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BEN HAAS CHECKLIST

Haas – writing as William Kane (and William King)


BEDSIDE

HOUSEWIFE CALL-GIRL – Bedside 1213, 1962. (All Kanes are PBOs.) Cover art by Harold W. McCauley.

Can’t tell if this book or a 1962 Nightstand called FLESH ADDICT was the first William Kane novel. The second Kane Nightstand is dated 1963, so it’s a safe bet that one of these two early Kanes was his “try out” for this publisher.  HOUSEWIFE CALL-GIRL reads like one of Ben’s Beacons. Marion Fiske is unhappy with life in Hazen City and unhappy with her husband Dale (the book begins “He was putting his hands on her again, and she did not like it.”) Marion takes her friend Fran’s advice and joins her at work as an afternoon call girl for Walter Marlon. Before she can blink she has been “bought” by lesbian movie star Regina Holiday for a four-day sex and drugs binge. What will Dale do?

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EMBER BOOK

STRUMPET by William King – EB903, 1963.

“From well-bred virgin to well-bedded harlot” - Dr. Joyce Sloane, Ph. D. leaves her respectable academic life behind and travels to the sleaziest strip of a sinful city in search of her lost twin Gloria, who is working as a stripper at the Black Cat Club. Sex and violence ensue. Many of the same themes are explored in a later William Kane book called RED LIGHT SISTERS.

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PASSION ROAD by William King – EB918, nd (1963).

When Donna Stafford learns her husband is having an affair, she runs away, first to the bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village , then on the road, with each stop more degrading. This is a dark story with mutilations and murders and Donna’s horrible end is nightmarish. If asked to guess, I’d say that the publisher assigned a book by one of the other writers to “William King” for this horror show.

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SHAME CIRCLE – EB947, 1964.

Millionaire Oklahoma oilman Dan Keller has everything he wants, except Kitty, who left him to marry Dell Anders, an Air Force colonel at a base in the Southwest.  But one day Kitty calls Dan and tells him Dell has disappeared. Dan’s search for Dell leads into some very kinky situations (including a chapter with a “titanic-breasted” lesbian that has no connection with anything else in the book), and into Kitty’s bed, and on to a gambling club where the grand prize each night is a naked woman.

THE SEDUCER – EB950, 1964.

Troy Garfield is “the seducer”, a man who lives traveling from woman to woman. But when Troy goes after the wife of tough logging crew boss Town Braddock, things go badly at a mountain cabin when a forest fire erupts.

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EMBER LIBRARY

MENAGE A TROIS – EL308, 1965. Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Rich and jaded Ken Wilkins and his wife Patricia evolve from a couple into a threesome when twisted little Sara Blaine comes to work for them as a maid.

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IN WARM DESIRE – EL351, 1966. Cover artist: Robert Bonfils.

In a sexbook version of IN COLD BLOOD, two psychopathic rapists named Rube and Charlie wreak havoc on innocent Midwestern families, but when captured they escape from the mental hospital and kidnap their psychiatrist, Don Denning.  They end up at Don’s house, where Don’s wife is “entertaining” her friends.

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TURN ME ON – EL366, 1967. Unknown artist.

Honey-blonde innocent young Connie Moran has her hands full with her cruise ship cabin mate Kay Kingston. Then wicked Kay takes her to Jasmine Island to teach her all about sexual slavery. But the natives are restless…
More reminiscent of EMMANUELLE or THE STORY OF O than anything else by Ben Haas, this 1967 Kane feels like the work of a different a
uthor with a different agenda.

“She pushed her loins against him, tantalized his hardness with her softness.”

Beyond BEYOND ALL SHAME - EL374, 1967.
Cover by Bonfils. Thanks to Grant Thiessen

 

 

EVENING READER

FLESH WEB – ER730, 1964. Cover by Bonfils.

Traveling salesman Don Rossman of Workhorse Equipment parties heavily an a convention, little knowing his wife Ruth is back home being blackmailed and seduced by wicked neighbors. Don hits the road and meets all kinds of farmer’s daughters. 

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PASSION PRIESTESS – ER738, 1964.

Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Told in a first person style that is unlike any other book on this checklist, PASSION PRIESTESS details the adventures of Les & Fran discovering voodoo on the Caribbean island of Pandamo .

