FFB: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES TO BE READ WITH THE DOOR LOCKED edited by Harold Q. Masur (Random House 1975), a further consideration

This was the first "Hitchcock" anthology I owned a copy of, and I've mentioned it on the blog on occasion. It was the fourth edited by Harold Q. Masur, who began editing the Alfred Hitchcock Presents: volumes for Random House after Robert Arthur's rather early death in 1969. Masur would continue to edit such volumes for the Random House series till Hitchcock's death in 1980, and then went on to edit one more for instant remainder publication, associated I think with a package deal the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine folks had. This volume contains, I think, more stories from AHMM than any other "Presents:" volume, as opposed to the series of best--ofs from the magazine...some of which would eventually be published as "Presents:" volumes, but not until after Random House ceased publishing the original line of multi-source anthologies. Previous to that, all the AHMM best-ofs had been Dell paperbacks with titles such as Alfred Hitchcock's Noose Report or Alfred Hitchcock's Dates with Death...note the possessive form the titles took.

Volume 1 of Dell's reprint

That Dell also published reprints of the AH Presents: volumes, in two volume breakdowns of the hardcovers' contents (and sometimes with substitute contents--since the hardcovers would include full novels on occasion which already had paperback editions in print, or other issues of that sort), only added confusion for bibliographers and at least some casual or even avid readers...Frank Babics, George Kelley and I have all been caught out trying to untangle some of the variants.

It's remarkable to me how many of the stories will come back to me with just a glance at their titles, as well as how many introductions to writers immediately or eventually important to me were made by this one volume...and then there were all the others I would gather or borrow and read in the years since. 

V. 2 from Dell, with retitle.

The hardcover edition was the first book attributed to Hitchcock that my mother bought for me, through a membership in the Doubleday Book Club, and a key event in my literary life. Thanks, Mom.

As I wrote earlier about this volume:
The eclecticism which Robert Arthur particularly had brought to his volumes of the "Hitchcock" anthologies he edited, both in the young readers' line [with such titles as Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum and Alfred Hitchcock's Sinister Spies] and the adult-oriented series for Random House (which were paperbacked by Dell, who split the RH compliations into two volumes for their purposes, while Dell also published the "best-of" volumes from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the same years, inspiring much confusion which others and I have addressed repeatedly on this blog and many other places) was ably continued by Masur, after Arthur's death...and Masur even added a few recurring contributors, such as gallows humorist John Keefauver and "Adobe James" with his slightly perfervid men's-magazine tales, to the band of Arthur's recurring favorites (Gerald Kersh, Rex Stout, and other worthies). This volume, I see in retrospect, is slimmer on women's contributions than at least some of Arthur's, but it does include at least three stories which genuinely stuck with me and really shook me up at the time, in the Sturgeon (not the first time I'd read his brilliant early work, but the first time I'd encountered "Shottle Bop," which goes from cocksure whimsy to jarring, touching sobriety masterfully), Joe Gores's "Watch for It" and Richard Matheson's "The Distributor" (I'm not sure I've read a better Matheson), and a number of the others came close to making such a strong impression...the closest to a bad story was Alan Dean Foster's pleasantly slick contribution, or the similar "James"--and the Jacobson, published in the last issue of the first Weird Talesrevival, is a little too recursively about the predicament that magazine itself faced ...and this volume introduced me to a number of its contributors, since it was at latest the second of the AHP:  adult volumes I read, at time of purchase; I'd picked up the likes of Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful (one of Arthur's double-handful of YA anthologies) and at least one other Presents: volume previously at the Enfield Central Library, that trove of my youth.

Along with Henry Mazzeo's Hauntings, and the extent to which Les Daniels's Living in Fearwas an anthology (the fiction there being almost illustrative examples to the critical/historical survey of horror in art), these were probably the most influential anthologies aimed at adults that I encountered in my early reading.

