Terror at Seacliff Pines by Florence Hurd (Manor Books, 1976)

A large scary house in the background?  A pretty young woman in the foreground?  This has got to be a Modern Gothic novel.

HOUSE OF TERROR

When young Jennifer inherited an old and sprawling mansion on the rocky California coast, a whole new world opened up to her.  She planned to sell the house, to travel, to do what she had always dreamed of.

But when she arrived at Seacliff Pines, her dreams became visions of hell.  For the house was tainted with the touch of death and alive with the whispers of madness...

It's a slightly unusual cover, because Our Heroine isn't running away from her "HOUSE OF TERROR" so much as standing around contemplating running away from it.  Or maybe walking away from it very, very slowly...

(I won't go into to the plot.  Suffice it to say it is resolved with very bizarre twist!)

Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck (Pan, 1958)

Found in a corner of The Green Shed:

Boisterous, Light-hearted, Impudent! 

High spirits, robust and tender humour, in this gay story by America's famous novelist

JOHN

STEINBECK

AT Cannery Row, derelict Californian seaside town, Doc's friends are worried.  Doc's a scientist who makes a scanty living by collecting and selling marine specimens.  He's unhappy, needs looking after.

What to do?  Marry him off, of course. But to whom?  Well, there's the new girl at the house called Bear Flag.  She's tough and pretty, and not really good at her job because "she's got a streak of lady in her." 

Will Doc take her on?  Suzy is suspicious, Doc needs prodding.  But when Suzy goes to live respectably in an abandoned boiler, things start moving. 

Warning: not for the prudish!

I'm not a big fan of Steinbeck, but I love this cover.  Artist: Cy Webb.

Return to the Stars by Edmond Hamilton (Lancer, 1969)

Found at a charity book fair.  Someone had evidently been keen on traditional space opera, because I managed to find a number of vintage paperbacks like this one.

KINGDOM OF THE STARS

John Gordon, twentieth century Earthman, is torn from his own time to a far distant future--a time when the entire galaxy is inhabited.  But men do not rule the future; our race is only one among thousands, and many of those thousands are sworn enemies of humanity!  Gordon, man of the past, is forced to form alliances with the men of the future in a desperate battle to save the human race from final annihilation...

The cover is all 1960s, but the stories inside date from 1947!

A Cure for Serpents by Alberto Denti di Pirajno (Pan, 1957)

 

 Breath taking in its frank and joyous account of extraordinary adventures, this book is the fruit of many years spent in the former North African colonies of Italy. The Duke's medical skills and genius for friendship made in welcome in gorgeous palace and humble tent. He tells of:

• His patients in closely guarded harems
• The veiled Tuaregs and their 'courts of love'
• The Negress who charmed poisonous scorpions
• The Arab with a serpent in his stomach
• The strange life and death of a pet lioness 

The author, whose dukedom was created in 1642 by Philip IV, King of Spain and Sicily, joined the Italian Colonial Administration after five years' service in Africa as a doctor, and in 1941 became Governor of Tripoli.