Dust off Ye Olde Eyewash Station: it’s time for retro cover art, courtesy of Diane, who sent me a collection of lovely awesome books, with truly spectacular covers, which I found again when cleaning out my book-gasm of an office.
Sarah: When even the Real Doll™ rejects your attempts to reach first base, it’s time to think about rewriting your eHarmony profile, is all I’m sayin’.
Candy: Zombies are so passé. The new horror trend? Reanimated mannequins, bent on making everybody dress in ironic 80s fashions. Just take a look at the latest sure-to-be-classic George Romero horror flick, “Night of the Disco Mannequins.” They’re not set on eating your brains, but they’re definitely going to try and make your shoulderpads bigger.
And because the picture is just too great to be believed, here’s a close up:
Sarah: For a long time, I wondered where Garth Brooks got his fashion sense. And even though I know the answer to that question now, I remain as mystified as ever as to WHY.
Candy: That is possibly one of the most porntastic ‘staches I have ever seen, and that woman looks like she’s ready to knock if off his friggin’ face. I love it!
Sarah: Ah yes, Prince Joe. Prince of what, you ask? Mulletshire, obviously. In the region of Feathering Blowdryer, kingdom of Northwest Mousse.
Candy: Daaaaamn. With hair like that, His Royal Highness there doesn’t need a helmet when he goes ridin’. I suppose if it weren’t so flammable, the military would’ve looked into developing the Aquanet Forcefield a long time ago.
Special treat!
All you who thought you were seeing Victor from the Young and the Restless, Jessica sent me an image of one of her books from her keeper shelf, and it is TOO AWESOME to keep to myself.
This guy right here, who IS Victor, I believe, is totally getting to first base up in here:
Dang it. Can’t even work my own website. Please stand by.
The guy on cover 2 isn’t Victor from Y&R, that’s totally Tom Selleck.
ROFLYSST
(- thanks to comedian Bill Bailey – Rolling On Floor Laughing, Yet Somehow Still Typing)
That’s some magic vintage cover art. Too good!
OMG these covers are amazing…I want to read them all now! My favourite is the third cover but I especially love the caption You can dress him up, but…! heh you can dress him up but what?
You can dress him up, but..
1. … he’ll still have a terrible mullet!
2. … he’s still spray tanned to within an inch of his life!
3. … he will always be the guy with hair extensions!
Oh picking on Prince Joe, when there was a much worse cover for a later book in the series. Need I remind every one of the pillsbury doughboy, “Get Lucky” ? Here is the write up from Suzanne’s website. (the reprint cover is much nicer)
http://www.suzannebrockmann.com/Lucky_Cover.htm
I managed to get all the way through the cover snark and the comments without laughing out loud—until I saw the cover and read Brockman’s write up. I absolutely LOVE that she was sending out little smiley stickers to cover the guy’s face!
Number two is so NOT my Tom.
Tom Selleck was on the Dating Game, back in the day, and was never selected as the lucky bachelor.
spamword: and 55. Would this system get it right? I’m not 55!!
@ocelott: yup, looks just like ol’ Liz! Obviously going through one of her phases where she tried to be Daring and Spontaneous, by hanging out with guys in leather jackets.
~~Since I’ve read Manhunting and Prince Joe and loved them both, I think I have to try Jan Hudson.
Clearly, Diane who hoards bad-covers reads books I like.
Diane – did you buy these new? Or did you know that they were probably OK and just ignore how bad the covers were? My copy of Manhunting is preppy pastel wallpaper and Prince Joe is part of the Tall, Dark and Dangerous bundle #1 – I haven’t noticed the cover, I e-skip to the actual story. ~~
HOTW,
I don’t hoard books for bad covers. I hardly ever notice the covers – or ridiculous random-word-generated Presents titles, for that matter. I first pick them up based on the author, and usually hoard them for the good stories inside. :o) There are some exceptions where I keep a book just for the cover (tho that usually is not an indictment of the book at all – just that I never got around to reading it, but liked the cover). For example, I kept a copy of the three armed lady even tho at that point in life I didn’t read historicals because hey… it’s a three armed lady. LOL I’m just old enough to have read them when they first came out, rather than as reprints. :oP While it’s embarrassing to admit, most of those over-the-top 80s covers didn’t seem as ridiculous and hideous then as they are today. It’s embarrassing, but hard to deny that EVERYONE looked ridiculous in the 80s. LOLOL
Welcome to My Parlour stayed on my shelves for a long time, more out of sentiment than any true love for the story (sorry Jan!), tho it was over-the-top enough to be fun in a campy way. The dude is a dead ringer for my high school crush. I thought the cover would appeal to Sarah and the Bitchery. As I recall, the disco balls could kindasorta, if you’re open minded, fit into the tale because Spider took her to a disco one night while she was hiding out. And naturally, because when one thinks of Texas, one immediately thinks of disco. ;oP
As to your question, I don’t remember, but it’s a safe guess that I bought the books new for my personal stash, and the ones I sent off to Sarah came from the boxes of spares in the garage. Back when it was still relatively new and lucrative, I used to go ‘booking’ and troll all the UBSs and thrift stores for coveted books and sell them on eBay. I no longer do that, but still have several cases of boxes in the garage. I got rid of most of them over the years, but the ones that are personal favorites or highly collectible, I kept.