If anything, Masur's volumes were at least as likely to feature humorous stories as Arthur's, usually very black humor indeed (as with the Robert Fish story, or all of Keefauver's, or the Matheson and the Roald Dahl).  I'm amused to the degree to which the John D. MacDonald and William McGivern stories didn't stick with me, given how much I've enjoyed their work in the years since. While Masur didn't publish much in the fantasy and horror press, as Arthur had before him, he wasn't any more afraid to reach for contributors much better-known in those fields, along with sf, including Foster, Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, and Harlan Ellison...even given that Asimov and Ellison had certainly established themselves as also crime-fiction writers by this time. This would've been the first time I'd read Bill Pronzini's work, in this 1975 volume purchased in that year, as well as my introduction to Nero Wolfe and his staff, and the useful acknowledgements pages helped me understand, along with the evidence of the few sf magazines around the house, that such things a fiction magazines might exist and be obtainable. 

Again, one of my mother's most important smaller gifts to me. One you could give to yourself, as well, as there are fine stories here by writers that aren't too often discussed these years...some, like "Adobe James," never discussed too often anywhere, ever, except when snatched up by Masur for his volumes of this series. 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked edited as by Alfred Hitchcock (actually, Harold Q. Masur) (Random House, 1975, 368pp, hc)

Derivative anthologies: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked (Volume I) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked (Volume II)/Alfred Hitchcock Presents: I Want My Mummy.

• xi · Introduction · Alfred Hitchcock (ghosted by Masur) · in
• 1 · Hijack · Robert L. Fish · ss Playboy Aug 1972
• 11 · Tomorrow and Tomorrow · Adobe James · ss Adam Bedside Reader 1967
• 15 · Funeral in Another Town · Jerry Jacobson · ss Weird Tales Fll 1973
• 33 · A Case for Quiet · William Jeffrey (Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann) · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Aug 1971
• 41 · A Good Head for Murder · Charles W. Runyon · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Nov 1974
• 55 · The Invisible Cat · Betty Ren Wright · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1958
• 61 · Royal Jelly · Roald Dahl · nv Kiss Kiss, Knopf 1959
• 87 · Light Verse · Isaac Asimov · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 1973
• 93 · The Distributor · Richard Matheson · ss Playboy Mar 1958
• 109 · How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies’ Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue · John Keefauver · ss National Review Oct 22 1971
• 115 · The Leak [Prof. Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen (The Thinking Machine)] · Jacques Futrelle · ss The Sunday Magazine Jun 9 1907, as “The Silver Box”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1949
• 129 · All the Sounds of Fear · Harlan Ellison · ss The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Jul 1962
• 139 · Little Foxes Sleep Warm · Waldo Carlton Wright · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jan 1971
• 147 · The Graft Is Green · Harold Q. Masur · nv Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1973
• 171 · View by Moonlight · Patricia McGerr · ss This Week Apr 19 1964
• 177 · There Hangs Death! · John D. MacDonald · ss This Week Feb 20 1955
• 185 · Lincoln’s Doctor’s Son’s Dog · Warner Law · ss Playboy Mar 1970
• 193 · Coyote Street · Gary Brandner · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1973
• 203 · Zombique · Joseph Payne Brennan · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1972
• 213 · The Pattern · Bill Pronzini · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1971
• 221 · Pipe Dream · Alan Dean Foster · ss Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep 1973
• 233 · Shottle Bop · Theodore Sturgeon · nv Unknown Feb 1941
• 259 · The Magnum · Jack Ritchie · ss Debonair May 1973
• 267 · Voices in the Dust · Gerald Kersh · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 13 1947
• 281 · The Odor of Melting · Edward D. Hoch · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1966
• 287 · The Sound of Murder · William P. McGivern · ss Bluebook Oct 1952; ; as “The Last Word”, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Feb 1963
• 299 · The Income Tax Mystery · Michael Gilbert · ss Lilliput Oct 1957, as “Mr. Portway’s Practice”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 1958
• 311 · Watch for It · Joseph N. Gores · ss Mirror, Mirror, Fatal Mirror, ed. Hans Stefan Santesson 1973
• 321 · The Affair of the Twisted Scarf [Nero Wolfe; Archie Goodwin] · Rex Stout · nv The American Magazine Sep 1950, as “The Twisted Scarf”; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1951

the UK edition (I've yet to see one)

Please see Patti Abbott's fine blog for the balance of this week's selections.

