Oculus Presents: Three rare vintage book covers

Hey, folks, this is Oculus Presents. Again.

I'm not exactly a book collector, my occasional eBay and Thriftbooks browsing aside - as much as I love forgotten and underrated genre fiction, I'm usually content to just long from afar for the truly rare out-of-print editions that go for huge prices on the collectors' market. One of the reasons I admire Valancourt Books so much (I urge y'all specfic fans to check out their catalog and throw a few bucks their way if you can - I'm not, like, affiliated with them or anything, I just think they're really neat) is the fact that they've brought back to life a whole lot of highly sought-after books that were either very rare or flat-out impossible to track down. But it does happen sometimes that I run into a real gem during my library and used bookshop trips - something that while not completely unavailable on the market, is enough of a curiosity to catch my eye. Hell, sometimes I won't even know they're rare until I check for them on the internet. I own three particular books that are really anything but rarities by themselves - but the editions in my library are very little known and very eye-catching, so I thought I'd share.

First off is this 1966 Pan Books Ltd. edition of Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie. I know Agatha Christie books are about as far from rarities as you can get - can't throw a stone in a bookshop or a library without hitting one - but this particular edition by London publisher Pan Books has pretty much vanished from consciousness, and I've seen copies of it go for 16 dollars and above. Not too shabby for a bestselling novel. Still, it's a shame, because I really dig the colors and the general layout of this cover - simple, but eye-catching with a real classy vintage flair. The book itself I've read and loved; I really think every single fan of crime fiction owes it to themselves to read at least one Agatha Christie book in their lives.

Mary Higgins Clark was a bestselling thriller and mystery writer, so also not what you'd call a rarity on the speculative fiction market; but this 1981 edition of one of her novels, published by Fontana Press, caught my eye with the absolutely gorgeous cover art at a used bookshop enough that I'd bought it on the spot. It's not a rare printing, per se, but it's definitely one of the harder-to-find ones; for a while I couldn't even track down a good-quality cover photo, which is a bit surprising given the gazillion editions of this book out there. I tried reading the book a while back and found the writing unbearably stuffy and one-dimensional, but I'll definitely be giving it another chance. I mean, I can't just not read a book I own with a cover this pretty.

Last, but not least, the 1973 New English Library version of Frank Herbert's The Green Brain is one of my favorite book covers ever printed. The colors, the composition, the rich detailing - an all-around masterpiece by cover artist Bruce Pennington. I've heard good things and bad things about the book itself, but the first few pages I'd read a bit back piqued my curiosity. I'll definitely feature this book in more detail on the blog, once the sci-fi mood strikes me again. And for extra charm, look at this inscription on the title page of my copy of this book:

I suppose we shall see if this book will also make me understand that insects are friends...