Cover of the Week: Nurse Todd's Stranger Summer by Zillah K. Macdonald & Vivian J. Ahl
Paperback Library #50-884, 1962 Cover artist Lou Marchetti
Lou Marchetti is a master cover artist for paperbacks and hardcovers. His website says, “Lou almost never painted directly from life. He relied primarily on still photographs, movie stills, and magazine clippings for inspiration, using his unique ability to creatively synthesize a single image from bits and pieces.” His work is colorful and very vivid. The cover for Nurse Todd’s Strange Summer is a bit of an outlier as he painted covers primarily for mystery and suspense fiction. I love his montage of images that reflect the story inside. The pose of Nurse Todd is especially good.
Nurse fiction is not nearly as popular as it once was, but there are still readers who adore the combination of romance and suspense. Susannah Clark runs a publishing house (and excellent website) that reprints nurse novels. Her site is a great introduction to this once-popular genre. We hope to speak with Susannah in the future for a Nurse Novel podcast.
From the blurb: “Once there was a mansion by the sea… Where a vivacious, beautiful young nurse was plunged into mystery. Where a handsome wealthy patient longed to be her lover. Where the local residents hated the man who healed them. Where a dream summer became a nightmare!”