"My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him." -- Neil Gaiman Ho hum. Another day; another corpse dredged up from the depths of Lake Michigan. This time it’s a body having the bottom half of a negro man and the top half of a Chinese woman joined together at the waist by some kind of greenish glue. But we don’t linger long at this unpleasant scene because Angus MacWhorter and his Mammoth Motorized Show are in another pickle. If Angus can’t pay back $3000 -- in $100 bills whose serial numbers must be evenly divisible by 13! -- he’ll lose the circus to the dastardly Geispitz Gmohling. But the needed bills are on the other side of Old Twistibus, the windingest road in the world, and Giff O’Dell, who has the bills, is obsessed with solving the Crazy Corpse murder. Now that is a pickle!

A collection of mystery criticism and essays from the reviewer of books for Ellery Queen Magazine. Jon Breen is the worthy successor of Anthony Boucher and his hundreds of reviews of books and authors is a must-have for all serious mystery fans. A Ramble House book

Ultra-Boiled is a collection of 23 stories about the evil men do, and they're often told in the voice of the evil-doer. Gary Lovisi has a knack for the tough edge of literature, spending his life immersed in the paperback world of Brooklyn, and in these stories, hand-picked for their disturbance factor, he shows you what ULTRA-BOILED really means. Gary talks about his life in crime in an introduction.

A poor sidewalk artist struggles to defeat a fiendish mastermind who is not only intent on world domination, but determined to kill all white people and for reasons that are never made entirely clear, wants to create nymphs, satyrs, and other Greek and Roman demigods through the miracle of vivisection! These characteristics alone would qualify Caspar Pettifranc to take his rightful place alongside John Sunlight, Wu Fang, Doctor Death and the other great villains of the American pulps, but Goddard doesn't stop here. The author also makes Pettifranc a master of voodoo who thus can ring in zombies and the pantheon of loas. For reasons that the author allows to remain obscure, the loas are given to making odd whistling noises, hence the title of the book. Introduction by John Pelan.

From THE JURY BOX, Jon Breen's critical column in ELLERY QUEEN Mystery Magazine: *** Joel Townsley Rogers: Killing Time and Other Stories, with introduction and afterword by Alfred Jan, Ramble House, Six longish pulp stories, dating from 1934 to 1947, represent an undervalued writer. The title story about a disabled World War II veteran trying to break into mystery writing, offers affectionate parody and fair-play detection, while the magazine version of the classic The Red Right Hand captures its offbeat flavor only slightly less effectively than at full length. The outre plots often involve coincidence, though not to the fantastical extent of Harry Stephen Keeler, whose complete works are offered by Ramble House. (An indispensable companion is the earlier Rogers collection Night of Horror and Other Stories [Ramble House, including the much anthologized minor classic "The Murderer" and a Rogers bibliography compiled by son Tom Rogers, expanded by Francis M. Nevins.) And here's what four of America's favorite authors-about-town have to say about Ramble House's two Joel Townsley Rogers' collections, NIGHT OF HORROR and KILLING TIME- "Rogers was the real deal, author of a true masterpiece, The Red Right Hand, and a pulp man who could, and did, do it all. If you want the strong heady thrill of genuine pulp - and not the pale imitation that came later - latch on to both of these collections immediately." - Ed Gorman "Killing Time collects six pulp novellas by Joel Townsley Rogers, including the original version of the classic The Red Right Hand, along with a story about a pulp writer and a story with a character named Captain Sparrow, whom I like to think is a distant cousin to the famous Pirate of the Caribbean. Highly recommended!" - Bill Crider "The six tales gathered here are among Joel Townsley Rogers' most accomplished pulp magazine contributions of the 30s and 40s - cleverly plotted, highly atmospheric, suspenseful, and dripping with menace. The original magazine version of his classic crime novel, The Red Right Hand, and Alfred Jan's insightful analyses of Rogers' work, are the highlights. Killing Time is a must for every connoisseur of vintage crime fiction." - Bill Pronzini "Ramble House has specialized in bringing neglected (and sometimes alternative) geniuses back into print. First came the great Harry Stephen Keeler, then the so-clever Norman Berrow. More recently Ramble House has been sparking the rehabilitation of Joel Townsley Rogers, a versatile and prolific author who seemed to be totally forgotten save for one novel, The Red Right Hand. Killing Time is the second Ramble House collection of Rogers's shorter fiction, and every story in it, from the 1934 'Murder of the Dead Man' to the 1947 title story, hits with a wallop and a sting. Bravo! Bravissimo!" - Richard A. Lupoff

The third novel published by Ramble House by Mark Hansom. It was written in 1935 and has all the hallmarks of Hansom's style, including the premature death of the villain.