Black Friday ebook deals from Amazon

I know that many readers of this blog don't take to ebooks, but they're a great complement to my physical book library - I can read them anywhere, no additional space needed in my house for them. Disable your adblockers to see the full links, or click the inline links.

Here are a few ebooks that I think you'd be interested in, and Amazon has good deals going on today:

The first 2 books in Joe Gore's excellent DKA series for 2 and 3 dollars respectively. What a deal! The DKA series has a great detective agency in charge of repossessing cars whose drivers have missed their payments. A great cast of characters in the agency, and always interesting plots.






The best writing about the worst books - it's hard to stop laughing, so maybe this isn't the best recommendation on a full stomach. But laughter is supposed to be the best medicine, so here you go with Bill Pronzini's Gun in Cheek

Pronzini takes aim at the worst western fiction in this one, and what a roundup it is! Six-Gun in Cheek



Probably more bargains there, but i haven't found them ... yet! Let you know when i do. Happy shopping.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone...

Hope you had an easier time getting your turkey than this guy. Happy Thanksgiving

Western Story Magazine, November 29 1930 cover by Sidney Riesenberg

Swipe or inspiration - you decide

I saw a post on a Facebook group about an artist copying (swiping) a cover from a previous issue of another magazine, and i also heard that it was done many times. I decided to take a deeper look into this, you decide if it's swipe or inspiration. Leave comments with your thoughts.

Shadows at the waterhole (1907) by Frederic Remington vs. Adventure May 15, 1931 by L.F. Wilford

Adventure 1936 May cover  by Walter Baumhofer vs Short Stories Feb 25 1938 by A.R.Tilburne

Adventure March 1 1932 cover by G.C. Delano vs Short Stories December 25 1936 by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure July 1934 cover by Walter Baumhofer vs Short Stories January 10 1937 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure June 1 1931 cover by Remington Schuyler vs Short Stories March 25 1937  cover by A.R. Tilburne

Adventure May 1931 cover by Remington Schuyler vs Short Stories April 25 1937 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure June 1934 cover by Walter Baumhofer vs Short Stories September 25 1937 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure March 1936 cover by Hubert Rogers vs Short Stories April 10 1938 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure November 10 1929 cover by Hubert Rogers vs Short Stories July 25 1938 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure December 15 1930 cover by G.C. Delano vs Short Stories May 10 1939 cover by A.R. Tilburne

Adventure December 1939 cover by Wesley Neff vs Short Stories December 10 1943 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Adventure March 15 1928 cover by Dominic Cammerota vs Short Stories February 10 1946 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Interior illustration for Dusky by Jim Kjelgaard from Short Stories February 10 1946

And this last one has to be unique, the same artist on both sides

Adventure September 1941 cover by A. R. Tilburne vs Short Stories September 10 1944 cover by A. R. Tilburne

Pulp AdventureCon 2018 - photos

The door to paper treasures

The dealer's room

Dealer with his collection

Some more magazines

Adventure House's wall of pulp

Some detective and mystery pulps

Art from science fiction digests

Stag magazine cover

Ken for Men magazine cover

More art

Frank R. Paul interior illustrations for Famous Fantastic Mysteries

Cover for Talbot Mundy paperback "The Devil's Guard"

Virgil Finlay interior illustration

Roy Krenkel print of Red Sonja

Couple of pulp collectors having a "friendly" discussion

My find - Adventure #1, November 1910. Not in great shape, very hard to find in any condition.

Review: Art of the pulps

Beautiful art - a retro blast from the past

This book takes readers back to an era without television or radio, when magazine covers featured original art designed to lure readers into picking up and buying them. From the early 1900s to the early 1950s, pulp magazines were the popular entertainment media of choice for millions of readers across the English speaking world.They were published in America and to a lesser extent, in Canada and the United Kingdom and read across the world, reaching as far as Australia and South Africa. Some were even translated into French and Spanish.

The pulp magazines were the medium through which a variety of genres established themselves - science fiction, fantasy and hardboiled detective among them. They brought a range of authors and memorable characters from Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan), Johnston McCulley (Zorro), Lester Dent (Doc Savage), H. P. Lovecraft (Cthulu), Robert E. Howard (Conan, Solomon Kane, Kull) and Dashiell Hammett (The Continental Op, Sam Spade) to readers. And they sold this with covers that made you want to pick them up, and interior illustrations that drew the reader deeper into the stories, till you bought and took them home.

This book surveys the pulp magazine field, taking us on a journey from the early days of the field in the 1900s when there a few general fiction magazines, to the end in the 1950s, when paperbacks and television replaced the pulps. All the major genres - adventure, detective/mystery, westerns, aviation, sports, love/romance, horror, science fiction, hero pulps (predecessors of the comics) and spicys - are covered. It's rounded off with a couple of essays on two great artists and authors. Each section's essay comes from an expert in the field, and all are published writers, so they know how to tell the tale. 

But you're not buying this book for the essays - excellent though they are - the art is the reason to buy this book.The book is printed on glossy paper, and the scans are from original issues in the personal collections of the authors. Each chapter is about 20% text and 80% art; with 12 chapters and about 240 pages it's almost 200 pages of gorgeous art for your money. A few sample pages below (some pages are cropped because my scanner isn't big enough):

Adventure	Aviation	Mystery/Detective
Hero	Horror	Romance
Science Fiction/Fantasy	Spicy	Sports
Weird Menace		Western

If you like illustration art, you have to pick this up. Link here: http://amzn.to/2iSHMjy