by Evelyn Piper
“At last we have the moon and the stars: at last, that is, the public can read the novel on which one of Hollywood’s most stirring melodramas is based.”
—Tania Modleski, author of Loving With a Vengeance
“Like the film it inspired, Olive Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager is as striking for the conventions it bucks as for the ones it embraces: a vivid reminder of a time when people crossed the ocean in liners and wore hats, and a hymn to an American ideal of social, moral, and emotional independence.”
—David Leavitt, author of The Man Who Knew Too Much
OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY (1882–1974) is the author of many books including Stella Dallas (1923), which was adapted into three films and a long-running radio serial. Later in her life, Prouty became patron and mentor to Sylvia Plath, and the inspiration for Philomena Guinea, the meddlesome character in Plath’s The Bell Jar.
THE G-STRING MURDERS
Gypsy Rose Lee
Afterword by Rachel Shteir
eISBN: 9781558617612 | ISBN: 9781558615038
A mystery set in the underworld of burlesque theater in 1941, The G-String Murders draws from the larger-than-life experiences of the legendary queen of the striptease. When one performer is found strangled with a g-string, no one is above suspicion. The cops face off with the theater’s tough-talking guys, and it’s clear that Gypsy will have to crack the case herself. The basis of the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck, The G-String Murders was the first of two murder mysteries written by Gypsy Rose Lee.
“Recommended for the readers who feel better when their eyebrows are raised.”
—New Yorker
“A rich and lusty job, brimming over with infectious vitality and a hilarious jargon of her own.”
—Life
“Lurid, witty. . . rich show business vocabulary and stage door gags make her book almost a social document. The G-String Murders builds up to a hair-raising climax.”
—Time
MOTHER FINDS A BODY
Gypsy Rose Lee
Foreword by Erik Lee Preminger
eISBN: 9781558618022 | ISBN: 9781558618015
A sexy, hard-boiled murder mystery by America’s most famous burlesque entertainer, this steamy sequel to The G-String Murders, Gypsy Rose Lee’s noir thriller, reads as if it’s ripped from her own diary pages. When her mother finds a dead body in Gypsy’s honeymoon trailer, Gypsy realizes that no one is who they seem to be and everyone is worthy of suspicion.
“Pure ozone to those tired of ordinary oxygen.”
—New Yorker
“One of the greatest mysteries ever written.”
—Philadelphia Daily News
“Our most famous burlesque queen may raise the temperature with a strip tease, but she chills the blood when she goes into her detective routine.”
—Boston Post
GYPSY ROSE LEE (1911–1970) was the most famous burlesque performer and striptease artist of her day, renowned as much for her witty repartee as for removing her clothes. Born Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, Lee first performed with her sister on the vaudeville circuit, eventually landing star billing at a top New York City burlesque theater. In 1937 she moved to Hollywood and went on to appear in twelve films and her own television show. A regular contributor to the New Yorker, Lee published two novels, and her memoir, Gypsy (1957), which became the inspiration for the hugely popular Broadway musical, Gypsy: A Musical Fable and the 1962 film starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood.
THE GIRLS IN 3-B
Valerie Taylor
Afterword by Lisa Walker
eISBN: 9781558617629 | ISBN: 9781558614567
Annice, Barby, and Pat are the girls in 3-B, three young women straight out of high school who leave their hometowns and land in the big city. In 1950s Chicago, they find refuge and danger. Encounters with predatory beatnik men, workplace drama, and lesbian trysts—the girls grow up quickly in this explosive melodrama about sexual identity and female friendship.
“The Girls in 3-B will give you a sense of the dangers and delights of passion between women in another era. . . . Valerie Taylor’s much-loved story has achieved well-deserved classic status in the lesbian pulp canon.”
—Ann Bannon, author of Odd Girl Out
“A remarkable slice of bohemia, Valerie Taylor gives ‘pulp’ a good name and weaves a wondrous tale of love, lesbianism, poetry, and sex around three young women who leave their small town for the allure of the big city.”
—Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity
STRANGER ON LESBOS
Valerie Taylor
Afterword by Marcia Gallo
eISBN: 9781558618008 | ISBN: 9781558617995
Sexy, beautiful, frustrated . . . a neglected housewife finds the delights and degradations of forbidden love. Frances, a 1950s housewife, becomes bored with her suburban life and enrolls in a class at the local community college. When she meets Bake, a butch lesbian, her life completely changes. In thrall to a world of martini lunches, late nights at queer bars, and a sexual passion she never knew was possible, Frances must choose between the safety of being a wife and mother, or the dangers of life on the edge of society. In this age of Mad Men fever, the reissue of Stranger on Lesbos comes at a perfect moment, invoking an era we can’t help but romanticize yet despise.
VALERIE TAYLOR is the pen name of Velma Young (1913-1997), prolific author of best-selling pulp fiction novels, poetry, and romances, including Whisper Their Love, The Girls in 3-B, World Without Women, Journey to Fulfillment, Stranger on Lesbos, and Ripening. A longtime activist for gay and lesbian rights, she was a co-founder of Mattachine Midwest and the Lesbian Writers Conference in Chicago.
BY CECILE
Tereska Torres
eISBN: 9781558618060 | ISBN: 9781558618053
In Paris, a young woman with the spirit of an artist finds refuge with an older man just after WWII. He introduces her to nightclubs, intellectuals, and non-monogamy. Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Eartha Kitt all make an appearance. When she falls for his mistress, she begins to live a life she deems worthy of writing about . . . but only under the pseudonym of her husband. By Cecile is a sensational story of modern love and personal transformation.
“Madame Torres has reimagined a youthful Colette (here called Cecile) in the infinitely seductive post-World War II period in Paris, where she moves like a sleeping princess through the perverse fairy tales of man-made cafe society. By Cecile is a sharply perceptive novel.”
—Joan Schenkar, author of The Talented Miss Highsmith
WOMEN’S BARRACKS
Tereska Torres
Afterword by Judith Mayne
Interview with the author by Joan Schenkar
eISBN: 9781558617148 | ISBN: 9781558614949
The grim setting of an urban military barracks—with its freezing dorms, rationed food, and unbecoming regulation under-wear—became the setting for one of the steamiest novels of its time and the first-ever lesbian pulp. Written from the point of view of one of the younger and more innocent girl soldiers, Women’s Barracks reflects Tereska Torres’s experiences in the Free French forces assembled under General Charles de Gaulle. Condemned in 1952 for its “artful appeals to sensuality, immorality, filth, perversion, and degeneracy” by the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, this novel became an underground phenomenon, selling four million copies in the US and many more abroad.
“As a lesbian historian, as a citizen of a war-torn world, simply as a reader, I found this 1950 novel, considered obscene in its own time, moving, arousing, and deeply interesting.”
—Joan Nestle, author of A Restricted Country
“Women’s Barracks stands not only as a classic in our literary heritage, but as a fascinating view of the intensity and resilience of the lesbian spirit.”
—Radclyffe, author of Sheltering Dunes
TERESKA TORRES’s Women’s Barracks is widely considered to be the first lesbian pulp novel. It
is based on her own experiences as a young woman in the Free French forces during WWII. Condemned in 1952, the novel became an underground phenomenon, selling over four million copies. Torres went on to write many more bestselling novels in France, which were often brought to an American audience by her husband, the author Meyer Levin. Torres lives in Paris, where she is completing her memoirs.
About the Author
EVELYN PIPER was the pseudonym of Merriam Modell (1908–1994), whose novels include The Lady and Her Doctor, Hanno’s Doll, and The Nanny (1965), which was made into a film starring Bette Davis.