Short Story Wednesday: DOLLS ARE MURDER edited by Harold Q. Masur (an MWA Anthology, Lion Books 1957)

(a redux post)

index put together from various, mostly Contento and Stephensen-Payne sources:

Dolls are Murder, "from the Mystery Writers of America," edited by Harold Q. Masur. Lion Books, 1957, "by arrangement with Revere Publishing Corp." 126 pp. 25c mm pb. Cover by Mort Kuntsler.

7 · Human Interest Stuff · Brett Halliday · ss Adventure Sep ’38; EQMM Sep ’46
20 · The Homesick Buick · John D. MacDonald · ss EQMM Sep ’50
34 · I’ll Be Waiting · Raymond Chandler · ss The Saturday Evening Post Oct 14 ’39
51 · Mind Over Matter · Ellery Queen· ss Blue Book October 1939
73 · The Doctor Makes It Murder [Dr. Paul Standish] · George Harmon Coxe · ss Cosmopolitan Sep ’42 (reprinted in The Saint Detective Magazine as "The Doctor Calls It Murder," Oct '57)
92 · The Dog Died First · Bruno Fischer · nv Mystery Book Magazine Fll ’49
115· Affaire Ziliouk [Monsieur Froget] · Georges Simenon; trans. by Anthony Boucher · ss Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1944; translated from Les 13 Coupables (1932).
122· Cop’s Gift · Rex Stout · ss What’s New Dec ’53 [as “Tough Cop’s Gift”]; EQMM Jan ’56 [as "Santa Claus Beat"]

So here's a slim, inexpensive (even for the time) paperback with at best a misleading title (but, thoughtfully, the MWA was kind enough to leave all the women writers out of this antho), inasmuch as some of these stories, such as "Brett Halliday"'s deft excursion into "B. Traven" territory, have no women to speak of in them (oh, wait...a minor character at the beginning is killed by the father of a young woman the mc insulted...dat's a deadly dame, doncha know). Likewise, the woman character in the JDMc story is notable mostly for being the only female character, and far less deadly than several of the males; she in fact commits no murder. But it's a solid little book, filled with stories that have become at least borderline chestnuts in the succeeding years, such as the Bruno Fischer story I first read in the Hitchcock Presents: volume I FFB'd the other week, a series, I'll note (somewhat redundantly) that Masur would eventually edit after founding editor Robert Arthur died. And the book rounds out with its shortest story, published under three different titles (I'm guessing that the title here, "Cop's Gift," might've been "Rex Stout"'s preferred one), a neat if not exactly challenging little mystery set on Christmas Eve, with the typical Stout wit and eye for small details (and not a Wolfe/Goodwin story). Much as this book itself was part of a seasonal gift from Kate Laity.

For more of this week's Wednesday's Short Stories, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Friday's "Forgotten" Book: DOLLS ARE MURDER (A MWA Anthology) edited by Harold Q. Masur

index put together from various, mostly Contento and Stephensen-Payne sources:

Dolls are Murder, "from the Mystery Writers of America," edited by Harold Q. Masur. Lion Books, 1957, "by arrangement with Revere Publishing Corp." 126 pp. 25c mm pb. Cover by Mort Kuntsler.

