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.
I love how of-their-era each cover design is!
A great trip down memory lane for us matriarchal bitches who cut their teeth on gothics, bodice rippers, and “torn between two lovers” romances. How those covers, fonts, and blurbs bring back memories! I also think the copy for NURSE BLADE (despite her father’s apparent HIPAA violations) is still fairly accurate: the nurses I know frequently find themselves torn between maintaining a professional distance and providing compassionate support when people are having their worst days. But the thing I really wanted to address is Heather’s guess that these vintage books are now being displayed on the shelves now because today’s trade paperbacks don’t fit: I think that’s spot on. I remember when CDs started to replace vinyl: for a number of years, record companies released CDs in cumbersome packaging (I shudder to consider the environmental impact of all that unnecessary paper and plastic) so they could fit into the bins created for the much bigger vinyl records. I’m pretty sure, in a sort of reverse way, that’s what’s happening at this bookstore: the product no longer fits the storage. Well, now that I’m feeling incredibly old, I must go make a cup of hot tea and do Wordle.
I want the plot of the Lilac Ghost to get a bit more Lavender as the ghost encourages her to explore her options with the ‘few women’ keeping her company at Bradley Hall. Just me? 😉
In the early 70s, when I was 12 or so, I went through a phase of reading nurse books. I probably read that first book then!
LOL!! These are gold! Sometimes batches of these will show up at our Friends of the Library sales–what delightful blasts from the past!
What a blast from the past! In my well-spent youth, I read several Glenna Finley titles; I even had a Red Rose Romance by Alice Lent Covert, iirc. I always credited my high verbal score on the SAT on those early Harlequins, which used lots of big words. Essie Summers showed me New Zealand; Mary Burchell [Ida Cook] opened the world of opera. [note: Ida Cook & her sister also saved lots of folks during World War II, detailed in _The Bravest Voices: A Memoir of Two Sisters’ Heroism During the Nazi Era_.]
That 1961 category nurse book looks like the books my mom had in a big bag from her single days. I may have read it. When she caught me reading her new Harlequins as a kid, she gave me the bag of books from the 60s. I’m pretty sure I left them behind, so they most likely ended up in a thrift store In Delaware.
As to the Finley — mini-dress. That color was a thing in the 70’s. I was there. I can vouch for it. I had an orange & teal dress that I wore with orange fishnet stockings when I was in 9th grade. I was the hippest chick around… or so I thought at the time.
I recently found a pile of old Harlequins that had belonged to my grandmother in the back of a closet. Several of the covers had letters penciled on them. When I mentioned it to my dad, we realized that the letters were the same as initials of the ladies in her bridge club. We assume that the bridge club must have doubled as a book club, with the ladies marking the ones that they had read.
Mr Conor Tremblay looks quite concerned, as well he should. Although I’m not sure whether he’s more concerned about the tiger he’s side-eying or the fact that he’s getting himself in deep doodoo with this lady who thinks he’s honest.
When I lived in Connecticut there was a used bookstore I frequented that would throw a couple of these old 60’s Harlequins in for free with every purchase. I probably still have some of them somewhere in one of the boxes of books I haven’t unpacked yet.
@Sandra, I had a blouse that color too! Bittersweet orange, lime green and magenta were hip colors back in the day.
* Correction: Conor Tremayne. I should have scrolled up instead of relying on memory!
I will pay cash money for a review of The Lilac Ghost. That sounds fantastic.
And I know in my soul that Sara’s skirt is a wraparound. It just is.
I miss the crazy 70s gothics! They were a lot of fun.
EC Spurlock: At least Mr. Trembaine has that gigantic belt buckle to protect his vital organs from the tiger. It’s large enough to double as a shield.
@filkferengi, I’m with you in crediting my high verbal score on the SAT to all those romances I read as a teen.
And, that Glenna Finley book looks awfully familiar!
@ECSpurlock
Was the bookstore by any chance Book Barn in Niantic?
@Sandra
I too had a garment (which I loved and the spouse loathed)–a shiny two piece mini dress in black polyester covered with small brightm orange and lime fishes. Sounds gross, yet I remember it fondly.
I worked with women who happily passed on their romances to friends and acquaintances. This was fortunate since neither my Grandma nor my Mom read during their down time, so no secret stashes for me. I would have snooped the hell out of that.
Ghost Tiger guy is Henry Cavil. I can’t unsee it.
My very first and quite long term boyfriend I had in High School, in the 1970’s- had a mother who had a WALL FILLED BOOKCASE in the basement of Harlequin Romances. The first time I saw it I almost fainted. I don’t think I had ever seen a Harlequin, but that many books in one place, outside a library? Not only was he a very sweet guy, but his mom wanted me to borrow her books. Talk about jackpot! I used to walk home with grocery bags full of books. Heaven…
My grandma wrote a number of nurse romances back in the day—that cover brings it all back! My dad ended up marrying two nurses (consecutively, not at once), and timing-wise, I think his relationships put his mom on the nurse romance track, but I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t the other way around…
[…] Gothic romance, Irene Saylor’s The Lilac Ghost, from 1970. I first heard about this book via a recent Smart Bitches Trashy Books post, and was intrigued enough that I sprang for a cheap ex-library copy I managed to find online. The […]