Paperbacks from Hell

His books have sold over 2 million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

He also writes nonfiction, and his history of the horror paperback boom of the 70s and 80s, Paperbacks from Hell, received the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction.

This is Grady's second time on the show and Steven and I had a wonderful time talking to him about the movie Alien 3.

Was there an alien on board?

This is also a war movie, right? But Alien 3 is a war movie like The Last Command.

It's one of those war movies that's like a hopeless mission, a hopeless outpost.

And in a lot of those kind of war films, you know, if you know anything about history, you often know, oh, no one, I already know when I pay my ticket, no one makes it out of this one, you know.

Charge it a light brigade time, folks, right? Gallipoli,

© BF-WATCH TV 2021 His books have sold over 2 million copies and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

He also writes nonfiction and his history of the horror paperback boom of the 70s and 80s, Paperbacks from Hell, received the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction.

His latest book, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, came out from Berkeley in 2025 in the US and is celebrating a paperback release in 2026.

Welcome, Grady.

The idea that these two women had had.

kids and no one ever knew about it, you know, and that they didn't know their kids was baffling to me.

And so I read this book by Ann Fessler called The Girls Who Went Away, which is an oral history of the maternity homes.

And it's really like, I mean, it is probably the only popular history of the homes written in the U.S., There's some books like Wake Up Little Susie that's about the black experience in homes, but that's a more academic kind of volume.

I was thinking, my friend, uh, I'm friendly with this guy Grady Hendrix.

He has a great nonfiction book called Paperbacks From Hell, and it's all about the, the horror paperback boom of the '80s when, you know...

I mean, there were hundreds, thousands of these books because, you know, in the wake of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, everyone wanted, wanted to be Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

Mm-hmm.

As many fans of vintage horror paperbacks have come to realize, the slasher genre is something of a rarity.

So why is this? Well let me tell you something, in the foreword to Joyride, our friend Will Erickson from the Too Much Horror Fiction blog and co-author Paperbacks From Hell, the reference book Paperbacks From Hell, tries to answer this mystery.

Now I'm not gonna steal a man's accolades, I'm not gonna steal his hard work from him.

You're going to have to get the book, but there is a couple things about Ronald Francis Patrick that I will mention here.