When we were in Germany the last time, we visited this amazing fleamarket in Cologne (I think it was Cologne… it could have been somewhere else…); anyway, it was amazing – bit more expensive but had a fantastic array of mid century design, 60s objects and just generally some impressive looking stuff for us to rummage through. Some of the things I bought were this selection of books for 50 cents each:

Translated as ‘Escape the Night’.

No prizes for translating that one. Even if you’ve never learned any German, ‘Der Tiger’ is a fairly obvious one!

The original title for this one is ‘The French Key Mystery’. How on earth that relates to a bear holding a bloodied knife is anyone’s guess. The German translates to ‘The Iron Bear’. Or bar. It could be bar. I put it into Google translate without the umlaut… I’m not sure how much difference it makes!

That one has the original title of ‘Death before Dinner’; I can see the link much more clearly between the picture and the title here!

What I like about these is the stark boldness of the graphics. The stories come from the 1930s, but these editions were published in the 1950s. One day, I may improve my German so much that I can even read them, rather than just enjoying their slightly morbid front covers.