7 · Human Interest Stuff · Brett Halliday · ss Adventure Sep ’38; EQMM Sep ’46
20 · The Homesick Buick · John D. MacDonald · ss EQMM Sep ’50
34 · I’ll Be Waiting · Raymond Chandler · ss The Saturday Evening Post Oct 14 ’39
51 · Mind Over Matter · Ellery Queen· ss Blue Book October 1939
73 · The Doctor Makes It Murder [Dr. Paul Standish] · George Harmon Coxe · ss Cosmopolitan Sep ’42 (reprinted in The Saint Detective Magazine as "The Doctor Calls It Murder," Oct '57)
92 · The Dog Died First · Bruno Fischer · nv Mystery Book Magazine Fll ’49
115· Affaire Ziliouk [Monsieur Froget] · Georges Simenon; trans. by Anthony Boucher · ss Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1944; translated from Les 13 Coupables (1932).
122· Cop’s Gift · Rex Stout · ss What’s New Dec ’53 [as “Tough Cop’s Gift”]; EQMM Jan ’56 [as "Santa Claus Beat"]

So here's a slim, inexpensive (even for the time) paperback with at best a misleading title (but, thoughtfully, the MWA was kind enough to leave all the women writers out of this antho), inasmuch as some of these stories, such as "Brett Halliday"'s deft excursion into "B. Traven" territory, have no women to speak of in them (oh, wait...a minor character at the beginning is killed by the father of a young woman the mc insulted...dat's a deadly dame, doncha know). Likewise, the woman character in the JDMc story is notable mostly for being the only female character, and far less deadly than several of the males; she in fact commits no murder. But it's a solid little book, filled with stories that have become at least borderline chestnuts in the succeeding years, such as the Bruno Fischer story I first read in the Hitchcock Presents: volume I FFB'd the other week, a series, I'll note (somewhat redundantly) that Masur would eventually edit after founding editor Robert Arthur died. And the book rounds out with its shortest story, published under three different titles (I'm guessing that the title here, "Cop's Gift," might've been "Rex Stout"'s preferred one), a neat if not exactly challenging little mystery set on Christmas Eve, with the typical Stout wit and eye for small details (and not a Wolfe/Goodwin story). Much as this book itself was part of a seasonal gift from Kate Laity.

Patti Abbott is taking this week and next week off, so I might be gathering up the links I'm aware of in the next post (and next week).

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: CHILD'S PLOY edited by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini (Macmillan, 1984)

1 * Introduction * Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini (in)

5 * The Rocking-Horse Winner * D.H. Lawrence (ss)  Harper’s Bazar Jul 1926
23 * How Pearl Button was Kidnapped * "Katherine Mansfield" (Kathleen Murray) (ss) Rhythm Sep 12 1912, as by Lili Heron
29 * The Beautiful White Horse * William Saroyan (ss)  Esquire Jun 1938; also as “The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse” in My Name is Aram
38 * Paul's Case * Willa Cather (nv)   McClure’s May 1905
61 * Little Boy Lost * Q. Patrick (Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler) (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Oct 1947
90 * Too Early Spring * Stephen Vincent Benét  (ss) The Delineator Jun 1933
105 * The Threatening Three * William Campbell Gault (as "The Threatening Trio"), (ss) 10-Story Detective Magazine Oct 1948
123 * The End of the Party * Graham Greene  (ss) The London Mercury Jan 1932
134 * The Landscape of Dreams * John Lutz  (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar 24 1982
143 * Fire Escape * Cornell Woolrich (na)  Mystery Book Magazine Mar 1947, as by William Irish (source story for The Window and its remake, The Boy Cried Murder)
191 * Ludmila * Jean L. Backus (as by "David Montross") first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Lights On, edited by Harold Q. Masur, Random House 1973
198 * Day for a Picnic * Edward D. Hoch (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Mar 1963, as by Pat McMahon
212 * Carnival Day * Nedra Tyre (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jul 1958
225 * Good Man, Bad Man * Jerome Weidman   (ss) The Saturday Evening Post Jul 1 1967
243 * Looie Follows Me * John D. MacDonald    (ss) Collier’s Aug 27 1949
258 * Here Lies Another Blackmailer * Bill Pronzini (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1974
266 * Morning Song * Betty Ren Wright (vi)  Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Nov 1982
271 * The Hedge Between * Charlotte Armstrong  (nv) Conflict: Stories of Suspense Fll 1953, as “Meredith’s Murder”
300 * Uncle Max * Edward D. Hoch (ss) The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Mar 1965 as by Pat McMahon

