Paperback 721: Operation: SEX / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F181)

Paperback 721: Midwood F181 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Operation: SEX 
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Operation: LACK OF IMAGINATION
• I have an alternative title for this book: Naughty Pine.
• This cover manages to be both deeply disturbing and super hot. Indirect evidence of nudity = very effective.
• You have to love the absurdity of the pull-down window shade in the foreground—it's architecturally impossible, of course, but does a cool job of implicating us in the voyeurism.

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa. Ruby? Tell me more about Ruby. The cover said nothing about Ruby.
• "Anything!"
• Talk about burying the lede—how is the front cover not more lesbianified? I mean, I love the cover, but if lesbian pulp has taught me anything (and it Has), it's that when your book has lesbian sex in it, some visual/textual indication of that goes on the cover. No beating around the bush. As it were.

Page 123~

She visualized the tiny droplets striking the shoulders and then draining down in liquid rivulets, down over those peaked breasts. Down. Across that smooth belly and down into—

End of paragraph. I assume the next words were going to be the aforementioned bush, but who knows?

~RP

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Paperback 354: Coming Out Party / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood 32-448)

Paperback 354: Midwood 32-448 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Coming Out Party
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "Don't mind me, I'm just taking a bubble bath in the sink..."
• Man, Charlotte Rae was *hot* in her youth.
• Soap bubbles look more like shaving cream.
• If nothing else, her right nipple will be very clean.
• Girl in doorway is striking a very unsexy "sexy" pose.
• Did "coming out" have the same meaning for gay people then as it does now?

Best things about this back cover:

• Front cover calls her a "houseguest," but this blurb makes her sound more like a sex slave.
• You can't just go out there and start sinning. You have to train. With a master.
• Oh, "Greenwich Village!" Well, you know what that means ...
• "Cute but topless???" I think you mean "and."

Page 123~

"I'm not a good actress, but I'm a real sexpot in front of an audience. Or in front of a camera. I found out that it does something to me. I get all excited. And I'm pretty sure that it registers on film. Isn't that important?"

And of course he then makes her prove it. Cinema!

~RP

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Paperback 249: A Bit of Fluff / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F256)

Paperback 249: Midwood F256 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A Bit of Fluff
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $60


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the word you're searching for is "Dang ..."
• Paul Rader is possibly the best sleaze cover artist that ever was. He and Robert Maguire are like gods to me.
• I love how "Lesbian" is capitalized, like "Mason" or "Scientologist."
• Strategically placed towel means that I cannot see any bit of fluff.
• I absolutely love this cover — the color, the design, the steam, the casual nudity, all of it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh lesbians. Always with the careful soaping.

Page 123~

There it was again. Only it wasn't a slip this time. She was practically informing me that she was a Lesbian. But her tone was meek and humble — and I wasn't afraid of her any more, now that she knew her place.

Again, I say: Dang.

~RP

Announcement: Paperback 250 will go up on Wednesday. To celebrate this milestone ... a contest. It will be Twitter-related, but I will add a Luddite option for those of you who can't be bothered with Twitter. You'll see. I'm off to conscript some other people to help me judge the contest. Oh, the prize will be the book itself — Paperback 250. And it doesn't suck, as my paperbacks go.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]