Haunts and By-Paths Store

	TOPPER Thorne Smith is a master of urbane wit and sophisticated repartee. Topper, his best-known work, is the hilarious, ribald comedy on which the hit television show and movie (starring Cary Grant) were based. It all begins when Cosmo Topper, a law-abiding, mild-mannered bank manager, decides to buy a secondhand car, only to find it haunted by the ghosts of its previous owners--the reckless, feckless, frivolous couple who met their untimely demise when the car careened into an oak tree. The ghosts, George and Marion Kerby, make it their mission to rescue Topper from the drab "summer of suburban Sundays" that is his life--and they commence a series of madcap adventures that leave Topper, and anyone else who crosses their path, in a whirlwind of discomfiture and delight. As enchanting today as it was when first published in 1926, Topper has set the standard in American pop culture for such mischievous apparitions as those seen in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Heaven Can Wait, Beetlejuice, and Bewitched.
	TOPPER TAKES A TRIP The beloved characters--mortal and immortal--of Topper return in this uproarious romp through the south of France. One of Thorne Smith's best-loved comedies, it proves once again that he is the undisputed master of urbane wit and sophisticated repartee. Cosmo Topper, the mild-mannered bank manager who was persuaded to take a walk on the wild side by the ghosts of George and Marion Kerby in Topper, finds himself reunited with his dyspeptic wife for an extended vacation on the Riviera. But he doesn't have long to enjoy the peace and quiet before the irrepressible Kerbys materialize once again and start causing fracases, confusing the citizenry, alarming the gendarmes, getting naked, and turning every occasion into revelry or melee. Soon Marion decides that Topper as a ghost would be even more laughs than Topper in the flesh. And all she needs to arrange is one simple little murder.
	THE NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS Thorne Smith's rapid-fire dialogue, brilliant sense of the absurd, and literary aplomb put him in the same category as the beloved P. G. Wodehouse. The Night Life of the Gods--the madcap story of a scientist who instigates a nocturnal spree with the Greek gods--is arguably his most sparkling comedic achievement. Hunter Hawk has a knack for annoying his ultrarespectable relatives. He likes to experiment and he particularly likes to experiment with explosives. His garage-cum-laboratory is a veritable minefield, replete with evil-smelling clouds of vapor through which various bits of wreckage and mysteriously bubbling test tubes are occasionally visible. With the help of Megaera, a fetching nine-hundred-year-old lady leprechaun he meets one night in the woods, he masters the art (if not the timing) of transforming statues into people. And when he practices his new witchery in the stately halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art-- setting Bacchus, Mercury, Neptune, Diana, Hebe, Apollo, and Perseus loose on the unsuspecting citizenry of Prohibition-era New York--the stage is set for Thorne Smith at his most devilish and delightful.
	OUT O' LUCK Out O' Luck" is the second book culled from Thorne Smith's naval days as editor of "The Broadside." This novel as well as its predecessor, "Biltmore Oswald" proved very popular in the late teens and early twenties. While "Out O' Luck" didn't fare as well in sales as "Biltmore," it still carried on the adventures of inept sailor, Biltmore Oswald. Smith wrote these stories to fill the empty space in "The Broadside," the official journal of the Navy, yet the officers loved them, much to Smith's suprise, increasing the circulation of the journal. After Smith left the Navy, Frederick Stokes & Co. took the material and split it into two books detailing Biltmore's adventures. While the story is quite antiquated, it still provides some humorous writing from a master wordsmith just beginning to flex his creative muscles. The story also provides some very good descriptions of the day-to-day duties of early 20th century sailors.
	BILTMORE OSWALD Before there was Popeye, Sad Sack, Beetle Bailey and Crock, there was Biltmore Oswald. Biltmore Oswald is the compilation of a weekly series that Thorne Smith wrote for the Naval Journal Broadside. It's the diary of Biltmore Oswald, a hapless naval recuit, and his day to day adventures during World War I. Oswald, a naive innocent, finds himself in many a compromising situation: Showering in the hotel room of the wife of a murderous, jealous man; observing French men greeting each other with kisses, and being pursued by beautiful women, much to the displeasure of his sweetie, Polly. This, as Thorne Smith's first attempt at writing, proved to be quite successful for its time, yielding a sequel, "Out 'o' Luck."