One of the only four? volumes of the Macmillan Midnight Library, all? anthologies by Muller and Pronzini from 1984/85 mixing with aplomb mystery, suspense, horror, fantasy, contemporary mimetic and other stories, despite the subtitle "An anthology of mystery and suspense stories", much in the manner of some of Pronzini's earlier selections, such as Midnight Specials, or the "Alfred Hitchcock"-branded anthologies for Random House Robert Arthur, Harold Q. Masur (one of whose volumes was the original source for the Jean Backus story--before today I was aware of only one original story in an AHP: anthology, Thomas Disch's "Casablanca" in the Arthur-edited volume he assisted the ailing Arthur with), and a few others had been assembling in both adult-targeted and YA-slanted series. I might have copies of all four...this one was recently unboxed in my effort to get my books back into some sort of order. All of them appear to have less than superb, but neither terrible nor conventional, cover designs and illustrations by Mary Mietzenfeid...and story headnotes from the editors. The packaging might've helped suppress sales; perhaps also the tendency for the books to turn up underappreciated (and some widely anthologized) stories from several decades previously.

My listing here seems as if it's the first online to include page numbers, and I've now added the first publication sites (contents and first publication data from WorldCat, the FictionMags Index and ISFDB). Much as I will reread the book in its entirety...but this doesn't stop me from commenting on some of my old favorites and stories I still remember well from this volume and previous encounters...at times in such similar volumes devoted to sf and fantasy stories about kids (Children of Wonder edited by Philip "William Tenn" Klass) or horror, suspense and fantasy stories likewise focused (The Little Monsters edited by Roger Elwood and Vic Ghidalia and sequels and similar efforts) and the like.

For example, the lead-off story is a mildly supernatural bit of a chestnut, the morose "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D. H. Lawrence, in which a boy takes on the burden of keeping his household financially afloat, in the wake of the collapse of his parents' marriage, by furiously riding his hobby-horse and gaining while doing so accurate prognostication of the winning horses at the local track. Graham Greene's nearly as famous "The End of the Party" is also a bit more outré than suspense fiction is usually accorded, involving twin brothers who have a rather bad time with a party game, and the unfortunate consequences that an empathy that tips over into telepathy between twins can have (even as Greene dismisses the term "telepathy" in a line in the story).

On the other end of the spectrum, "The Beautiful White Horse" is, as the editors note, a tale of nearly the most mild sort of horse-theft, or -borrowing, two young Armenian-American cousins in the early decades of the last century can get up to...it's the often-excerpted first chapter of William Saroyan's largely autobiographical and most popular book for young readers, My Name is Aram, but is by no means painfully naive reading for adults. While Stephen Vincent Benet's "Too Early Spring" is, as the editors suggest in that story's headnote, not a story of conventional crime at all...rather than one of too-conventional (and mean-spirited) outlook leading the parents of a community to blithely insist their suspicions of a sort of infraction on the part of their early-adolescent children must be true, and punished accordingly. The crime, as Muller and Pronzini suggest, is one against the kids--too often the case in human affairs...or even beyond, among other species (for we are also animals). 

Much of the rest of the book is indeed crime fiction as we usually understand it, and doesn't suffer for that. Further reportage on these stories soon!

The other three Muller/Pronzini Macmillan Midnight Library items I'm aware of are Witches' Brew (1984)--horror and supernatural fiction by women, and the 1985 duo Kill or Cure (medical crime fiction) and Dark Lessons (campus crime fiction).