I used to LOVE categories. Still do, tho I often prefer the older ones to some of the newer ones. I have no idea what the stats are, but a large percentage of books in circulation now by The Big Gun authors (Nora, Evanovich, Brockmann, Howard, Johansen, Lowell, Crusie, Greene, etc), all started out as lowly Harlequin or Silhouette category romances. Barbara Mandrell used to sing a song about how she was country when country wasn’t cool. That’s kindof the feeling I get every time I hear someone raving about a wonderful new book they ‘just read’ by So and So… and it turns out to be a reprint of an old Harley. Here they are, spending $20 or more on a hardback reprint of a story that I paid maybe $1.25 for 20 years ago – and have had 20 years of pleasure in re-reads. I often wonder how horrified they are when/if they find the book they were reading and raving about is a category romance. I’m not talking about the people who are just now finding out about a new-to-them author, mind, but the ‘elitists’ who always disparaged my choice of reading material as being too pedestrian or somehow ‘less’ because it came out in category form. How sad that they have missed out on so many wonderful reads.
Reading everyone’s comments, I also was thinking about Lucky’s story, and SB’s solution to that truly frightful cover. LOL I’m glad someone re-posted it.
Diane :o)
I don’t know if I could have enjoyed Manhunting like I did if I’d had that mustached image in my head. Yikes!
The Suzanne Brockmann fix of her Get Lucky is awesome!
The Manhunting one, was obviously done in the days before Photoshop because she actually has a real arm. She might could even work up a good batwing jiggle if she worked at it.
The men and their hair, being from the south, those fellas still are seen in walmart and auto zone!
Cover #1: WAIT, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is that Jem?
It’s a slightly more Jerrica haircut than not, and the belt is all wrong, but that’s a Jem dress. I’m sure of it.
Thank you. I wish I had known about this in time to get my purchase to count towards autism research (December) but I love it!!!! It is my new favorite Christmas song if only for the line “they have good chords but the lyrics are dodgy” about church music. My feelings exactly!
I thought the same thing.
Dean Koontz. The guy on the Manhunting cover looks like Koontz before he shaved off the ‘stache and joined Hair Club for Men.
http://www.qnet.com/~raven/koontz.jpg
Whee, it’s a Candy sighting. Hi Candy! *waves*
Amazing snark, as ever. I must somehow get a copy of the All My Children romance, because that totally has to be Phil Brent and Tara Martin, the first soap love story to suck my soul.
omigod, my friend turned me onto this website and now i’m sitting in the kitchen at 2 am stuffing my robe in my mouth so that i don’t wake up the parrots with insane laughter…
its my birthday today, this is a GREAT way to start it!
Manhunting was reissued with a more chick-lit type cover (I think it was a pair of boxers on a fishing hook) so don’t be afraid to order it!
Chapter One Excerpt: “Everyone should be so lucky,” Tara said. She averted her head as her eyes misted over.
But Phil could always tell when she was upset. “Hey, I’m sorry.” He dropped to his knee and took her hand between his. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right,” she said, turning back to him as she blinked back her tears. “It’s just that sometimes I miss my mom so badly.”
Phil felt like an absolute jerk. He knew that Tara was sensitive about her mother’s death, and here he was, rambling on about his wonderful Aunt Amy being a second mother to him. “Look, have you talked to your dad about it?”
“How can I?” Tara shook her head. “Dad misses her too, and Jeff…well, most of the time he’s wrapped up in medical school, but I can tell he misses Mom. Thank goodness we have Gran.”
“But it’s not the same.” Phil lifted her chin with one finger and looked into her clear blue eyes. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and freckles, lingering from last summer, still dusted her nose.
Let the bidding begin… 🙂
If only i could unsee the Louisana shaped sideburn on cover #3 :/ I can’t decide if the fact that it also looks like a small handgun make it better or worse…
Regarding cover #3, I’m sad that the Prince Joe title has covered up whatever bling he is wearing around his neck. That gold chain looks promising.