	THE STRAY LAMB Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb had a wife, a daughter, and a commutation ticket. He worked hard, looked at women on trains and did nothing about it, suffered his wife to play about platonically (he thought) with a Mr. Leonard Gray, who was interested in amateur theatricals. Mr. Lamb was, in a word, the Great American Commuter. That was before he met the russett man in the woods, and woke up one morning to find himself a handsome balck stallion, practically free from his wife and the world. It interfered with his business and social life, but Mr. Lamb didn't particularly mind that - and there were compensations. After that Mr. Lamb became in succession a good many different kinds of creature, all of which helped to give him a new viewpoint on the world - as for instance: a sea-gull, watching the beautiful Sandra in her less public moments. "The Stray Lamb" is a hilarious book, a gay, ribald, knowing book, with a deep strain of wisdom and humanity flowing beneath the brilliance of the story.
	RAIN IN THE DOORWAY When the mysterious hand pulled Mr. Hector Owen (who was waiting there pretty hopelessly for his wife) through the rainswept, dismal doorway on a depressing New York street, it pulled him at the same time into a new life - a life where inhibitions vanished and dreams came true. For this is the odyssey of Mr. Owen, the average man, who never had had his share of fun, whom life bullied and harried, who wanted nothing so much as to go away somewhere and hide. Instead, through the miraculous doorway, he was to meet love and adventure, to fall in with Miss Honor Knightly, that paragon of her sex; with Mr. Monk, who had written a book, and with Minnie the stuffed whale, who was simply inert; with the three outrageous shopkeepers, Messrs. Larkin, Britt-Britt and Dinner; with hordes of women who pursued him clamorously; with triple martinis served in a stein; with, in short, the kind of a life he had always wanted to live.
	TURNABOUT Turnabout begins with a description of how much Sally Willows hates the sound of her husband's cracking toes. Tim Willows likes nothing better than a good toe cracking. The couple begin bickering and arouse the attention of Mr. Ram, a little Egyption idol statuette resting on the mantle of their bedroom. Mr. Ram can only take so much of this bickering night after night and proceeds to transfer Tim's mind to Sally's and vice versa. In other words, Tim becomes Sally and Sally becomes Tim. One of the funniest scenes I can remember reading is then a pregnant Tim (Sally) has to go to the doctor for a complete physical. Even though the text is nearing 70 years old, Thorne Smith's wonderful writing style is still as fresh and funny today as it was when it first came out. Yes, this is a familiar theme, but this is the story that started it all. Yet another wonderful example of Thorne Smith's innovative contribution to the world of film and literature.
	THE BISHOP'S JAEGERS Peter Duane Van Dyck, a 34 year old coffee magnate, Bishop Waller and four other passengers fogbound on the Staten Island Ferry leave their stranded vessel seeking help and find themselves shipwrecked in a nudist colony. The man leading the nudist colony, named Jones, carries a duck under his arm that goes by the name of Havelock Ellis. Jones and the group welcome the stranded strangers ashore but request that they adhere to the colony's policy concerning the restricted use of clothing. Those that comply have a jolly time living it up with the rest of the ribald group. Those that don't (Bishop Waller) become the subject of ridicule. As with almost all Thorne Smith novels, the fun ensues when the characters let down their hair (take off their clothes) and thumb their noses at the rules and regulations set up by society.
	THE PASSIONATE WITCH This uproarious novel recounts the remarkable consequences of a marriage of a meek and respectible man with a grade-A witch. T. Wallace Wooly, Jr., a wealthy widower who lived a quiet and stuffy life on a diet of vitamins and vegetable juices, did not know what he was getting in for when he rescued a strange woman, entirely nude, from a burning hotel. In fact, Mr. Wooly was a little bewildered a week later to discover that he had taken the lady as his wife. His bride's unconventional antics were eventually to revolutionize Mr. Wooly's life. He who had never in his life drunk anything stronger than carrot juice was to find that steady alcoholic consumption was requisite to peace of mind. There follow some of the finest binges in literature, climaxed by the memorable scene in which Mr. Wooly disguised as an old lady from Perth Amboy, appears at a Turkish bath.

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