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SIN WED – ER745, 1964. Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Down on his luck and broke, Lloyd Travis is sitting on a park bench when a lady named Elizabeth Brant comes along with a proposition. It’s a proposal actually; she needs Lloyd to marry her. When she takes him home to the Brant mansion, Lloyd finds out she’s caught in a nasty trap arranged by her evil brother Howard, who runs the town.

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RED LIGHT SISTERS – ER1257, 1966. Cover art by Tomas Cannizarro.

Rich and famous movie star Jennifer Marsh has it all, including a hidden past. She gets a letter from her kid sister Priss from a sin town called Deltaville. Caught in the red light district, Priss needs her help. Jenny uses clothes and make-up to disguise herself as a Deltaville tramp, and she descends into the hellish town, where Priss is working in a live sex show controlled by dangerous pimps and crime lords.

 

IDLE HOUR

SWITCH CLUB – IH426, 1964. Bonfils cover.

Jim and Judith Fanning live in the Shady Hills area of Craighead (two place names familiar to residents of Ben’s home town, Charlotte NC). When Judith is attacked walking home at night from a pool party, Jim enlists his friend Carl Crippen, a policeman, to hunt down the attacker. Undercover private detectives Brad Fennimore and Dot Jennings are brought in to pose as a married couple in the neighborhood. And what they find is a wife-swapping club.

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SINERAMA – IH471, 1965.

Writer Matt Dennison is out walking on the California coast one morning when he rescues a beautiful suicidal blonde from the surf. She turns out to be Jeri Cochran, the famous movie star. Jeri has been reduced to making porn movies for an evil producer named Shofar. Matt infiltrates Shofar’s “illicit movie colony”, where his plans get waylaid when he falls in love with one of the porn actresses, a comely brunette named Marti Valance.

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LEISURE BOOK

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SIN MIXERS – LB612, 1963. Cover art by Bonfils.

Doris and Charlie Lord are bored, affluent middle-class middle Americans. They decide to spice up their dull lives with some wife swapping. This is never a good idea for the sinswept characters in these books.

Cover artist Robert Bonfils has quite an eye for composition, and the cover of SIN MIXERS avoids all the things its male readers have no interest in, like seeing men in their underwear. The men are just virile hands and forearms reaching into the frame. Our eyes are drawn to the flashy and colorful women.

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SEXPLOSION – LB617, 1963.

The sleepy “Southwestern” town of Hollyville is disrupted when two women arrive and move into Miss Betsy’s Rooming House. One of them is a sexpot with gentian-blue eyes named Christa; the other is the new librarian Laurie, who shocks the town by stocking the library with modern fiction. The local hooded “Vigilante Society” reacts, and soon the whole town bursts open. There are a lot of repressed souls in Hollyville, but oh, that Miss Betsy!

A memorable line from SEXPLOSION: “She had all the modesty of a chimpanzee.”

SIN HOOKED – LB644, 1964. Small format, pink spine. Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Traveling salesman Doyle Trevor is happily married to Donna, free at last to forget his roaming first wife Annalee, who had died in a fiery car crash. When Doyle travels to a different city on business, a man named Pangloss takes him to a live sex show. Doyle is shocked to find Annalee starring in the show; it had not been her in the burned car. Now with two wives, Doyle sets Annalee up in a home of her own. But wildcat Annalee won’t settle down, she goes out to a fateful orgy.  The basic outline is very similar to the Ken Barry Beacon THE BIGAMIST.  

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THE TRYSTING PLACE – LB1141, 1966. Bonfils cover.

Some of the original authors were gone when the publisher switched to these taller paperbacks with white spines and colorful Robert Bonfils cover art. For example, none of the Andrew Shaws in this format are by the original Shaw, Lawrence Block. But on the Clyde Allison and Don Elliott books, it is obviously the work of the same authors of the early small-format books. Like Allison and Elliott and others, some of the William Kane books appear to be written by the same writer of the first Kanes. For example, THE TRYSTING PLACE takes place at Danny’s Place in Hazen City , the same setting for four early Kane titles from 1962.

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SHE HAD TO CHEAT – LB1146, 1966.

Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Returning to a theme explored in STRUMPET and RED LIGHT SISTERS, SHE HAD TO CHEAT is about two twin-like women named Carol and Claudia. Claudia is frigid prude, the flip side of the coin Carol is a nympho. Claudia’s husband Eric finally goes to other women for comfort. Claudia and Carol seem so alike because they are the same person; she has split her personality in two. And Carol has to cheat.

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SIN-DEEP LOVER – LB1186, 1967. Transvestite cover art by Robert Bonfils.

It’s never believable for a second, but the author asks us to accept the idea that this blonde science major on the cover is so sexy and so beautiful she can’t get a job as a scientist, or as a model. She is forced to pose for sleazy photographs. She falls in love with the photographer and, willing to do anything to advance his wish to become a photojournalist, agrees to secretly sleep with a big-time newsmagazine publisher to get her boyfriend a job. When the publisher takes her to his bed, he has a surprise for her. He’s a transvestite. Cover artist Robert Bonfils captures that moment from the book: “weirdo and wanton”.


MIDNIGHT READER

BOOMTOWN SINNERS – MR425, 1962. Cover art by Harold McCauley.

On the run from the St. Louis syndicate, Beth Calder moves to Roaring Horse, a Rocky Mountain boomtown with 1500 men and nine dance hall girls. Those odds look good to Beth. But then the syndicate hit man comes to town.

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SEXECUTIVE – MR443, 1962. Cover by McCauley.

Charles Wayne works for Missile Components in Hazen City . His job is to line up the booze and women for the wild parties thrown to win fat government contracts. But the parties get out of hand.

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LUST LOTTERY – MR453, 1962.

Like SEXECUTIVE, LUST LOTTERY takes place at Missile Components in Hazen City . Two employees, April Gentry and Ros Cole, come up with a sure-fire scheme guaranteed to make money. On every payday, the workers put a couple dollars into a lottery and a lucky winner is drawn. That winner then gets a weekend with April or Ros. Seems like a great moneymaker, but April starts falling in love with her foreman, Curt Walker. And then the lottery is won by April’s living nightmare, a brutal gorilla of a man named Vito Bonnelli.  

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FLESH FIX – MR480, 1963.

Corrupt Governor Clell Fenton is turning his state government into a pit of degradation. Newspaperman Perry Morgan plans to expose the racket, but instead he is lured into the sin game by Fenton’s evil assistant Anne Weatherford, who gets her kicks whipping younger women. Perry is assigned to watch the Governor’s ex-wife Libby. Violence and death soon follow.

Clell strikes me as a rather odd name, but it is also a name in Ben Elliott’s CONTRACT IN CARTRIDGES.


LUST WEB – MR484, 1963.

Diabolical Communist spy John Orloff unleashes his human lust bomb Grace Cromwell on the unsuspecting scientists working on the Omega-3 at Shelton Missile and Guidance Company, using “the most potent tool at the command of the spy – sex”. Grace is trained in the arts of seduction – and lesbian love!

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LUST LASHED – MR490, 1963.

Not all 1963 Midnight Readers depict women being whipped on their covers, just the ones by William Kane.  

She was Chris Carse, owner of Carse Castle on the California coast, built by her father, the famous newspaper-chain owner.  He had taught his daughter to be tougher and harder than any man. Chris makes sex puppets out of the weak-willed people she meets, and a writer named Mark Rutledge becomes the latest victim of her whip. But when they are stranded by a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness, Mark becomes the master and Chris the willing slave.

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NIGHTSTAND BOOKS

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FLESH ADDICT – NB1613, 1962. Cover art by McCauley.

All prim and proper, Dorian Kay arrives at State to begin college, but nothing has prepared her for the world of her oversexed roomie Lucia Denton. Lucia is working on a sexuality project for Professor Vertrees, who plans to become the next Dr Kinsey. Lucia and new project recruit Dorian are required to look at a lot of porn, and everybody knows what looking at porn does to an innocent young lady like Dorian. She becomes a sex addict! The project spirals so wildly out of control that finally people start getting killed. At the end of the book, one character who has survived has moved, he is “doing clinical and social work in another state in a large town called Hazen City ”.  Possibly William Kane’s first book.   

