Showing posts with label Gregory Shepard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gregory Shepard. Show all posts

Thursday, January 23, 2025

2024: THE STARK HOUSE ANTHOLOGY edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard (Stark House); DEATH COMES TOO LATE by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime): CF publishers celebrate their notable 2024 anniversaries (25th/20th)...and index to BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND 1, edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash


Gregory Shepard's Stark House, which has mostly specialized in bringing vintage novels and collections of hardboiled/noir and other crime-fiction classics and "forgotten" (including previously unpublished) work back or first into print, mostly in two (or more) novels-in-one-volume trade paperback editions, for the last 26 years, and Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime line, which has mostly focused on new (and previously unpublished from decades past) work in a similar vein in mass-market and trade paperback editions for 21 years, both serving (clearly and justly) sustained and appreciative audiences, offered in 2024 anniversary compilations: an anthology of selections from Stark House authors (including a newly-published Peter Rabe short story and a Jada Davis short novel), and a collection of twenty of Ardai's short stories (offered in the stead of another novel, such as Fifty-to-One, which he wrote to celebrate the publication of Hard Case's first fifty titles, with chapter titles taken from each of those releases). Both have had notable sidelines: Stark House (as Shepard notes in his preface) having begun with a hardcover edition of a (Ms.) Storm Constantine fantasy collection, The Oracle Lips (a title that might've worked for a Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel, as well), and has offered some further horror and fantasy titles since, as well as a few sf and western items and other fiction, mass-market paperbacks in the Black Gat imprint, and the Staccato Crime and Film Noir Classics lines. Ardai's most visible other offering at first was his series of Gabriel Hunt adventure novels, each written by a different notable adventure/crime fiction writer, beginning with James Reasoner's Hunt for the Well of Eternity, though before he founded Hard Case he worked with the Davis Publications fiction magazine group (later bought by Dell, and currently published by Penny Press) and primarily on their anthology projects--and Hard Case itself has offered a line of graphic novels to go with the purely prose items.

Ninja, our elder, gray tabby cat, will scratch her face against the heavier paper of the Stark House publication's corners more readily. If this is a consideration, be aware of this.

Contents: 
The Stark House Anthology edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard

7 * Stark House Press: The First 25 Years * Gregory Shepard * in
10 * Introduction * Rick Ollerman * in
13 * Hangover * Charles Runyon, (ss) Manhunt December 1960
24 * A Matter of Balance * Peter Rabe (ss) 2024 (first publication)
35 * Invitation to an Accident * "Wade Miller" (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 1955
48 * The Tormented * James McKimmey (nv) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine August 1967
64 * Murderer #2 * Jean Potts (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January 1961
75 * To Kill a Wife * Lionel White (nv) Murder September 1956
89 * So Curse the Day * Jada M. Davis (na) 2024 (first publication)
198 * Art for Money’s Sake * Dan J. Marlowe (ss) The Elks Magazine February 1970
204 * Chester Drum Takes Over * Stephen Marlowe (ss) Ellery Queen’s Anthology #25, Spring/Summer 1973
216 * Sleep Without Dreams * Frank Kane (ss) [Johnny Liddell series] Manhunt February 1956
228 * The Memory Guy * Henry Kane (nv) [Peter Chambers series] Come Seven/Come Death ed. Henry Morrison, Pocket Books, 1965
241 * Nothing in My Way * Orrie Hitt (ss) Smashing Detective Stories July 1955
250 * Preventive Medicine * Harry Whittington (ss) Trapped Detective Story Magazine August 1956
256 * Die, Darling, Die * Gil Brewer (nv) Justice January 1956
275 * The Geek-Girl * "Day Keene" (nv) Adam October 1953
297 * Woman Missing * Helen Nielsen (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1960
318 * Backbite * Lorenz Heller (as "Fredrick Lorenz") (ss)  Justice January 1956
323 * Angie * Ed Gorman (ss) 999 ed. Al Sarrantonio, Avon Books, 1999
336 * Night Games * Bill Pronzini  (ss) Bullets and Other Hurting Things: A Tribute to Bill Crider ed. Rick Ollerman, Down & Out Books, 2021
343 * The Silent One * Fletcher Flora (ss) Hunted Detective Story Magazine #7, December 1955
349 * Beware of the Dog * Fredric Brown (ss) Ten Detective Aces February 1943, as "Hound of Hell"
354 * Hit Me * Rick Ollerman (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #1, 2017
370 * Axe * Gregory Shepard (ss) 2024 (first publication)
378 * Last Night at Skipper’s Lounge * Timothy J. Lockhart (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #2, 2017
390 * Barbarians (Chapters 1-3) * Robert W. Chambers (novel excerpt, 1917) 
402 * Politics Pays Best * E. Phillips Oppenheim (ss) [Major Radford series] The Country Gentleman February 1930
415 * Secretaries Make Such Nice Wives * A. S. Fleischman; also here (ss) Toronto Star Weekly (a 1941 issue; formerly the weekly magazine supplement to the Toronto Star and can be referred to as Star Weekly)
418 * The Dead Man’s Eyes * Robert Silverberg (ss) Playboy August 1988
432 * Disorderly * Barry N. Malzberg (ss) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine January 1968
436 * Instruction for Murder * Bruno Fischer (ss) A Mate for Murder and Other Stories from the Pulps ed. Gary Lovisi, Gryphon Books 1992 (the magazine[s] the stories were sold to folded before scheduled publication in the 1940s, and Lovisi published a slim original-publication collection of them)


