Heather S went on what she calls “an expedition to Half Price Books” and found many vintage Harlequin romances on the shelf – which is odd, because the store usually doesn’t shelve them:
“I wonder if they’re having trouble filling the old mass market paperback shelves now that most romances are trade or the weird wide paperback that Harlequin publishes now.”
Your guess is as good as mine, but what really matters here is that HEATHER TOOK PICTURES.
Is it likely we’ll find some strange names, outstanding illustrations, and curiously offensive plot points? Oh. Oh, yes.
“First up: a very vintage Harlequin nurse romance!”
This book was first published in 1961. Look at that type treatment! Those letters are dancing. And how unsettling would it be to have a nurse named Nurse Blade?
“It’s time for your procedure. I’m Nurse Blade.”
And because Heather is Most Awesome, we have pictures of the back cover copy.
If you were trying to guess the plot, well, how close were you?
So June’s father told her all about his patients and his problems? Sounds like June’s dad might have had an inaccurate understanding of boundaries.
And then June rolls into the hospital thinking she knows “if not all, at least most of the answers.” Oh, dear. Especially the part about not “confusing sympathy and pity with love.” No wonder she looks forlorn. She’s having a hell of a first week.
So are we, Nurse Blade. So are we.
Now, this cover couldn’t get any better – it even has gold foil!
Heather: “I love her hair. This was the hair romance novels promised I could have as an adult.”
YES. YES IT IS. Also…that’s fuchsia, right? That is full on fuchsia hair? (Ghost Tiger was first published in 1994, so yeah, I’m going with fuchsia. The crunchy curl pattern is also excellent mid-90s representation. Glad to see it!
And let us not neglect to admire the mullet. The frown. The chiseled cheekbones and chin divot that are the envy of many a cosmetic surgeon.
The cover copy for a book with a mullet and fuchsia hair and that chin divot with a giant tiger in the background couldn’t be bizarro objectionable, right? Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.
No, that’ll be fine. No worry about any pesky Orientalism or anything. It’s fine.
I wonder where the tiger comes in. I hope the tiger has dialogue.
This one is a Signet, not a Harlequin. The sticker obscures it, but this is Love’s Magic Spell by Glenna Finley, published in 1974. I love the connection to Ghost Tiger across several decades with all the daffodils. That’s neat.
First, this is $3.00, while the original price was 95c. If you want to go back in time to do some vintage Signet arbitrage, that’s not a terrible return on investment, depending on the costs of the time travel.
And look at that collar! The orange – is it a blouse or a dress? The print. THE COLLAR POINTS. All of them. So many.
At the top, there is mention of “a deserted Louisiana plantation” with a “young girl caught by the terror of voodoo.”
I’m sure the cover copy will be totally fine, no big deal.
WOW.
A handsome Piers is a ladies’ man, who wants to make her his property.
And the other guy is named Lee Sherman. That’s a bit of a mixed historical reference, but ok. Sure.
A standard love triangle would have been enough, but wait, we’ve got “strange rites of voodoo magic clos[ing] in on her.”
Oh, no. That won’t be problematic at all. It’ll be unproblematic. De-problematized.
You think this a paranormal? Or are Piers or Lee trying to scare her into their pants, I mean, arms? This is one of the times where I’m curious but I’m not sure I would be able to put that into my brain.
Heather says, “The only ‘equal opportunity’ this book offers is in yikes.”
And if you’re wondering what Heather bought: “The one I got just because I loved the cover too much to leave it behind.”
This is a Bantam Red Rose Romance from 1970. The cover copy is very brief:
After a whirlwind courtship at sea, Virginia had married Rick Bradly and gone with him to his ancestral home, an isolated house perched on the peak of a mountain and shunned by villagers and tradesmen.
Now, after three weeks, Rich had gone off without warning, leaving his wife alone in a raging storm, with no company save a few women and the lilac ghost of Bradley Hall. And the ghost which walked the garden by the lilac bush was hardly reassuring.
Everyone hates your house and there’s a ghost by the lilac bush? Seriously, go talk to the ghost. The lilac ghost absolutely knows what’s going on. TALK TO THE GHOST, VIRGINIA.
Seriously, I’d be outside all day and all night waiting to have a lilac ghost chat. I hope Heather will let us know how the book is!
Have you gone vintage romance shopping lately? Encountered any ghosts?
As an obsessive reader of the Sue Barton and Cherry Ames book, I assumed the Nurse Blades book would be about nursing school, where she would meet a handsome doctor. But it seems like being her father’s daughter maybe qualified her without actual, you know, training?
The Louisiana plantation setting for Love’s Magic Spell is a huge red flag, but so is the comp for Emilie Loring. I had a friend in college who collected her books, and I read a few. The only characters of color (always servants of course) were straight out of Gone with the Wind, even when they worked in New England.