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SIN CITY SLAVES – NB1650, 1963.

Three soldiers on leave at Fort Channing (Benning) make life-altering choices in the Sin City across the river. Unexpected emotional pull and character development for a Nightstand. Sample sentence: “Payne walked through shatteringly bright sunlight, faced with a yawning eternity of time, full of a chaotic aimless restlessness.”


HAMILTON ’S HAREM – NB1756, 1965.

Lawyer Gage Hamilton of Crescentville agrees to help his client Allen Fernol with his wild wife Melissa and their three stunning, out of control blonde daughters. But when Fernol is murdered, Hamilton suddenly has a “harem” on his hands that would drive anybody crazy. Especially his girlfriend Greta. 

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THE PRUDE – NB1787, 1966.

Conrad Blane writes hardboiled detective novels about a super-tough private eye named Grant Sledge (as in Sledge Hammer), who is described as “a brute, an animal, a sadist”. The books are very successful. Too successful, really, for Grant Sledge is slowly taking over the mind of his weaker alter ego Conrad Blane. 

(Nightstand experimented with books with no cover paintings for a short time in 1966.)

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PROGRAMMED TO LOVE – NB1801, 1966. Cover by Cannizarro.

On the surface, it looks like Jim Cardin has it all – his brilliant, rich and beautiful wife Betsy, a home in Fletcher City in the Midwest, and a great job at the computer programming department at AWP (Automated Work Planning).  But when Jim’s job takes him to Hudsonia Mills, things get strange. Is it boredom or decadence that drags Jim and Betsy down? Or are those words synonymous?

 “Machines (computers) are the wave of the future, people are obsolete.”

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SINNING SIMON – NB1816, 1966.

Repressed librarian Vickie Donovan collides with sexual predator Simon King.

Simon comes into her library in Cantonville and asks for a copy of CANDY. She refers him to the local drug store for “such trash”. He seduces her by pretending to be mystery writer Jefferson Trentwell, author of MURDER FOR MIDGETS and MURDER FOR MATRONS. Simon is working his way through all the women in town when two teens get killed drinking and driving. Their friends lie to the parents and blame Miss Donovan -  and the small-town witch hunt begins.  


DEALER IN DESIRE – NB1817, 1967. Cover by Cannizarro.

Howard Mallory is 42; he lives in Desmond , Ohio with his wife Ellen. Howard has always been a quiet, unassuming sort, but, he tells us “each man dreams of a lovely, well-bred nympho-maniac who will stop at nothing.” And that’s how he views their neighbor, Lita Roland. Lita is a handful, but when Lita’s Lolita–type daughter Christie advises Howard she prefers much older men, Howard now has both hands full.

DEALER IN DESIRE is narrated by three different characters who take turns telling us this story.

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FLESH RAID – NB1826, 1967. Cover by Bonfils.

Laird Steel, top traveling salesman for Follett Foundries, lives in Greene City with his wife Chris. When Laird gets arrested on the road in a motel room with a hooker, Chris leaves him. Laird and Chris both embark on new sexual experiences, but that gun on the cover does not show up until the last chapter.

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PILLAR BOOK

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SEX SEA by William King – PB804, 1963.

Cover by Bonfils.  

Beachcomber Rod Carlson (“the only white man for miles”) is taking life easy of the island of Bora-ka, part of the Bora-Maka atoll, “until one day an orgy-laden yacht drenched (the natives) with blood love!” 

Things are getting crazy for Rod when a typhoon hits.

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JOY JOB by William King – PB811, 1963. Cover by Bonfils.

As SEX SEA is about sinners on a Pacific isle climaxing with a typhoon, JOY JOB is about sinners on one of those barrier islands off the Georgia coast, climaxing in a hurricane. Tom Craighead finds work as a procurer for Barton Knapp, one of the richest men in the world. Knapp turns out to have a torture chamber, and he wants every woman who ventures into his house, including Tom’s wife Jill.  So he hypnotizes her and that (of course) turns her into a nymphomaniac.


THE DEPRAVED ONE – PB822, nd (1964).  Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Pillar Books are nominally “sex” books, except I don’t find them to have any interest in sex. They are instead all about depravity. Ex-Army Major Walker Flint, now a mercenary somewhere in Central America , tells this story in first person. Both the title page and a list of Pillar Books inside give the title correctly – it’s THE DEPRAVED ONES.

