6

GOTHIC AND ROMANTIC

CHAPTER 7

INHUMANOIDS

CHAPTER 8

SPLATTERPUNKS, SERIAL KILLERS, AND SUPER CREEPS

SELECTED CREDITS AND PUBLISHER BIOGRAPHIES

AFTERWORD

CREDITS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

About the Author

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INTRODUCTION

Years ago at a science-fiction convention, I was flipping through the dollar boxes at a dealer’s table when this Hector Garrido cover for The Little People brought my eyeballs to a screeching halt. I wasn’t a book collector—I didn’t even know who Hector Garrido was—but I knew what this was: the Mona Lisa of paperback covers. I bought it so fast my fingers blistered. I never expected to actually read the book…but three months later, I fished it out of my “To Be Read” pile and cracked it open.

I knew John Christopher’s name from his Tripods science-fiction series, which had been serialized as a comic strip in the back of Boys’ Life magazine. But this 1966 Avon novel was stronger stuff. In it, a gorgeous secretary inherits an Irish castle from a distant relative and converts it into a B&B to show her patronizing lawyer/fiancé that she can stand on her own. On opening weekend, the house is full of guests: an Irish dreamboat alcoholic, two bickering Americans with a hot-to-trot teenage daughter, and a married couple who met in a concentration camp, where he was a guard and she was a prisoner.

But some uninvited guests are lurking in the basement: the Gestapochauns.

The Gestapochauns live in the dark, battling their ancient rat enemies with teeny bullwhips. Shortly after we meet them, the author lets us know that these are not just any Nazi leprechauns. These are psychic Nazi leprechauns who enjoy S&M, are covered with scars from pleasure/pain sessions with their creator, were trained as sex slaves for full-sized human men, and are actually stunted fetuses taken from Jewish concentration camp victims. And one of them is named Adolph.

While all this information is being hosed into the reader’s eyes like a geyser of crazy, this book rockets from 0 to 60 on the loony meter and overdelivers on practically every level. From the moment the Gestapochauns play a mean practical joke on the old Irish washerwoman who works in the kitchen to the moment that the lawyer/fiancé realizes exactly what the Nazi leprechaun named Greta is up to in his pants, it’s one fifty-page freakout that’s firing on every cylinder.

The book’s original hardback cover by Paul Bacon featured merely a tiny foot.

Sadly, the Gestapochauns are completely absent from the last thirty pages of the book. The author devoted the remaining pages to a discrete psychic battle that takes place in the dreams of the non-psychic, non-Nazi, non-leprechaun members of the cast. In other words, the Boring People. Yet Christopher and his Gestapochauns fly so high and so far in those middle passages that they practically touch the sun.

No matter what book I read next, the Gestaopchauns clung to my gray folds, whispering to me in my sleep: What else has been forgotten? After some late-night googling brought me to Will Errickson’s Too Much Horror Fiction blog, I blacked out. One year later, I woke up squatting in the middle of an aisle at Sullivan’s Trade-a-Book in the heart of South Carolina, surrounded by piles of musty horror paperbacks. Apparently I was buying them. Apparently I was reading them. Apparently I was addicted.