Contents:
Death Comes Too Late (20 Stories) by Charles Ardai

15 * Introduction * Charles Ardai * (in)
161 * Jonas and the Frail * Charles Ardai (ss) Blazing! Adventures Magazine #9, 2008
179 * The Deadly Embrace * Charles Ardai (ss) Truth, Justice and..., edited by Thomas Deja, 2004 ebook
203 * Don't Be Cruel * Charles Ardai (ss) Down These Dark Streets, edited by Thomas Deja, 2003 ebook
259 * Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright * Charles Ardai (ss) Black Is the Night ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Titan, 2022
307 * My Husband’s Wife * Charles Ardai  (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2009
327 * A Bar Called Charley’s * Charles Ardai (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine November 1990
345 *  A Free Man * Charles Ardai (ss) BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010)
363 * The Investigation of Things * Charles Ardai (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine February 1991

Fiction reviews, long delayed, to follow. Thanks to Charles Ardai, Gregory Shepard and Patricia Abbott for help with bibliographic information.  TM



And, to add to the indices here, here's the trade paperback version of BEAT to a PULP, Round 1, the 2010 anthology drawn mostly, apparently, from stories first published by the BEAT to a PULP online magazine.

BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010), xiv+396pp, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0615388243, cover illustration by James O'Barr (BtaP 20XX indicates the year the story was featured on the webzine)