For more items rounded up for SSW, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

The other three Macmillan Midnight Library anthologies edited by Muller and Pronzini:

Witches' Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories by Women (1984) 1 • Introduction (Witches' Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories By Women) • essay by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini 7 • The Haunted Chamber • (1794) • short story by Ann Radcliffe 26 • The Last Man (excerpt) • (1826) • short fiction by Mary Shelley [as by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley] 37 • The Yellow Wallpaper • (1892) • short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (title variant of The Yellow Wall-Paper 1892) 56 • The Striding Place • (1896) • short story by Gertrude Atherton 64 • Afterward • (1910) • novelette by Edith Wharton 98 • Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched • (1922) • short story by May Sinclair 122 • The Lamp • (1933) • short story by Agatha Christie 132 • The Gray Men • (1927) • short story by Rebecca West (variant of The Grey Men) 140 • The Cyprian Cat • (1933) • short story by Dorothy L. Sayers 155 • A Haunted House • (1921) • short story by Virginia Woolf 158 • The Idol of the Flies • (1942) • short story by Jane Rice 184 • Judgement Day • non-genre • (1965) • novelette by Flannery O'Connor 206 • The Birds • (1952) • novelette by Daphne du Maurier 235 • Night Court • (1953) • novelette by Mary Elizabeth Counselman 256 • The Lovely House • (1952) • novelette by Shirley Jackson 282 • Kindling Point • short story by Marcia Muller 300 • The Bingo Master • (1980) • short story by Joyce Carol Oates Kill or Cure: Suspense Stories About the World of Medicine (1985) The resident patient / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- The superfluous finger / Jacques Futrelle -- The Cyprian bees / Anthony Wynne -- Easter devil / Mignon Eberhart -- But the patient died / Lawrence G. Blochman -- The problem of the covered bridge / Edward D. Hoch -- Hurting much? / Cornell Woolrich -- The memorial hour / Wade Miller -- Guilty witness / Morris Hershman -- The doctor takes a case / George Harmon Coxe -- Miracle of the fifteen murderers / Ben Hecht -- Doctor's orders / John F. Suter -- The splinter / Mary Roberts Rinehart -- Sound alibi / Jack Ritchie -- Paint doctor / Joe L. Hensley -- The other side of the curtain / Helen McCloy.

Dark Lessons: Crime and Detection on Campus  (1985) William Wilson / Edgar Allan Poe -- Murder at Pentecost / Dorothy L. Sayers -- Murder at Mother's Knee / Cornell Woolrich -- The lethal logic / Norbert Davis -- To break the wall / Evan Hunter -- When Greek meets Greek / Graham Greene -- Charles / Shirley Jackson -- The ten o'clock scholar / Harry Kemelman -- The problem of the little red schoolhouse / Edward D. Hoch -- The disappearance of Maggie / Talmage Powell -- A matter of scholarship / Anthony Boucher -- Final exam / Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg -- Broken pattern / George C. Chesbro -- Dead week / L.P. Carpenter -- Van Der Valk and the high school riot / Nicholas Freeling -- Robert / Stanley Ellin -- The turncoat journal of Marc / Milton Stearns, Barry N. Malzberg.

Doubleday Book Clubs ad copy triumphs of the 1950s

Perhaps the worst of the often ridiculous Science Fiction Book Club (US version) ads of the 1950s:

Meanwhile, the Dollar Mystery Guild in 1951, perhaps (probably) from the same copywriter (and courtesy Paul Di Filippo):

So, my tribute:
You crossed the court to taste FORBIDDEN LOVE...and now she might kill you!...

...Get out of there, you fool! Use your mentality! But, perhaps...perhaps she'd be Worth It...

You'll thrill to THE DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUBS AD COPY ANTHOLOGY, one of several "instant remainders" you'll find in the Red Dot clearance pile at the surviving B&N near you. Where else, aside from men's sweat anthologies you'll find on the same shelf, will you find such stirring prose, such intriguing intrigue?

--surely it's simply coincidence that Armstrong and Asimov were alphabetically the first writers in either ad's selection of enticements...surely such ingenious selling techniques weren't so mechanically applied to the work being sold...like pound goods, or at least like mid-price alcoholic beverages, floor wax or cigarets...late '70s SFBC ad, below:

Rather typical DBC ad from the '50s:

