Paperbacks from Hell: A History of Horror Fiction from the '70s and '80s by Grady Hendrix is the history of the paperback horror novel. Hendrix is the author of the novels Horrorstör, the only book you'll ever need about a haunted Scandinavian furniture superstore, and My Best Friend's Exorcism.

In the mid-1970s I would go to the corner store, a Lawson, and raided the book rack. There was always a carousel of books near the front counter. Horror books took up most of the shelf space with everything from the Omen to countless barely remembered horror stories of all types. I remember a class mate, Pam, giving me her copy of Gary Brandner's The Howling. That book was a game changer for me. The Scholastic Books, an in school book sale, even had Stephen King's Carrie for sale. This caused a temporary ban of Scholastic Books in my school as some parents got very upset about the books available to 7th graders. There was something special about buying books that were not meant for school children.

Paperbacks from Hell is a return to that time with a detailed discussion and listing of books from that period. Hendrix provides a great refresher for those who loved the horror boom of the period. What subject defined horror changed over time. Satan and Satanists made an easy subject and a lasting one through books and even music in 1980s metal. David Seltzer's novelization of the movie The Omen started a string of books and the popularization of an obscure Bible passage. Knowing that 666 was the number of the beast suddenly became a Bible trivia everyone knew regardless of religious belief.

Damian also triggered the growth as a child being evil or a killer. Evil children were a shocking subject going back to the 1954 book Bad Seed. Books like The Crib and Spawn had a supernatural touch while Let's Play Games at the Adams' and The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane told of normal kids gone bad or take control of their own situation. There is also the far fetched fear mongering book Rona Joffee Mazes and Monsters which turned the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons into something that will damage and warp a teenager's brain.

Animals also were big sellers from Peter Benchley's Jaws to killer dogs, cats, rats, and even rabbits. Animals were killing people in untold numbers. Pick a seeming defenseless animal and there is probably a story of it being a mad killer (yes, butterflies too). If one thought animal killers wasn't quite over the top there were also killer plants. Jaws lead the escalation of wildlife killers.

If it wasn't an animal or child, it was probably a haunted property. Amityville Horror was the foundation for the haunted house. Amityville spawned six books in the series, each marketed as nonfiction. The premise of haunted houses being built over vortexes, graveyards, or other mystical places expanded into haunted train lines and hospitals. Anything could be haunted or possessed. Just ask Arnie Cunningham.

Hendrix starts his book with an introduction featuring The Little People who live in a basement of a bed and breakfast, Gestapochauns (Nazi leprechauns) and ends with a genre called Splatter Punk. Not much new has been developed since the late 80s death of paperback horror. Stephen King and others still write but the present generation would rather have movies and video games rather than a cheap paperback. I revisited the era re-reading Brandner's Howling series a while ago, but I did it on a Kindle. It just didn't seem the same. While today people look for special effects in movies today, we had cover art back then. Hendrix captures a multitude of the covers that got many people reading. Cover art at the time was important in making one book stand out from the rest. Foil covers, embossed covers, step back art, and die-cut covers became the norm and helped reveal some of the book's mystery or added a layer of shock. This was a time when horror brought entertainment to many readers. For those of us who had a library that was too far to walk to (or too dangerous to go to alone), the corner store became the early Netflix for many. Well written. Well illustrated. Well referenced. A welcomed walk down memory lane.

Grady Hendrix, who gave us the excellent My Best Friends Exorcism, takes a loving look back at the pulp horror paperback craze of the 1970s and 1980s in this fantastic title that pays homage to not only the crazy novels but also the oft overlooked cover artists. A perfect blend of history and phenomenon, the book explores the socio and cultural reasons behind the rise, as well as the authors, subjects and titles that populated book shelves during this time. The material is presented in a straightforward yet informative way that breaks down the different waves of fiction and oozes with Hendrix’s passion for the subject. You’ll want to keep a note pad handy though as with such a crazy array of books covered, you’ll be adding scores of names to your to be read piles.

Grady Hendrix, will you be my best friend forever? I love everything he does. I love that there are delinitations for dolls, and for talking dolls, and for people with plant body parts, etc. tc. etc.

This book might be the best thing I've read ever.

OK, slight exaggeration there, but it's totally worth the exaggeration.

Hendrix takes you down into both the well known and less well known corners of '70s and '80s horror fiction, exploring the trends and connections to the world at large in a wonderfully engaging and absolutely hysterical narrative. Broken down by subgenre, we go from the familiar (haunted houses, vampires, etc) to perhaps the less familiar (knife-wielding crabs, homicidal vegetation) in a veritable tour of the horrific and absurd.

Highly recommend to fans of horror and non-horror alike, and a must read for anyone with a taste for kitsch and cult.

This book seems targeted right at me.

As a book buyer and a bookstore employee growing up in the late 1960's/early 1970's through today, I have fond memories of the plethora of horror books that were published during this time, often with awesome, creepy covers that called out to the book-buyer and let you know immediately what sort of story would be found on the inside. Now, Grady Hendrix examines this industry and the push to pulp by publishers looking to cash in on the horror craze even as the genre changed its identity from horror to thriller and back again.

