Thrills & Chills

Starting on a new book (what a surprise!): This time I'm going for Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me [1st Edition, Dell Pocket size, 1965--another library book sale coup]. I love these little pocket size books that came out from the late 1930s to 1960s. In fact, I had great plans to scoop up a whole slew of them back in 2007. I'd been promised a "blank check" at Mason's Rare & Used Books in Lebanon as an anniversary present from my husband. We had just discovered (in the previous year) that Mr. Mason once again owned a used bookstore in Indiana. (I lived at the original Mason's when I was growing up in Wabash.) After a couple of trips to buy small amounts of books (and watching me gaze longingly at the substantial section of pocket editions), Brad told me about my present. I was ecstatic...book lover's heaven...with visions of armloads of pocket size mysteries being carted out to the car, I couldn't wait to get to Lebanon to find......the store absolutely empty. Shelves gone....all the glorious books vanished.....I think my agonized yelps could be heard all the way back to Bloomington. I still wonder where all his stock went and whether I could get my hands on those little editions.




But, I digress...back to Hitchcock. I went through a major Hitchcock collection phase when I was in late elementary school. I read anthologies with titles such as Stories Not for the Nervous and Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked. My mom got a little worried about me and my spine-tinglers--especially when it came time for the Young Authors conference (for which all 5th & 6th graders had to make books) and I submitted a collection of short stories featuring ghosts and swamp monsters and things that go bump in the night. She didn't think that quite the thing....

So, full of nostalgia for those days of freaking my mom out more than the stories ever freaked me out...I'll be settling in with my Hitchcock tonight. With the lights on full and hoping that the scratching noise at the window is just the neighbor's cat and not whatever creepy-crawlie is featured in the latest story.