MARECHAL, LUCIE. _The Mesh_ (trans. by Virgilia Peterson.) Appleton 1949, pbr Bantam, 1951, 1953, 1959. Excellent novel of a Belgian family; the weakling son marries, brings his bride into home dominated by his mother, shadowed by his lonely sister. Eventually sister takes the young woman away from her brother.
MARLOWE, STEPHEN. _Homicide is My Game._ Gold Medal 1959 pbo. Hardboiled murder mystery involving a teen-age sex club—a businessman is involved of running it, but the real culprit is his daughter, Liz. She is also a lesbian. Evening waster.
MARK, EDWINA. (pseud of Edwin Fadiman jr). _My Sister, my Beloved._ Citadel 1955, pbr Berkley 1956. Two young sisters, daughters of a drunken lush of a mother, fall into a too-close relationship as Eve, the older, protects young Sheila from their mother’s beatings and tantrums. Sheila plays around and gets pregnant; mother, at the stage where alcohol will kill her, is given a big drink by Eve, who then arranges for Sheila to have an abortion and the two of them to live happily ever after; instead, Sheila marries the boy and Eve is whipped half to death by one of her mother’s gigolos. One of _those_ books—where anything from abortion to rape is preferable to lesbianism.
+ _The Odd Ones._ Berkley pbo, 1959. Jean, small-town girl running away, comes to New York and falls in with Sherri, tied to a crazy husband. Rather good and not condemnatory at all; rather restrained for a pbo, although of course it has the obligatory sexy stuff.
MARR, REED. _Women without Men._ Gold Medal pbo, 1956. Naive, if not too intelligent girl sent to a woman’s reformatory, encounters the usual hardening experiences—corrupt matrons, police-court-type lesbians, trusties and well-meaning officials who have their lives to live and can’t or won’t do anything to better conditions. Good of its kind.
MARSHE, RICHARD. _A Woman Called Desire._ (Orig. pub. 1950 under title of _Wicked Woman_) Berkley pbr 1959, scv.
MARSTON, JOHN. _Venus With Us; a Tale of the Caesars._ N. Y. Sears, 1932. pbr Universal Pub. 1953 tct _The Private Life of Julius Caesar_. Fast, funny, risque historical novel—or romance—with approximately six historical errors per chapter, but a lot of fun nevertheless. The scenes laid in the College of Vestals are exclusively lesbian; there are both serious, emotional affairs between women, and funny light-hearted ones in the manner of King Pausole. Good of kind.