Shocking Exposé! Secrets Revealed!

by Carol Queen

San Francisco just made her feel this way—that anything was possible. After her reverie had faded, she finished the last sip of coffee and walked the few blocks to Kayo, a bookstore she’d never visited before. Stepping inside, she gasped—this shop seemed to have nothing but old pulp paperbacks!

From every shelf, glamorous dolls and bitchy babes gazed or snarled out at her. A few were menaced by monsters, a few were being ravished by pirates, but most of them were the focus of the cover all by themselves—or, in the lesbian section, in twos. They were redheads and blondes and brunettes, slinky in evening gowns or seductive in lingerie. They were gorgeous! Abby began making her way through the endless stacks of books, mostly fiction but interspersed with some midcentury pop psychology.

Shocking Exposé!
The World’s Oldest Vice!
Transvestite Secrets Revealed!
What Every Young Wife Must Know!
Innocent No More!

Even the Kinsey Reports and Bulfinch’s Greek and Roman Mythology had been published with lurid illustrations.

Abby walked sideways down a whole row, reading titles and drinking in the brightly colored covers. Almost every one had a gorgeous woman on it. Just change her clothes and she switched from Amazon Pagan Queen! to Sorority Sis Unleashed! The bookstore had been deserted when she came in, except for the guy behind the counter, so she almost dropped the small stack of paperbacks she’d picked out when she got to the end of the row and nearly bumped into a small, smiling woman, who stood as if waiting for Abby to reach her. A man stood behind her, smiling too.