I recently spotted some artwork for sale by Stuart Bodek which was listed as for an unknown cover. I recognised it as the Sphere edition of “Rich” by Graham Masterton and as it was not too expensive I bought it. You can clearly see the original is signed but the book cover has a blurb added right across it. I’ve added it to Stuart’s page HERE along with some more Sphere titles from the same series, possibly with covers by Stuart, but ‘Rich’ is the only one that wraps around. I’ve also added three of Stuart’s from  PAN Horizons, the only ones that I’ve found so far.

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I was pleased to get a copy of the Macmillan newsletter from PAN Archivist Alysoun that contained an article by John Handford about founder of PAN Books, Alan Bott. You can read all the newsletter by clicking  HERE but if you just want to read about Alan jump to page 10. Pleased to find there was a plug for the website at the end, thanks John.

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I’ve also added to the ‘PAN As Seen on Television’ page but yet again it was ‘Bargain Hunt’ on 12th Novemeber 2019. Natasha Raskin Sharp was doing the summing up in front of a book carousel and I managed to spot a PAN title. If you can’t see it click on the picture below to go to find the answer.

As a sideline to PAN Books I also like to see if I can get hold of the Press Campaign Books that went with film releases and especially if they mention PAN as tie-ins.
Here are a couple which show how much importance was placed on the book from very little to nearly a whole page. The books in question are ‘Von Ryan’s Express‘ and ‘Mayerling‘ I’ve also included a coup of other Westheimer titles from PAN.

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Having found Linda Goodman’s book ‘Sun Signs’ as below I have also discovered she did twelve others for each sign of the zodiac. I have six so far and I am just wondering if it is worth trying to get all of them, have I better things to do with my life and my money? Click HERE to see the ones so far. I’m tempted to get all twelve to see if I can cut and paste the images off the front to make a complete circle! The covers are by Maggie Kneen and I contacted her and she kindly replied “Dear Tim, I’m not sure what happened to the artwork; I think it must have been in a portfolio that went missing years ago. I did enjoy that job, which was done in the 1980s in my London bedsit days. Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs was my teenage ‘bible’, so I felt immensely lucky and proud to have been given the job. Esoteric projects often seemed to come my way, as I illustrated Psycards, and the Old English Tarot as well. I’ll have another think about it and let you know if I’m wrong and the artwork is still in a drawer somewhere. Best wishes, Maggie Kneen”

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…. and a quick reminder if you are in Wolverhampton the pop up bookshop is there again in the Wulfrun Centre until 28th November. Good selection of book, hardback and paperback, fiction and non fiction plus magazines and comics. I was pleased I got a couple of PANs in very good condition to replace ones that could be described as ‘reading copies’

I’ve mentioned before the ‘Topliners‘ series written for reluctant readers in their teens which PAN started to publish in 1968 but, apart from odd titles in the Piccolo series, there weren’t titles aim specifically at main stream teenagers until the ‘PAN Horizons’ series first launched in 1986.

There had been the ‘Heartlines‘ series from 1965 but that was really just romance for girls. ‘PAN Horizons‘ was for 14 to 16 year olds, male and female, with titles from well know authors covering pertinent topics. The first fifteen had uniform covers by artists such as Gary Keane (of sports illustrations fame) Paul Finn and Kaye Hodges (or Kage as she is listed on one book cover) I have made contact with Kaye and it turns out there is not enough money to be made as an artist these days so she now works at Maidstone Hospital which by a weird coincidence is where our first Grandchild was born just over three weeks ago. We have an open invite to visit her in her studio when we are next down visiting. Kaye kindly sent me a couple of photos of her original works, one for a Corgi and one for a Horizons cover on the page.. Click on the image below to see the original of the Corgi title.

The first titles for the Horizons series followed the same format with an eye catching painting for the cover but later they changed to a photo cover for some plus altering the spine logo when they dropped the word PAN from the series name. I’ve included a few that have not arrived yet, hence it says WEB if I’ve found a good image or title if not and no artists name.

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The novel ‘Odette’ by Jerrard Tickell was first published in 1955 as PAN GP35, as X368 in 1965, in 1971 and again in 1972 each time with a different cover and in my opinion not always for the best. I’ve tried to find out if there are any more but not discovered any yet. I’ve put individual editions on their respective pages but also put all four together HERE

If there was competition for the most pages in a PAN book I think ‘….And Ladies of the Club’ by Helen Hoover Santmyer (possible contender for longest name as well)  would win. The first edition has just 1176 pages but is the larger size whereas the 1988 edition is the more normal size and has 1433 measuring just over two inches thick. I’ve look along the shelves and can’t see anything that comes anywhere near it so at the moment, and unless you know better it is in number one place. The cover of the first edition is by Pam Masco who painted a lot of the PAN covers including Monica Dickens covers and the later is by Stuart Bobek also mentioned previously.

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Jane Frank of ‘WOW Art’ is having one of her sales and this time it’s for ‘Halloween’ and I would love to buy the Keith Scaife cover for ‘The Werewolves in London’ but at $800 plus $87 for postage with a $15 discount it’s a bit more than I want to pay.

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Just spotted this on the PAN Macmillan twitter page, well done Adam.