ARE YOU ARE MAMMOTH HUNTER?

Being a frequenter of Charity shops I always look for horror novels to add to the 'bleeding' pile.

Some books I see are like echoes from libraries long closed, books I would have read back when but never did.

One such book is a novel I see a lot on Charity shelves, usually in hardback with a dustjacket:

The Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel.

It's part of a series from this American writer called the Earth Children, which has sold mammoth amounts since 1980, the first of which was the Clan of the Cave Bear and perhaps its most famous installment.

Here's the entire run of Auel's I saw on an online sale, all looking beautiful in their neat jackets and no doubt quite collectable. The magpie in me is very attracted to lovely sets like these.

Oddly enough I've never seen paperbacks of these in Charity shops.

Despite wanting to be a hammer-wielding paleontologist when I was a kid and like many of you having a healthy obsession with dinosaurs and fossils, I wasn't attracted to Clan of the Cave Bear when it came out. In 1980 I was 19 and new interests had wandered into my cave, namely girls, my rock band and birdwatching.

In fact I've never really been drawn to pre-historic novels or movies for that matter. Not since the heady days of Harryhausen's lizards, which I loved.

Later attempts to re-create ancient humanity like Quest for Fire and 10,000 BC I missed altogether, which I should maybe rectify.

Not sure if I've even seen Hammer's One Million BC. I do remember Raquel Welch's famous hide bikini shot from it being a sought-after poster in the back of American comics like Creepy and Eerie. She was often placed side by side with Karloff's Frankenstein stood in a doorway. My older brother may have had Miss. Welch up on his bedroom wall. I had Karloff a few years later.

Maybe Clan of the Cave Bear is the most obvious entry point for either the film version or series of books. Have you seen or read it readers?