TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE -- OLD ENOUGH FOR SIN!

Happy Friday, everybody! I'm going to change this exploitation blog series up a little bit today. Instead of the usual movie posters, I'm going to share a collection of exploitation book covers that have been just dying to get out of their folders on my laptop and into the limelight.

Up until a couple of decades ago or so, these "mature" novels could be found in any newsstand or bookstore that sold adult magazines. They were printed by the carload on cheap pulp paper and cheesy-quality cover stock. Some of the imprints like Beacon, Midwood and Brandon House have become high-priced collectibles; once again, not for their literary merits, but for their covers. Even mainstream publishers like Berkeley, Belmont and Fawcett jumped into the game with suggestive titles and cover images. For instance, Fawcett, who in 1959 published "Mandingo", the controversial Antebellum taboo-sex story, slogged even deeper into the swamp with a series of southern blaxploitation-style novels, such as "Rebels of Sabrehill" and "Rogue Black".

But the main attraction of these trashy tomes was sex; not the straight kind, but every other imaginable sexual fetish, from wife-swapping, to 3-way, B&D and yes, even robot love dolls! Probably the most remembered of all of these today were the so-called lesbian novels that proliferated the spinner racks, but any "forbidden" topic was fair game.

I've read a few here and there over the years, and believe me, the only thing they've got going for them besides a few cheap thrills are the salacious covers and the bawdy blurbs. Still, they are a persistent element of pop culture and these days have cleverly morphed into more "sophisticated" offerings by randy self-publishers available now on Amazon!