Top 5 Posts Of 2015

The Top Five Posts of 2015

 Presenting the top 5 for the blog for the whole year of 2015

 

#1

From October 18th 

The Pace That Kills by William Fuller

 The Pace That Kills by William Fuller

#2

From March 28th
The Black Hole (1979)

The Black Hole 1979

#3

From March 9th
1967 Book Signup

   

 1967 Book Signup

#4

From March 24th
More Double Trouble

 

 

 

More Double Trouble 

#5 

From January 9th

Bare Trap by Frank Kane 

Bare Trap by Frank Kane 

See you in 2016

Passport To Danger by Jessyca Paull

Terror prowls the streets of Paris, pursuing her everywhere, as she plunges into the nightmare of being mistaken for a spy

Tracy stared at the words. Where did the newspaper get that story? That cold report on her own murder in a dingy Paris hotel?

At first, Tracy Larrimore was too stunned to be frightened. Terror came slowly, with chilling, deliberate precision...

When she learned that her passport was found in the mysterious corpse's rigid hands - making it impossible for Tracy to prove who she was...

When the whispering voice demanded her return to America - offering a small fortune if she obeyed......

When the woman with the veil kidnapped her in broad daylight, her gun pointed straight at Tracy's head.

Nerve-chilling terror came slowly but relentlessly as Tracy became entanglesd in the intrigue of vicious espionage. With a ruthless enemy who wanted her dead for a sinister secret she did not realize she possessed... and her only ally a tall, young stranger she loved, but knew she could not trust.

Printing History

 Written by Julia Perceval and Rosaylmer Burger

Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp 

Award Books

#303  (1968)

#1250 (1973)

My Gun Is Quick by Mickey Spillane

Mike Hammer Mystery

Mike Hammer is meeting a red-headed prostitute in a diner. She is hassled by a man she appears to know and fear but Mike deals with him swiftly. Despite having little conversation, he gives her some money to get a real job and leaves. The next day she is found dead, the victim of an apparent hit-and-run accident. Mike does not believe this and proceeds to hunt down her murderers and in the process he uncovers a massive and powerful prostitution ring in New York.

 Printing History

Written by Frank Morrison Spillane (1918-2006)

E. P. Dutton

1950

The Film

1957

Directed by Phil Victor and George White

 Cast

Robert Bray as Mike Hammer
Whitney Blake as Nancy Williams
Donald Randolph as Colonel Holloway
Gina Core as Maria Teresa Garcia
Pamela Duncan as Velda
Booth Colman as Pat Chambers

Merry Christmas (2015)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

 

Miracle On 34th Street (1947)

Taking place between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in New York City, this film focuses on the impact of a department store Santa Claus who claims to be the real Santa.

Kris Kringle, a bearded old gent who is the living image of Santa Claus, is serving as a last-minute replacement for the drunken Santa who was to have led Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Kringle is offered a job as a Macy's toy-department Santa. The Supervisor soon begins having second thoughts about hiring Kris. It's bad enough that he is laboring under the delusion that he's the genuine Saint Nick. But when he begins advising customers to shop elsewhere for toys that they can't find at Macy's, he's gone too far!

 Based on the story by

Valentine Davies

Directed by

George Seaton

Cast

Maureen O'Hara as Doris Walker.
John Payne as Frederick M. "Fred" Gailey
Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle
Natalie Wood as Susan Walker
Porter Hall as Granville Sawyer
William Frawley as Charlie Halloran
Jerome Cowan as District Attorney Thomas Mara
 

Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS by Elizabeth McIntosh

The daring missions and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of America's World War II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), are well documented and have become the stuff of legend. Yet the contributions of the four thousand women who made up one-fifth of the OSS staff have gone largely unheralded.

A seasoned journalist and veteran of sensitive OSS and CIA operations, Elizabeth McIntosh draws on her own experiences and interviews with more than a hundred other OSS women to reveal some of the most tantalizing stories and best-kept secrets of the war in Europe and Asia. McIntosh weaves intimate portraits of dozens of remarkable women into the storied development and operation of the OSS in the 1940s. Along with famous names like Julia Child and Marlene Dietrich, one will discover such intrepid agents as Amy Thorpe, who seduced a Vichy official and stole naval codes from the French embassy. And Virginia Hall, who earned a Distinguished Service Cross for her work with the French resistance running an underground railroad for downed fliers; and others who recruited double agents, pioneered propaganda and subversion techniques, and tracked the infamous Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny. 

Printing History

Written by Elizabeth P. McIntosh (1915-2015)

Random House Publishing Group

1999