vii * Foreword * Bill Crider * fw BtaP 2010
xi * Introduction * David Cranmer * in
xiii * Acknowledgements * Elaine Ash * ak
1 * Maker's and Coke * Jake Hinkson * ss BtaP 20o9
7 * A Free Man * Charles Ardai * ss BtaP 2010
23 * Fangataufa * Sophie Littlefield * ss BtaP 2010
37 * You Don't Get Three Mistakes * Scott D. Parker * ss BtaP 20o9
45 * Insatiable * Hilary Davidson * ss BtaP 20o9
53 * Boots on the Ground * Matthew Quinn Martin * vi BtaP 2010
55 * Studio Dick * Garnett Elliott * ss BtaP 2010
67 * Killing Kate * Ed Gorman * ss BtaP 2010
74 * The Ghost Ship * Evan Lewis * ss BtaP 2010
86 * The Strange Death of Ambrose Bierce * Paul Powers * ss BtaP 2010
96 * Heliotrope * James Reasoner * ss BtaP 2010
110 * The Wind Scorpion * Edwin A. Grainger * ss BtaP 2010
122 * Hard Bite * Anonymous-9 * ss BtaP 20o8
132 * Crap is King * Robert J. Randisi * ss BtaP 2010
151 * The All-Weather Phantom * Mike Sheeter * ss (first published as "Swing High, Sweet Chariot" in the online magazine Hardluck Stories, 2008, edited by Dave Zeltserman and Ed Gorman)
164 * Pripet March * Stephen D, Rogers * ss BtaP 2010
169 * Ghostscapes * Patricia Abbott * ss BtaP 2010
183 * Off Rock * Kieran Shea * ss BtaP 2010 
195 * At Long Last * Nolan Knight * ss BtaP 2010
203 * A Native Problem * Chris F. Holm * ss BtaP 2010
219 * Spend It Now, Pay Later * Nik Morton * ss BtaP 20o9
225 * Spot Marks the X * I. J. Parnham * ss BtaP 2010
236 * Hoosier Daddy * Jedidiah Ayres * ss BtaP 2010
251 * Anarchy Among Friends: A Love Story * Andy Henion * ss BtaP 2010
265 * Cannulation * Glenn Gray * ss BtaP 2010
280 * The Unreal Jesse James * Chap O'Keefe * ss BtaP 20o9
292 * Acting Out * Frank Bill * na BtaP 2010
357 * A History of Pulp * Cullen Gallegher * es BtaP 2010




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Friday, December 6, 2024

Books Received: COLLECTING MYSELF: THE UNCOLLECTED STORIES OF BARRY N. MALZBERG, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard; CREAM OF THE CROP: BEST MYSTERY & SUSPENSE STORIES OF BILL PRONZINI edited by the author, Stark House 2024

Three of my favorite new stories in 1978, not quite a half-century ago but not far from it, the year I started reading fiction magazines regularly and probably more passionately than before or since, were "Strangers in the Fog" by Bill Pronzini, in EQMM's June issue, "Prowl" by Barry Malzberg in Fantastic dated July, and "Another Burnt-Out Case" by Malzberg and Pronzini in the October Fantastic, albeit arguably out of place in that issue, as it wasn't really fantasy, horror nor sf, but a bit of absurdism, that Barry remembers as including as much as they could that just made them laugh and laugh. (Barry doesn't seem to much like "Prowl"--it's an unsparing metaphor for relations between teens and their parents in the form of a vignette about werewolves--and the only reprint of it I'm aware of is in the Fall 2011 issue of Allen Koszowski's Inhuman magazine, apparently not with his permission.)


There's more to say about these, and the careers of these writers, and the noble efforts of Stark House, but it's been a distracting and busy week, and it's not over yet. (A d&b fortnight, by the time it's done.)

Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg by Barry N. Malzberg (Stark House Press, March 8, 2024, 979-8-88601-081-7, $15.95, 186pp, tp, co) [edited by Robert Friedman & Greg Shepard]



Cream of the Crop: Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini edited by the author (all content by BP) Stark House Press, August, 2024, 979-8-88602-099-2, $19.95, 340pp, tp, co

9 * Preface * Bill Pronzini * pr

11 *  Standalones 
13 * Opportunity * Bill Pronzini * ss * Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine December 1967
24 * Proof of Guilt * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 1973
33 * Sweet Fever * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 1976
38 * Smuggler's Island * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 1976
53 * Under the Skin * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine October 1977
58 * Strangers in the Fog * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 1978
66 * A Craving for Originality * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 17 1979 
95 * Liar’s Dice * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine November 1992
102 * Out of the Depths * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine September 1994
117 * Possibilities * Bill Pronzini * nv * The Strand Magazine #17, October 2005/January 2006
131 * The Cemetery Man * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2013
139 * Hooch * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 2014
147 * Snap * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 2015

