Borderline

          Meg Rector slept until noon. Sleeping was easy. The hotel was expensive and the air-conditioning worked the way it was supposed to. The bed she slept in had a firm mattress. The sheets were good percale, and they were perfectly clean. She'd had half a pint of Beefeater gin before she went to bed, not enough to leave her hung over in the morning, just enough for deep sleep to come in a hurry.

Borderline
Lawrence Block
1961

http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bios.cgi?entry=bk123&type=excerpt

Casino Moon

       All the houses seemed low, gray, and falling apart. No matter how much i'd struggled and hustled, it seemed i hadn't really gone anywhere.

Peter Blauner
Casino Moon
1994

        https://yellowedandcreased.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/casino-moon-peter-blauner/

More Obscure Covers

New Pulp

New 2014 re-issues on Hard Case Crime of lost Pulp

Nowhere Else to Be

        Inside the grandstand was a crowd of men who had nowhere else to be in the middle of  a weekday afternoon. They lined up nine and ten deep at the twelve brass-barred windows where tellers took the money eagerly pushed through the bars and handed back slips of paper. Drifts of spent papers littered the floor, kicked and crumpled underfoot, ignored. There were large windows looking down into the horses' stables so you could get a good look at the contenders.

Ariel S. Winter
Falling Star
from
Twenty-Year Death
2012

Published by Hard Case Crime Books

Casino Moon

             I was watching from the parking lot of a club called Raffertys, on the other side of  Gardners basin. It was a short boxy car-battery of a place with a blue neon Schaefer sign in the window. I'd stop by once or twice a week in those days to help total up liquor receipts and invoices.    
                                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
           All the houses seemed low, gray and falling apart. No matter how much i'd struggled and hustled, it seemed i hadn't really gone anywhere.

Casino Moon
Peter Blauner
1994

cover
Ricky Mujica
Hard Case Crime 

Forgotten Waitress

          A never before published lost novel by James M. Cain is due to come out later this year on Hard Case Crime and we all hope it lives up to our expectations from the man who brushed his reputation with the legends of Chandler and Hammett.