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I picked up four Gothics at a garage sale yesterday. Never read or heard of any of the authors before.
The Golden Unicorn, by Phyllis A. Whitney. On the cover, a unicorn looms over a guy with his hands over his crotch and a maiden draping herself over him, with the obligatory house in the background.
Back cover (reproduced exactly):
They say that the shadow
of the unicorn
will fall over the face
of the moon
and that someone in that
house
will die....
Courtney had been the perfect adopted child. But around her neck hung a time bomb on a chain-- a tiny gold unicorn that brought her face to face with the most violent intrigues of the past-- and the murderer her real mother had not escaped....
Damn, not a real unicorn.
From the inside cover: "Don't try to find out who you are Courtney. You may find horrors you're better off not knowing. Let the door stay closed."
Desperate Heiress, by Marilyn Ross.
Trapped on a haunted showboat, Hester is stalked by an eerie menace who is neither dead nor alive!
According to the back and inside covers, she inherited the showboat from her great-uncle, Diablo the Great, who accidentally beheaded his wife in his "gruesome magic act." She has now inherited the "floating theatre," complete with "the embittered dwarf, Quantimo."
A peek inside shows that this one's racial sensitivity matches its ablism sensitivity. It goes on about some random guy's "white eyeballs in his broad black face" on page one. This does not bode well.
The cover shows the disturbingly pointy-breasted heroine lurking near her evil steamboat.
The Place of Sapphires, by Florence Engel Randall.
On the cover, a surprisingly practically-dressed heroine walks through the moor, ominous house behinf her.
Against the eerie backdrop of a demon-haunted house... two sisters apparently suffer creepy identity confusion.
The Deadly Climate, by Ursula Curtiss.
On the cover, a heroine flees with her arms stuck out from a lurching figure. In the background... wait for it... a house!
I opened this one randomly. I think it'll be the best yet! For context, a man is searching the bedroom of a murdered woman for clues, and finds her robe.
Because there it hung in the shaft of entering light, shell-pink, alarmingly sheer, as random as a butterfly in a filing cabinet.
Was it even a robe? Carmichael suspected that it had borne some far prouder name in the department store where it had been bought.
(Carmichael examines the robe in minute detail for another paragraph.)
Whatever it was, it had a pocket. Not a utilitarian square wuth a slitted mouth, but a coy little cup of pale pink, capped with lace. Because it was the only pocket he had so far encountered in this room, and therefore the only place conceivably unsearched, Carmichael slid two fingers automatically inside.
I need a cigarette!
The Golden Unicorn, by Phyllis A. Whitney. On the cover, a unicorn looms over a guy with his hands over his crotch and a maiden draping herself over him, with the obligatory house in the background.
Back cover (reproduced exactly):
They say that the shadow
of the unicorn
will fall over the face
of the moon
and that someone in that
house
will die....
Courtney had been the perfect adopted child. But around her neck hung a time bomb on a chain-- a tiny gold unicorn that brought her face to face with the most violent intrigues of the past-- and the murderer her real mother had not escaped....
Damn, not a real unicorn.
From the inside cover: "Don't try to find out who you are Courtney. You may find horrors you're better off not knowing. Let the door stay closed."
Desperate Heiress, by Marilyn Ross.
Trapped on a haunted showboat, Hester is stalked by an eerie menace who is neither dead nor alive!
According to the back and inside covers, she inherited the showboat from her great-uncle, Diablo the Great, who accidentally beheaded his wife in his "gruesome magic act." She has now inherited the "floating theatre," complete with "the embittered dwarf, Quantimo."
A peek inside shows that this one's racial sensitivity matches its ablism sensitivity. It goes on about some random guy's "white eyeballs in his broad black face" on page one. This does not bode well.
The cover shows the disturbingly pointy-breasted heroine lurking near her evil steamboat.
The Place of Sapphires, by Florence Engel Randall.
On the cover, a surprisingly practically-dressed heroine walks through the moor, ominous house behinf her.
Against the eerie backdrop of a demon-haunted house... two sisters apparently suffer creepy identity confusion.
The Deadly Climate, by Ursula Curtiss.
On the cover, a heroine flees with her arms stuck out from a lurching figure. In the background... wait for it... a house!
I opened this one randomly. I think it'll be the best yet! For context, a man is searching the bedroom of a murdered woman for clues, and finds her robe.
Because there it hung in the shaft of entering light, shell-pink, alarmingly sheer, as random as a butterfly in a filing cabinet.
Was it even a robe? Carmichael suspected that it had borne some far prouder name in the department store where it had been bought.
(Carmichael examines the robe in minute detail for another paragraph.)
Whatever it was, it had a pocket. Not a utilitarian square wuth a slitted mouth, but a coy little cup of pale pink, capped with lace. Because it was the only pocket he had so far encountered in this room, and therefore the only place conceivably unsearched, Carmichael slid two fingers automatically inside.
I need a cigarette!
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I remember reading The Glass Flame by Phyllis A. Whitney in high school; both the HS and junior libraries in my town were well-stocked with Gothics, and I'd already read all the Mary Stewarts I could find. Can't remember a thing about it except that it was set in the south and introduced me to kudzu.
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I remember Stephanie Blake's and Barbara Riefe's as being skeezy, but with some truly Gothic frills and furbelows. Laurie McBain's were too prettied-up for me after a while, but they were the first Gothics I ever read and the first one or two I remember fondly--"Moonstruck Madness" in particular.
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These all sound like perfect summer reads, really. Get a jug of iced tea and a bag of cherries and head for the beach!
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Wow, and people say women don't have enough words to talk about our junk!
That's pretty amazing ... I wonder if he finds a little knot of threads or something at the top or a textured bit when he slides his fingers inside and then suddenly the whole thing seems a lot more spacious yet curiously snug at the same time?
This could go on for PAGES! :)
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I think we exhausted all the library had, in fact; 20 years on, though, I don't remember any of them in depth.
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Anyway, I seem to recall hearing that "Marilyn Ross" was actually the pen name for a husband and wife team of writers, but I couldn't swear to it. The book you describe doesn't seem to involve any "Dark Shadows" characters I've ever heard of, so presumably Ross wrote gothics featuring original characters as well.