In January '80, I stepped off a plane and walked into a bookstore at LAX and was presented with this magnificent piece of art. I snapped it up immediately.
I loved the book, too. Robert McCammon had an extraordinary run for a while.His Avon covers were the best.
One of the most sensual, spellbinding covers of any book I have seen.And lots of Girl Power inside.
The cover of this first edition (August, '79) of William Katz's Deathdreams is so evocative and haunting.There are few images as troubling as a drowned child.
This one doesn't stay that way, of course. "And that's the rest of the story", as Paul Harvey used to say.A spooky, powerful, well written novel that has much in common with Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (an upcoming Peter Jackson film) and wretched crap like David S. Goyer's The Invisible.
Although it was reprinted, it never appeared with this amazing cover again.
Katz is/was a very underrated novelist.
I first read a rave review of Big Gurl (Onyx, '89) in Fangoria. It a perverted, bizarre tale of a freak who could easily be a Garbage Pail Kid.Everything about this novel, which is very John Waters in setting and incident, is oddball.
I love it.
It wasn't reprinted, and it's not particularly easy to find, but I urge you to devote your life to engaging with it.
The unpronounceable Stchur, who wrote Paddywhack (St. Martin's Press, '84), returned in '87 with this tight, nasty little number set in rural Michigan.
It's cliched but fun.
Totally amazing Ketchum novel featuring the character 'Arthur Danse', one of Ketchum's most monstrous creations (that's saying something because he's created his fair share!).
This first edition paperback was published in '95 by Headline Book Publishing, a division of Hodder and Stoughton.The sense of evil surrounding a child in terrible jeopardy is brilliantly conveyed, and has never left me.
One of Ketchum's darkest and least discussed.