Items I remember purchasing from the Doubleday Book Club, 1975-1976:
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read With the Doors Locked edited by Harold Q. Masur
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Stay Awake By edited by Harold Q. Masur
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King
The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins
The Prometheus Crisis by Thomas Scortia and Frank Robinson
The Encyclopedia of World Travel by C. Earl Cooley and Nelson Doubleday
a similarly useful-looking two-volume reference for gardening (my parents were briefly in the mid-'70s very avid truck gardeners)
A Treasury of Little Golden Books (mostly so I could read them to my then very young brother, and a bit in early nostalgic mode, as between us Eric and I had destroyed some of my own ca. 1966/68-purchased individual slim volumes in that series)

Books I remember purchasing from the Science Fiction Book Club, 1978-1981:
The Persistence of Vision by John Varley
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Starlight omnibus by Alfred Bester
The Hugo Winners, Volumes 1 and 2 omnibus, edited by Isaac Asimov (clumsily, omitting a Fritz Leiber story from volume 2 and typoing the title of Robert Bloch's story in volume 1, and the careful attention of Doubly-Daze's editors clearly engaged in both volumes, not bothering to clean any of that up for the omnibus reprint)
The Foundation Trilogy omnibus by Isaac Asimov

Books I remember purchasing from the Quality Paperback Club, 1980-81:
The 101 Best Jazz Albums by Len Lyons
Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino
a boxed set of Calvino novels, which recapitulated an HBJ trade edition, with If on a winter's night a traveler, The Baron in the Trees and Invisible Cities
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, the then-current (first?) edition of the Jack Zipes volume aimed at adult readers

--there were others in each case, at least several from QPB, but damned if I remember which at the moment. 

Friday "Forgotten" Books: Harold Q. Masur, Editor: ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES TO BE READ WITH THE DOOR LOCKED

This almost certainly wasn't the first HITCHCOCK anthology that I read, but it is the first that I owned a personal copy of, a Doubleday Book Club edition. How could any young reader (I was 10 at the time) manage to not have their doors blown off by a selection such as this:

First edition:
Random House, 1975, USA.
Contains:
"Royal Jelly" by Roald Dahl
"Hijack" by Robert L. Fish
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow" by Adobe James
"Funeral in Another Town" by Jerry Jacobson
"A Case for Quiet" by William Jeffrey (Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallman)
"A Good Head for Murder" by Charles W. Runyon
"The Invisible Cat" by Betty Ren Wright
"Light Verse" by Issac Asimov
"The Distributor" by Richard Matheson
"How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies' Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue" by John Keefauver
"The Leak" by Jacques Futrelle
"All the Sounds of Fear" by Harlan Ellison
"Little Foxes Sleep Warm" by Waldo Carlton Wright
"The Graft is Green" by Harold Q. Masur
"View by Moonlight" by Pat McGerr
"There Hangs Death!" by John D MacDonald
"Lincoln's Doctor's Son's Dog" by Warner Law
"Coyote Street" by Gary Brandner
"Zombique" by Joseph Payne Brennan
"The Pattern" by Bill Pronzini
"Pipe Dream" by Alan Dean Foster
"Shottle Bop" by Theodore Sturgeon
"The Magnum" by Jack Ritchie
"Voices in the Dust" by Gerald Kersh
"The Odor of Melting" by Edward D. Hoch
"The Sound of Murder" by William P. McGivern
"The Income Tax Mystery" by Michael Gilbert
"Watch for It" by Joseph N. (aka Joe) Gores
"The Affair of the Twisted Scarf" by Rex Stout

I will have more to say about this volume and its brethren tomorrow, but right now I'm beat to the ground.

And here's Patti Abbott's list of links to the other Friday suggestions.

FFB: books (and of course magazines) that greatly influenced me in my early reading...

This can be considered cheating, as it's an answer to a Facebook meme that came at me from at least two directions, from FFB founder and mainspring Patti Abbott, and from comedian and voracious reader Jackie Kashian, but nonetheless, here 'tis (with the links back to previous citations in the blog and elsewhere)...

Grimm's Fairy Tales To Read Aloud, a beginning reader's edition...along with Dr. Seuss and some Golden Books, the texts my parents taught me to read with, and the most elaborate and text-heavy (and even more fantasticated than Green Eggs and Ham and the Cat in the Hat books).