Hendrix does a marvelous job, breaking down the genre by type: Satanic, kids, animals, real estate, science, gothic/romance, and on to splatterpunk and serial killers. If you've read much horror, you understand this breakdown, but even if you don't, Hendrix describes it well, often identifying the break-out book that established the sub-genre.

Along with describing the books and their content, Hendrix spends a fair amount of time laying out the publishers and editors for the reader, letting the reader know that sometimes the death-knell for the category came about because of a change or loss of specific editors who understood the market.

And of course there are the authors. This book is by no means a comprehensive list of the authors who worked in the genre during this time, but it does go in to some detail, including authors you might have forgotten or perhaps never knew about unless you were reading these books.

But as nice and well-researched as all this is, perhaps the best part of this book is that it is <em>lavishly</em> illustrated with book covers from this time. Awesome, creepy, ridiculous, frightening, and ever so unique. Hendrix talks a little about the artists who created these covers but mostly in regards to a change in the publishing world when Photoshop and its clones became the norm and gruesome works of art were no longer needed, or at least publishers wouldn't want to wait the length of time it took to create one when a kid on Photoshop could whip up something devilish in a matter of hours. This is perhaps the biggest loss in the industry - the loss of fine art like this.

Like others of my generation, I remember these books BECAUSE of the covers. Only some of the stories stand out to me, but the creepiness on the outside were so wonderful that I often kept the books for the covers alone.

While Hendrix does a really tremendous job at bringing the history of the genre to life, I might even use this book as a coffee-table art book, what with all the glorious gruesome covers inside. It would certainly be a conversation piece!

This was a wonderful read and aside from bringing back memories and giving me some interesting history of the genre, it also gave me a few authors and titles to look for.

Looking for a good book? <em>Paperbacks from Hell: A History of Horror Fiction from the '70s and '80s</em> by Grady Hendrix is a well-researched, gritty look at the horror books in the 1970's-80's as the market peaked and then dwindled. It is recommended for its information and for the tremendous book covers from the period.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

To say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover was probably never less relevant than with horror paperbacks from the 70s and 80s. This time period offered the most insane covers, enticing you to untold nightmares inside. In those days of pre-Internet, pre-blogs, and widespread reviews you’d find a book just by browsing the shelf. A cover that stood out would make all the difference. It seemed as though artists had free reign to sell the book in ways you would never see now. Did the text match the quality of the cover? Not always, but as Hendrix tells us, they accomplished the most important thing – they were not boring.

After reading an extremely bizarre, long forgotten paperback, our author became addicted to the hunt, and we follow his journey of discovery through used book stores in search of more lost gems. Paperbacks from Hell offers the history of some of the most interesting paperbacks from the halcyon days of print horror publishing. He takes us into a world of killer clowns, mannequins, and possessed animals and that is just scratching the horror paperback surface.

The book is separated into chapters which cover different themes of books, such as satanic, creepy kids, animals, and haunted houses. The author offers social commentary on the historical time period during which specific books were written. He talks us through the wider cultural happenings that the popular horror books drew from to sell books. For example, the release of The Exorcist spawned all kinds of demonic rip-offs and The Omen spawned devil child stories.

The author discusses a number of the leading book cover artists. There are hundreds of outstanding and often odd covers throughout the pages of this book. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the book is reading the plot synopses of the most interesting books that Hendrix has chosen. Nothing was really taboo, with lots of sex and violence as the norm. Some of the titles discussed include Satan’s Love Child, The Voice of the Clown, Horrorscope, and Dracula in Love. We also tour the major horror paperback publishers and authors. You’ll see the works of Graham Masterton, James Hebert, Ramsey Campbell, and Anne Rice to name but a few.

Grady Hendrix has two great fiction titles under his belt, My Best Friend’s Exorcism and the striking IKEA based romp Horrorstör. Paperbacks from Hell is an insightful and enjoyable read, full of interesting stories that set the context for the paperbacks. The book offers great nostalgia for those of us who remember the era. It’s also a great way to make a reading list for hitting the used book stores and garage sales to see what you can discover.

I absolutely loved this book. The covers sprinkled throughout the book are very well chosen (I recognized a few that I'd read before) and by the end i was keeping a list of the more outrageous ones to look out for the next time I'm secondhand book shopping. The writing is self-aware and hilarious - Hendrix is obviously very well informed not just about the genre, but the industry overall. The changing trends and politics behind these mass-market titles was just as interesting as the outrageous topics.

I'm absolutely going to be buying this when it comes out, and have already record it to a few friends who are deep into the horror scene and will no doubt appreciate it even more than me!

Review of PAPERBACK FROM HELL by Grady Hendrix

Horror nostalgia rocks in author Grady Hendrix' exceptional and thoroughly entertaining recounting of two of horror publishing's most fervent decades, the 1970's through 1980's. Mr. Hendrix clearly loves and knows his topic, and for readers who also have reveled in novels produced in this period, memories will awaken. Perhaps among readers who don't know these books, inspiration might arise to search out some of these novels. Mr. Hendrix offers clarity, humour, and the benefit of a thorough understanding of horror publishing's most prolific hour.