Last week, Jane sent me some Longarm, by which I mean she attached about six different Longarm covers to an email message and I barely remained upright. These were so bizarre, I asked her to snark them with me. But first, Jane answers the burning question, HOW DID YOU FIND THESE?
Jane: I was searching Berkley published books in an effort to find some deals. I came across these. I think that there are several hundred of them published.
Sarah: Yup. After doing some research, I found this Wikipedia entry which states that there is one Longarm novel published nearly every month. There are nearly 400 in the series – in fact, #400, Longarm and the 400 Blows comes out (snerk) February 28. The series is distinguished “from classical westerns by the inclusion of more explicit sex and violence.” So one per month, with more sex and violence. Yeah. I am going to start Longarming people who sniff at romance.
Sarah: Setting aside the Best Perm Ever, he's chasing his perpetrator through the back door while somehow hiding beneath another woman's skirt. WOW. HOW IS THIS NOT A MOVIE?
Jane: She looks so happy getting rogered up the ass. Like she is being tickled by his “long arm” in her vagina.
Sarah: Longarm is straight up getting to second base on this cover. This guy does not mess around.
Jane: I'm not sure what is going on with Longarm in this picture because neither of his long arms are actually in the clinch. Her dress is falling off which suggests that the Longarm activity took place at some point. Perhaps off scene, just prior to the the curtain drawing up.
Sarah: Does “doomed” mean “bored” where Longarm is from?
Jane: My first read of this cover always is the “Domed Beauty” Like a beauty with a dome head or something. I think the chick is bored because he is smelling her armpit.
Sarah: All these…guns… pointed out. What could they mean? And whoever the model was for Longarm's covers, he must have LOVED his job.
Jane: Are the two women featured in the cover the same? Should it actually be Santa Fe widows? Am so confused.
Sarah: HOW did Harlequin MISS THAT? Not just virgins but paranormal vanishing virgins? What came next, Longarm and the Yelling Lady on 49th Street? Longarm and the Boardroom Mistress? Longarm and the Hosiery Saleswoman?
Jane: I think there was a typo on the cover and a few letters left off. Should have been Longarm and the Vanishing Virginity. My guess is that Longarm knew where the hymen was.
BUT WAIT, there is MORE. With some sort of librarian sixth sense, Rachel Z. scanned some Longarms (how did they fit in the scanner?) as she was shelving them this week, as she had to share the WTFery. Ah, Longarm, the gift that keeps on giving.
Rachel: There are just so many people on that cover. And the old lady just looks creepy.
Sarah: LOOK! Longarm is rogering another girl up the ass with the Druid Sisters! That man is NOT RIGHT. But I guess with one book per month, the rogering images have to be recycled. This will be the best Etsy trend ever: Upcycled Buttsecks!
Jane: Can one's dick become smaller after so much use? Like the vaginas are whittling away at it? Also? He never looks like he is sexxoring up the same female character on the cover. Like there are two women on the cover, one who is featured and the other that is in his bed.
Seeing the Druid Sisters and Love Sisters covers makes me wonder how many of the cover involved cut-and-paste jobs using previous covers. And they didn’t even use the power of Zee Bucket to magically change her into another woman. Pff, lazy.
I doubt those stories usually have a “happy ever after” or even “happy for now” ending as far as the female characters are concerned (I bet the “hero” rides off alone into the sunset at the end of each book), and Westerns with “more explicit sex and violence” sounds to me like porn rather than romance. The covers are certainly snarkworthy, but set against the likely contents inside I’m not getting much fun out of them.
Oh god my eyes! It looks like Daniel Plainview is analy raping Maureen O’hara, that is just wrong.
Those are very busy covers! How many pages in these things? They remind me of the choose your ending books from when I was a kid.
I’ve read a couple. As I remember it, the covers pretty well fit the action of the books. Butt sex, with or without druids, regular sex, irregular sex, incest, multiple women, assorted Western weirdos. And gun fights. And fist fights.
The women usually came more than once. Because he might have been a fast draw, but not below the belt.
I distinctly remember the words “Winking anus” used in one of the books.
Seriuously, if you want trashy books, this is the mother load.
Googly eyes?
Longarm has googly eyes and he’s the hero?
No, that’s just wrong.
Winking anus?!
My day is MADE.
Did anyone else notice the cover blurb on “Longarm and the Vanishing Virgin”?
It states, ‘Longarm beats the bushes for a blushing bride!’…WTH!?! No wonder she vanished!
400? That’s mind boggling, must have been chugging oysters down to keep it up. Also very scary due to most people having VD and no way to treat it.
Last night, I was reading about a heroine who kept dosing a potential attacker with saltpeter, causing him to have ED.
If you start with the Domed Beauty and work your way down, you’ll see that the Domed Beauty is the lover on The Santa Fe widow. And the spare (extra woman) on the Santa Fe Widow is the lover on The Vanishing Virgin.
And I know you already called out The Love Sisters lover and the Druid Sisters lover being the same, but maybe it’s just a flash back? You know: “whenever I hang around with sisters it reminds me of this one time with the sister who wore a blue dress and had a winking anus…”
(@Christine Merill – thanks for that. Now I’m going to distinctly remember that “winking anus” was used on SBTB)
This post has straight up ruined moustaches for me. But it did make me laugh a lot. 🙂
Winking anus IS a phrase that would stay with you! There’s a ton of these in my library and I think I just found what I’ll be reading on my 15-minute breaks. Hurray!
Oops, I meant to reply to the post below.
