• First Digital Edition • Afterword on the history of pulp paperbacks She folded Sheila into her arms and kissed her eyes, her soft fair hair, finally her lips. Nicoli’s short dark hair, gray eyes, and cameo cut features were somehow fascinating to Shelia. And Nicoli gave of them freely. Honey-haired, statuesque Sheila Case is the central character in a fascinating story about a young actress who is drawn to women and finds many women attracted to her. These attractions can be intriguing, even useful, as Sheila works to further her acting career in the harsh and competitive theater world. Sheila knew she had a crush on Nicoli from the first moment she met her. Cool and deliberately sensual, Nicoli allowed the attraction to develop into a deeply passionate affair both women were powerless to control. Before long, though, the dangerous game Sheila is playing to advance her acting career threatens to trap her in the very web she has woven, and ensnare the lovers in the glare of gossip, rumor and ostracism. Against the backdrop of the theatre world, Queer Patterns is a story of powerful attraction, passionate love and the lengths to which two women will go to protect it against all odds. About Lesbian Pulp A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and the reading public would consume them. In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. Unlike hardback books, these pulp paperbacks were inexpensive and readily available everywhere. The American public could not get enough of them. During the 1940s, mysteries and romances were the hot sellers. In the early 1950s, new pulp fiction subgenres emerged—science fiction, westerns, gay & lesbian fiction, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Publishers soon came to realize that sex sells. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they turned from straightforward "tasteful" cover images to alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. To this day, the pulp cover art of these vintage paperback books is just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago. We are excited to make these wonderful pulp fiction stories available in ebook format to new generations of readers, as a new revolution—the ebook revolution—is in full swing. We hope you will enjoy this nostalgic look back at a period in American history when dames were dangerous, tough-guys were deadly and dolls were downright delicious.