Potpourri of Posts

• Steve Scott, at the John D. MacDonald blog The Trap of Solid Gold, looks back at “Kitten on a Trampoline,” one the most famous and delightful combinations of MacDonald’s fiction and Robert McGinnis’ artwork. The short story “Kitten on a Trampoline,” he notes, “appeared only once”—in the April 8, 1961, issue The Saturday Evening Post—“and has never been anthologized or republished.”

• Prior to the recent start of his “hiatus,” British Columbia blogger Noah Stewart began putting together fascinating galleries of the various covers used on classic works of mystery fiction. Here, for instance, are examples of the fronts you can find from The Rasp, Philip Macdonald’s 1924 novel. And click here to see a wide variety of façades that have decorated The Red Box (1937), Rex Stout’s fourth Nero Wolfe novel. I hope Stewart will be back soon with more of these “Cover Art Through the Ages” posts.

• The newest Web site to imagine funny/wicked/wonderful new titles for older novels is a Twitter page called Paperback Paradise. Both Mashable and BuzzFeed have recently gathered together Paperback Paradise’s parodies of once-innocent children’s books.

• Pulp International offers a beautiful cover from I Like It Tough, James A. Howard’s 1955 novel—the “powerful story of a reporter destroying a vicious dope ring.” It’s one of Howard’s tales featuring Steve Ashe, who also appeared in such works as I’ll Get You Yet (1954), Blow Out My Torch (1956), and Die on Easy Street (1957).

• Finally, check out Gravetapping’s enjoyable “Thrift Shop Book Covers” posts. Blogger Ben Boulden has so far featured works by Ralph Dennis, Gavin Lyall, Richard Stark, and Isaac Asimov.