Best of
Pulp

1952

A Stone for Danny Fisher


Harold Robbins - 1952
    But when Danny's family falls on hard times, moving from their comfortable home in Brooklyn to Manhattan's squalid Lower East Side, he is forced to leave his carefree childhood behind. Facing poverty and daily encounters with his violent, anti-Semitic neighbors, Danny must fight both inside and outside the ring just to survive. As his boxing becomes legendary in the city's seedy underworld, packed with wiseguys and loose women, everyone seems to want a hand in Danny's success. Robbins's colorful, fast-talking characters evoke the rough streets of Depression-era New York City. Ronnie, a prostitute ashamed of how far she's fallen and desperately in need of friendship; Sam, a slick bookie who wants to profit from Danny's boxing talent; and Nellie, a beautiful but lonely girl who refuses to believe Danny is beyond redemption -- each of whom has a different vision of Danny's future -- will help steer his rocky course. Gritty, compelling, and groundbreaking for its time, A Stone for Danny Fisher is a tale of ambition, hope, and violence set in a distinct and dangerous period of American history. A classic, sexy bestseller by Harold Robbins, reintroduced to a whole new generation of readers.

Man Drowning


Henry Kuttner - 1952
    He finds the girl he loves, Sherry, in Arizona; gets a job with a very mentally displaced couple; and, with lethal anger catching up with him, is on the lam. The fight between his almost rational self and his anti-social demands borrows from the desert background for a sultry brooding viciousness. Torrid tale-telling.

Maybe - Tomorrow


Jay Little - 1952
    Blake is everything he wants to be: tall, tan, handsome, athletic, and most of all masculine. He makes Gay wish he'd been born a girl so he could dance and flirt with Blake the way the girls are allowed to.Written in 1952, Maybe--Tomorrow is a classic piece of mid-century, gay erotica. Gaylord is just beginning to discover his desires and how and when to give in to them. Though his sights are set on Blake, he winds his way through several other lovers in his journey of sexual discovery.

Satan Takes the Helm


Calvin Clements - 1952
    So with nothing to lose, he applies for the job. The person doing the hiring is a nice surprise. Joyce is the ship captain’s wife, and Martin is just the person she’s looking for. Captain Sloan is too lenient and needs a chief officer with backbone. He’s also too old, too crippled, and just too ugly for Joyce. Theirs is a marriage of convenience that has grown inconvenient for Joyce. What she needs in a chief officer is more than a man who can keep the crew in line. She needs a man who will help her replace the captain…

Johns: The Outhouse Beautiful


Frank O'Beirne - 1952
    An ad executive's humorous designs and descriptions of the outhouses of the future.

The Witching Night


C.S. Cody - 1952
    S. Cody to distinguish this novel from the crime fiction and international intrigue he would later become famous for. Groundbreaking in its approach, The Witching Night pits medical science against a relentless, malignant force. Dr. Loomis-a young, well-grounded MD who operates a small clinic in Chicago-draws on his medical training by using pharmaceuticals to keep himself buoyant and lucid in the midst of a direct attack by a malicious entity . . . or is it a curse? Nameless, indefinable . . . one thing is certain: it's a killer, and likes to torture before it kills. Leslie Waller wrote such memorable novels as Dog Day Afternoon and Hide in Plain Sight. He also collaborated with Steven Spielberg on the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Too long neglected, The Witching Night was chosen to launch Bruin Books' new line of weird fiction, Bruin Asylum. Introduction by Jonathan Eeds. Welcome to the Asylum.

Zip-Gun Angels


Albert L. Quandt - 1952
    The city slums pour them out into the world, and then leave them to take care of themselves... and in their way, the girls do. Some of them take the "easy" road, with men in bars and on street corners.Others fight for decency and a home and future. Some are beautiful, and dream of using their bodies to win fame and applause... and men with the money to give them what they want. Others are plain... but they're still female, with all the yearnings of ripening women.They all start out on the streets of the city... and from the beginning it's a battle... for food, for decency, for love. Boys in the same predicament form themselves into gangs, and fight wih broken bottles and zip guns, defying the world to stop them...This is the story of one girl who fought with everything she had, with body, with heart and fresh young beauty... as the leader of a new kind of street gang... a gang of tough and beautiful girls.

With or Without Beans: An Informal Biography of Chili


Joe E. Cooper - 1952
    

The Deep End


Fredric Brown - 1952
    Immediately, the situation sparks the classic 'could it be an accident? Of course not...' and it isn't long before newspaperman Sam Evans begins to sense that something is wrong. But when he starts to link this death with other apparent accidents in the town, is his obsession taking him too far?

The Cabin In The Cotton


Harry Harrison Kroll - 1952
    

Junkie!


Jonathan Craig - 1952
    It was four a.m. on a muggy Washington morning and the liquor hadn’t helped. Neither had the jam session at Sully’s. That was the hellish thing about a torch – the longer you carried it, the hotter it burned."

The Night Watch


Thomas Walsh - 1952
    Ritchie McCallister is the young clean honest one, who feels compelled to look after his partner Paddy Ahern. Ahern is an average cop, who has a habit of taking a nip from the bottle at times. Walter Sheridan is the third detective. Hes a wise ass, who only looks out for himself. The stakeout is the apartment of a bank robbers wife. One night the robber returns, and Sheridan and Ahern nab him. The guy has the money with him, so Sheridan kills him making it look like self defense. Hes really after the cash, and he convinces Ahern hes doing this to protect him. Sheridan throws the body along with the loot into the trunk, with plans to retrieve it after the night is over. Things go quickly wrong for Sheridan and after a failed attempt to silence a female witness, he ends up killing Ahern. The second half of the novel involves the manhunt for Sheridan. McCallister, distraught over Aherns death and the attempt to kill an innocent girl, stalks Sheridan throughout the apartment development area with the assistance of other policemen.

The Brotherhood of Velvet


David Karp - 1952
    Lion Books #105