I think the woman with the rifle on the Druid Sister cover is very young and early Rachel Welch. I think the cut and paste cowboy on the far left is someone famous also, but couldn’d say who. Gary Cooper is the only old time cowboy name I know.
More groups of women need to be called “The Love Sisters”. They don’t even need to be sisters.
In fact, if I ever start a band…
Also, “Santa Fe Widow” sounds euphemistic, somehow: well, she’s not *really* a widow, she’s one of those “Santa Fe” widows, wink wink.
She does look an awful lot like Raquel Welch!
Also, the tagline: In a town full of ladies, Longarm does his duty. And he does his job, too.
Oh, Longarm. You are all that, plus a bag of chips.
I’m oddly proud that neither of my local libraries carries any of these books.
He looks like a young Tom Hanks, to me.
I quite frankly am ASTONISHED you had never seen these before! Ha! 🙂 I worked in a used book store for years and these (and many other similar Westerns) were always a great source of amusement. For years I referred to them as Harlequin Presents for Men.
I’m sorry, I’m still stuck at my initial reaction, which is that the young woman on the first cover seems to be thinking: “YAY! Doggy-style is the Best. Sex. EVAR!!!!!1111!!!1”
THat just made my morning. I’m going to go look more covers up and laugh innapropriately while I’m here at the library.
Is it just me, or does the “Doomed Beauty” in #3 look just like Emma Watson/Hermione?
Kate, these average about 175-185 pages. I work at a library; I see the catalog records for a lot of these, but (thankfully) don’t often see the books themselves.
I’m getting a serious Bruce Campbell vibe from these books, especially from the grin on his face while he’s helping the woman on the Sisters’ books back that thang up.
@Cathy KJ lol Bruce Campbell wouldn’t go for virgins. 🙂
But I keep looking at that mustache of awesome thinking Tickle, Tickle.
There have been/are several similar “adult western” series put out by other publishers for a long, long time. 25+ years. Can’t remember the series name now, but one features a female lead character with a Native American sidekick, iirc. The first one I ever saw, well over 25 years ago, featured the repeated phrase “pulsating penis.” This conjured an image of a Frankensteinian device. . . . . .
It’s simply too early here for this. My eyes! My eyes! And the winking anus? I need another cup of coffee…
The analogous (anal, snerk) female version is “Lonestar”. She has a half-Indian sidekick (half chinese, too, as I remember), and they roger and get rogered by a different man and woman in every book. But Lonestar has the hots for her sidekick-only they never end up fucking
‘Pulsating Penis,’ meet ‘Winking Anus.’ My day is made.
OMG! Should I hang my head in shame to admit that I used to read these? Like…in the dark ages. My dad (a huge western reader—Louis L’Amour/Zane Grey) bought them and I scarfed them up like crack. The covers were much saner back in the day. Now I’m all nostalgic and shit. I may have to grab one just for old times sake. While I’m at it, I might have to snag a Mack Bolen book too!
I can’t stop gaping at these covers! Who knew? I think my favorite line is “LongArm beats the bushes for a blushing bride”
And he looks so happy at his work!!
Wow.
Thank you.
I know I’m going to have to read one now…
And I’m equally embarassed that my library has 62 of these! (I just checked the catalog).
At least now I know where to go for a good laugh…just look for “Longarm” in the Western genre fiction. Lol
Oh goody. James Bond with a moustache, a drawl, and no class. I can’t wait for my first copy to arrive.
I read these in high school because my parents did NOT know these were smutty smut with smut sauce. EVERYONE in the books got a happy ending. Sure, some were dead at the end of the book … but there were plenty of happy endings before that.
Some of the other series—
The aforementioned Lonestar, similar covers to Longarm with profiles of main characters back to back.
Spur
Slocum by Jake Logan (extremely violent; sex scenes were obligatory, now available on Kindle)
Edge (also available for Kindle)
The Gunsmith (also available for Kindle)
The Trailsman
Most were/are released one title per month, just like category romances, but were not necessarily written by the person named on the cover as author. For example,Jon Sharpe wrote the first 200 or so of the Trailsman series but it’s now house-written. I don’t have the info at my fingertips, but there were quite a number of authors who went on to individual success who wrote adult westerns on work-for-hire contracts at the beginning of their careers.
And there so IS at least one Longarm movie. A made-for-tv movie at that, from back in the 80’s. Longarm in the family room. TAnd you thought they made Nora Roberts’ books into bad tv movies. The horror!! Longarm and his ilk were what I threw at my friend who chided me for my love of bodice rippers -which he actually liked and would make me read out loud to him. It wasn’t necessarily fair since he was a big sci-fi reader, but it made the point.
Um. I read these. And Lone Star – which is way better because it features martial arts awesome. And some seriously interesting sex scenes. Also.. um.. the Casca series written by Barry Sadler, who also wrote the song The Ballad of the Green Berets. Multi-talented.
There was a lot of schlock in my house growing up. Between Lone Star, Casca, Gor, and the stream of Sybil Danning movies, it’s a miracle I’m not a porn star.
There is a reason why Longarm is gritting a cig between his well turned mustache in every single image. It’s very simple. He’s restraining himself from winking back at that anus. It’s a very powerful desire he has, this winking business. Without the ‘stache and the cin he would be helpless on his hands and knees winking away…
Do you have one to recommend? Otherwise Jane and I might have to read the #400th Longarm, and his 400 blows, which I am afraid might not be the type of “blow” one receives from a punch thrown, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
“He’s restraining himself from winking back at that anus.”
Can’t. Breathe.