In the interest of completion, here are covers from Ruby Jean Jensen's 1970s Gothic novels, well before she got the Zebra treatment for her horror fiction. The Girl Who Didn't Die (Warner 1975) is my favorite: great painting, the woman's expression of fear perfectly captured, and in an odd twist, she's not actually running from the castle. Perhaps she will try to get help there to protect herself from whatever's chasing her across the misty moors, and then find a whole new world of horror waiting...
Hear the Children Cry (Leisure 1983) Meh. More like her Zebra paperbacks.
Seventh All Hallows' Eve (Warner 1974) Uh, what? Some kinda tribal or kabuki mask?
House at River's Bend (Dell 1975) Boring run-of-the-mill standard Gothic romance.
Child of Satan House (Manor 1978) Golf club? Cane? I expect her to break into a little soft-shoe at any moment.
Satan's Sister (Major 1978) That is one bizarrely specific tag line.For more on Jensen, be sure to check out Phantom of Pulp's post.
Well, I'll type this up again, I guess (note to self: Firefox &/or Google &/or blogspot.com need to be destroyed) ...
ReplyDeleteI know just about nothing about Jensen, & I think I own only one thing of hers (that I've never read & couldn't name if I had all weekend, probably ... something like Snowdrop?), but I hold a residual fondness toward her because my understanding is that she hails from my home state of Arkansas, which is true of just about no other horror writers. (Charlaine Harris of True Blood fame actualy resides in the small town where I went to college in the state's extreme southwest corner, about 15 miles from the even smaller town -- not a single traffic light to this day! -- where I grew up, but she's actually from Mississippi, I think, & apparently sets her novels in Louisiana, so I regard her status as an Arkansan as ... adulterated, or something.)
Dan
Am I the only one who sees the face of a young Jamie Lee Curtis in the spectral countenance on the cover of "Satan's Sister?"
ReplyDeleteOh man, I knew she reminded me of somebody!
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