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PASSION LIMBO – PB826, nd (1964), Cover art by Robert Bonfils.

Mild-mannered bank president Russell Fletcher wakes up one morning to realize he has been suffering from amnesia, and during that time he has built a new life as the slum lord of a part of town people call East Hell. And a man with a gun who wants to be the new slum king is coming for him.

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PASSION WEB – PB830, nd (1964). Cover by Bonfils.

Lois Frost is an industrial spy. She works for Nationwide Oil. Lois is sent out West to seduce a virile geologist named Kirk Parsons, who knows where a rival oil company holds secret oil reserves. But Lois runs into Clint Sandifer, who dresses like a  cowboy and wields a big whip. 

SUNDOWN READER

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LUST TREASURES – SR513, 1964.

Modern-day soldier of fortune Len Wolfe (who identifies himself as a lone wolf in the first chapter for any readers not paying attention) takes on a job from an American fruit company to carry a fortune in silver to buy off a bandit called “El Presidente”   running a Central American banana republic.  Wolfe arrives as a revolution breaks out. The situation begins to get dicey when Wolfe falls for El Presidente’s mistress.


SINNERS NEST – SR571, 1965. Cover art by Darrell Millsap.

Perry Quentin from Kenton Heights has invented a new photo emulsion destined to make a fortune for his employer, Fotochem. On a business trip to London , he meets a stripper named Lora, marries her and brings her home to America . Six weeks later, industry spy Liz Webber wants that new emulsion for her rival company, and sets her wicked sights on Perry. Liz enlists Perry’s neighbor Randy Britton to get Lora out of the way by seducing her. Lora meanwhile has come to realize just why she liked stripping – she’s an exhibitionist.

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FLESH FRUG – SR574, 1965. Cover art by Darrell Millsap.

Poston, a promoter who can sell anything, takes a job revitalizing a dying fishing village on the Pacific Coast . His employers are three sex-crazed sisters who use their considerable skills to entice him into taking the impossible job. He envisions a new resort with a folk music festival where all the college kids will want to come for Spring Break, pouring money into the town’s cash registers. When thousands and thousands of red-blooded American kids show up for the music festival, the whole town goes wild. William Kane has predicted Woodstock four years before it happened.

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ORGY STORM – SR584, 1965.

A hurricane is headed for the Atlantic coast fishing village of Clydeburn, where pop art master Caddo Wallace, lobsterman Eben Blaine and voyeur playboy Garth Connor have more women worked up than they can shake a stick at.  Connor’s lost love Rena arrives in town, like a hurricane.  Eben’s lover Rose has those “gentian-blue eyes” like Christa in SEXPLOSION.

“Evil does live in the world, doesn’t it?”

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SIN SAFARI – SR588, 1966. Cover art by Darrell Millsap.

Great white hunter Peter Kenton is on safari in Africa with nympho sex goddess Barbara Vail’s party and his trusty native gun bearer, Kuroso. Kuroso however has a secret agenda. He is leading them to the village of the Kinoros, a renegade army of raping-and-slaughtering natives planning to wreak havoc. This plan is short-circuited when Barbara Vail, having drained every man on the safari, takes on the entire Kinoro village in one night, exhausting them all and calling for more. 



QUEEN OF TARTS – SR620, 1966.

There’s a new District Attorney cleaning up the town. His wife Teddie didn’t want him to take the job, because she has been keeping a little secret from Bill. She’s running the town’s call-girl operation out of the back of her lingerie shop. Things start to boil when a sadistic hit man is hired to take out the new D.A.

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SEXODUS – SR624, 1966.

Jud Gordon has come home from Vietnam and taken a boring job at his father’s bank in Tindall City . Life turns exciting for Jud when a gorgeous woman named Norma Dance comes in for a loan. Jud is in love, not realizing that Norma needs a sucker on the inside for the bank heist she has planned. Jud knows Norma is a wild one when he sees a whole shelf of Olympia Press books in her apartment. And he knows what Norma is:  “the wildest, most depraved woman I ever met in my life.”

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