Children's Digest magazine, the first fiction/essay-heavy magazine I read, and another bounty of short fiction, comics (Tintin and others), etc. Set me on a path to being one of the rare sorts these days who still loves fiction magazines. Highlights for Children and Humpty Dumpty (the latter then CD's slightly younger-skewing stablemate) didn't hurt, but weren't as good to 5yo me.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, ghost-edited by Harold Q. Masur. Might not be the first of the anthologies edited by Robert Arthur and Harold Q. Masur in the various "Hitchcock" lines that I read, but it might be, and it was the first I owned a copy of. Eclectic and sophisticated range of all sorts of "dark" (including darkly comic) fiction, one of many volumes aimed at adults and a companion series aimed at YA readers...I inhaled them from about age 9 till I'd read them all...while also reading the series of anthologies taken from and associated with Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which always had other editors. AHMM, for its part, was the first adult fiction magazine I read regularly.

Living in Fear: A History of Horror in Mass Media, by Les Daniels...the mass media very much including literature...the first critical/historical pop-culture work I devoured, and assuredly not the last. Along with the pointers, as valuable as those on the Newbery Award shortlists to my young reading, it was also a fine anthology of short stories, alternating with the chapters of Daniels's text.

The better Time-Life Books, Science Service Books, and a galumphing big coffee-table book full of essays and great photography, Our Amazing World of Nature, definitely nudged me into a lifelong interest in the natural sciences...various encyclopedias and other multivolume sets didn't hurt. 

The American Heritage multi-volume set on the US presidents (and Famous Americans), for example, among other things helped fuel an early fascination with election statistics and related matters...

The Year's Best Horror Stories, Series 5, edited by Gerald W. Page. The first evidence I had that the horror fiction anthologies I'd been finding in libraries (and from Scholastic and similar book sales in and through the schools) were part of a continuing tradition. Other best of the year annuals were also fascinating. 

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (to which I've contributed in the most slight way) and Fantastic Stories and Whispers, perhaps the most beloved by me of the first wave of adult fiction magazines I started buying and reading in earnest in 1978. These three were the best and most popular fantasy fiction magazines I'd find, all eclectic in their remit (they'd even run the occasional story that was fantasy only by association, presumably because the editors thought they had a good story by a writer who usually wrote fantasy)...while I'd read the likes of Short Story International and Galaxy and Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine assiduously as well. I transitioned in my periodicals consumption from reading comics and Mad (and any National Lampoons I could obtain...and Boy's Life and Dynamite) to reading fiction magazines over the years from ages 10 to 13...and discovered that magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly still carried short stories, as well as sometimes fascinating articles. I'd been reading the short stories in Playboy for a while...while not letting the rest of the magazine alone, of course...

Dissent magazine was my first regular leftist read, soon joined by others ranging from The Nation to Rolling Stone's relevant material, and so on to such books as Vivian Gornick's Essays in Feminism (and Women in Science), Emma Goldman's Living My Life, and the notable anthology The Essential Works of Anarchism.. But I think Joanna Russ's essays, and her novel The Female Man, were among the biggest even earlier nudges I had in that direction. I certainly didn't like the antifeminist flavor of the writing of R. Bretnor nor (Miss rather than Ms.?) Raylyn Moore from early on... Our Generation magazine probably spoke to me most directly, along with Social Anarchism (to which I would eventually contribute) and, in a more broadly focused way, Harper's Magazine in the 1980s...

The Futurians by Damon Knight convinced me that I wanted to be an editor even more than I did a writer. And the critical writing of Knight, Russ, Gornick, John Simon, Harlan Ellison, Algis Budrys, James Blish, Anthony Burgess, bell hooks, Avram Davidson, Fritz Leiber, and others spoke to me profoundly.

And if I have to make a default choice as to my favorite book so far...well, I couldn't. But Avram Davidson's magisterial The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy might be it. Or Jorge Luis Borges's The Aleph, and Other Stories 1933-1969, or too many others...

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for more of today's books. I believe I'm set to host next week's selections...