171 * Carpenter and Quincannon
173 * Gunpowder Alley * [John Quincannon & Sabina Carpenter] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 2012  [Remarkable how often even conscientious reviewers will revise the Marcia Muller character's name into "Sabrina"...TM]

195 * Nameless Detective
197 * Thin Air [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1979
214 * Cat’s-Paw [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * nv * Waves Press, 1983, chapbook
233 * Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * nv * The Eyes Have It ed. Robert J. Randisi, Mysterious Press, 1984
256 * Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * An Eye for Justice ed. Robert J. Randisi, The Mysterious Press, 1988
274 * Souls Burning [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * New Crimes 3 ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Robinson, 1991
281 * La Bellezza Delle Bellezze [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Invitation to Murder ed. Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, Dark Harvest, 1991
305 * Home Is the Place Where [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine November 1995
313 * The Big Bite [Nameless Detective]  * Bill Pronzini * nv * Shots Winter 1999
326 * Who You Been Grapplin’ With? [Nameless Detective] * Bill Pronzini * ss * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine December 2014

339 * Bill Pronzini (1943-date) Bibliography * Bill Pronzini * bi

TM

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Thursday, November 23, 2017

Books Received: THE CLINGERMAN FILES by Mildred Clingerman; WIDOW'S MITE and WHO'S AFRAID? by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Greg Shepard's Stark House has added another two-novel volume to their valuable selection of reprints (full stop, but in this case specifically) of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding's suspense novels, this one replicating in primary content its Ace Double previous paperback edition. I hadn't realized till now, or had forgotten, that she died relatively young, even for her time, in 1955 at 65 or 66 years of age, and while the paperback boom was certainly well under way, she was a bit early to benefit from, at least, Fawcett Gold Medal at its height. Even her more modest novels (the only one I've reviewed so far on the blog, for example, Too Many Bottles or The Party Was the Payoff , depending on which edition one read) are worth the effort. her better ones drew the extended admiration of such contemporaries as Raymond Chandler and such successors as Ed Gorman and Sarah Weinman. Her author portrait on the back is rather reminiscent of Ayn Rand, a writer she in no other way resembles...Sanxay Holding having wit, grace and character (and characters rather than mouthpieces lecturing each other) in her writing...

































  



Through the kindness of Scott Cupp, present as I was not at the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio this year, I now have a copy of The Clingerman Files, edited by Mark Bradley and including apparently all Mildred Clingerman's completed short fiction, previously published or not, in the initial and perhaps only volume to come from Size 5 1/2 B Publishing (we gather from the logo it was probably Clingerman's shoe size), an outfit made up largely of her family. Clingerman was a productive (but not Hugely productive) and highly-regarded fantasy and sf writer of the 1950s and '60s; never wrote a novel, when that was (at least as much as now) the way to a sustained career in the field, and even with sales of two stories collected here, two stories to Collier's  and one to The Ladies Home Companion, didn't get much more than a supplementary income from her writing...her one previous collection, A Cupful of Space, was published by Ballantine in 1961, in the midst of a severe cash-crunch for that company, and as a result her daughter remembers an advance of merely $600...enough to buy a used car then, to be sure, but a far cry from what Ballantine had been able to offer its writers a half-dozen years before (or than either slick magazine would've paid for her short stories individually). Her first story to be published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, "Minister Without Portfolio", was agented, and the editors were amused to have her described as "a beautiful but unpublished writer", leading Anthony Boucher to jokingly wonder what her agent was trying to offer (Boucher and McComas note the phrase, if not their response, in the headnote of the story as published in F&SF for February 1952; the response can be read in The Eureka Years: Boucher and McComas's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1949-1954, edited by Annette Peltz McComas).  I shall be digging into both of these, and other kindly provided items by Scott, in the coming weeks.

 






































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