It's funny, just the other day I was wondering how many pulp covers there were that featured cold weather. It's hard to have a scantily clad woman in cold weather, yet here we are....



Link.

The "original" Robert B. Parker?

Ah, I see. From the HCC site...

THE REDISCOVERED PULP CLASSIC
BY THE ORIGINAL ROBERT B. PARKER!

Decades before Robert Brown Parker began writing his books about Spenser, a man named Robert Bogardus Parker (1905-1955) penned this extraordinary novel of post-war intrigue.

From the corridors and compartments of the Orient Express to the shadowy, ruined streets of Budapest—which he saw firsthand as a foreign correspondent during World War II—Parker takes you on a nightmare tour of a land where life is cheap, old hatreds run strong, and a couple of Americans can find themselves in more danger than they ever imagined.

With all the immediacy of the wartime dispatches Parker filed from Turkey, Danzig, Warsaw, and Bucharest and all the authority of a man who himself spent three years crossing borders without a passport and narrowly avoiding arrest by the Gestapo, PASSPORT TO PERIL paints a heart-stopping picture of desperate men in a desperate time.


First publication in more than 50 years!
Featuring a new afterword by one of the author’s daughters, talking about her father’s real-life experiences behind enemy lines
Author served as a war correspondent, witnessing Germany’s march into Poland in 1939, the Russian conquest of Bessarabia, and the Spanish Civil War

Sounds very cool.

That cover to Last Quarry though is pretty unimpressive imo.

The latest from Charles Ardai...

****************************

Friends,

We just put a new book up on our Web site (www.HardCaseCrime.com): PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker. This is not the same Robert B. Parker as the current author who writes the best-selling Spenser detective novels -- this Robert B. Parker died in 1955 after a short but accomplished career as a journalist during World War II and (it later turned out) as an agent on behalf of the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. PASSPORT TO PERIL is a terrific thriller set in the shadowy streets of war-torn Budapest, as an American traveling on a stolen passport hunts for the secret of his brother's death. The cover is by Greg Manchess and the opening chapter (which takes place on the Orient Express!) will keep you riveted. You can find both now at our site.

Looking ahead, we have an exciting bit of news to share about another upcoming book: We recently learned of the existence of an unpublished novel by the great pulp writer Lester Dent (creator of classic pulp hero Doc Savage). It's called HONEY IN HIS MOUTH, it's a crime novel Dent originally wrote with the publisher Gold Medal in mind, it's one heck of a page-turner...and we'll be publishing it in 2009.

What's that? You want more? Well, no guarantees yet, but...I just got back from the annual "Bouchercon" mystery convention (where SONGS OF INNOCENCE won the Shamus Award, incidentally -- if you haven't read it yet, now you really have to!), and while we were standing on line for drinks atop the catacomb where Edgar Allan Poe is buried, Max Allan Collins and I fell to talking, and...let's just say we may not have seen the last of the hitman known as Quarry.

Which isn't the worst reason I can imagine to pick up our latest title, THE FIRST QUARRY, now available in a bookstore near you. And of course there are other reasons, too -- starting with the fact that you'll enjoy the heck out of it.

Finally, a reminder: We're just 6 weeks away from our big "50th anniversary" book, FIFTY-TO-ONE! Any fan of our books is going to want to get their hands on that one -- so if you haven't already asked your local bookseller to order or hold a copy for you, now's the time...

Best,
Charles
---------
Charles Ardai
Editor, Hard Case Crime

I took this a couple months ago, but kept forgetting to upload it.

Happy birthday, Hard Case Crime!



I think I need some more bookcases...

What is that slim book between the Wounded and the Slain - Blackmailer?

Those are little preview giveaways (I think there are 2 of them) that HCC printed up to promote their upcoming titles. They've got covert art and excerpts from the upcoming books.

Nice.

Here's your monthly reminder. David Schow's Gun Work is landing in stores within the next week. I'm particularly excited about this one, as I've been a Schow fan for a couple decades! Watch for it!

iTunes new release days are Tuesdays, comic books come out every Wednesday ... is there a set day of the week for new books in stores? (Specifically HCC of course.)

Most new releases are on Tuesdays... But it really depends a lot on the bookstore. They've got the books ahead of time, so it's just a matter of when they put them out. (And release dates are notoriously flexible in publishing.)

I don't know specifically about HCC -- but I assume they fluctuate even more, given that their book club sends them out to subscribers well in advance of the bookstore distribution.

I worked at a few bookstores years ago, and I can also tell you that a lot depends on when boxes are actually opened and how long it takes for books to get to shelves. A book can sit in the receiving room, encased in its box or on a shelving cart, for days past the release date. I would also point out that I don't think I ever paid attention to "street dates" except for the most high-profile of releases.

All that to say, I often go into my local B&N on a book's release date, and the book is either on a cart waiting to be shelved or still in the back room. Or still in a box somewhere.

Here's the latest update to the HCC website.



AUGUST 2009

SOME MEN AND SOME MERCHANDISE
ARE JUST TOO HOT TO HANDLE

All Tony Catell knew when he broke into the university science lab was that they had a gold ingot on the premises for some sort of experiment. So he stole it. What he didn’t know was that the experiment involved nuclear power—and that the gold was dangerously radioactive.

Now the cops and the FBI are on Tony’s trail, Tony’s underworld contacts don’t want anything to do with him, and the loot he’s lugging around is leaving a swath of radiation sickness and death in his path.

And since he’s just come from his third stint in prison, if they catch him, he’s not going back to jail—he’s going to the electric chair...


--First publication in 45 years
--By the author of classic suspense novels such as THE BOX, ANATOMY OF A KILLER, and MURDER ME FOR NICKELS
--Erskine Caldwell on STOP THIS MAN!: "I couldn’t put this book down!"

I wonder if HCC will publish the rest of those early Michael Crichton (John Lange) novels?

I was thinking the same the other day -- there are six others:

Wow, I had no idea there were so many.

I talked to Charles Ardai about this a while ago... He said they definitely wouldn't reprint Binary, given that it's so widely available already. (Every used bookstore in America has a copy, it seems.) But it was possible that HCC would do one or more of the others. Charles had specific thoughts on at least a couple of the books, yea or nay, but I don't remember what they were.

I read elsewhere that Charles and "John Lange" talked about reprinting a third book, but no firm decision had been made at the time of his death. MC was very much involved in the process, doing editing and revising, even writing new material, so Charles didn't know if it would happen now.

Thanks for the inside scoop, David. Always a cool addition to the thread.

Even new material, really?

MC wrote new framing chapters for the second HCC Lange release. (A minimal amount of new material, granted.) Also, according to Charles, MC did a line-by-line edit of the books and revised them to at least some degree. Sometime I should dig out the old copies and compare them to the new ones.

Hey if you could do that, that'd be great! I'm very interested.

New message from Charles Ardai this morning...sounds like Fifty to One is hitting stores early?

*************************

Friends,

First things first: We've added a new book to our Web site, STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe. (Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title.) It's the story of a thief trying to unload a bar of gold that happens to be radioactive and it's one of the most memorable and moving books I've read in ages.

Second, we have reached an important milestone: as we speak, our 50th book is hitting stores. It's called FIFTY-TO-ONE, it was written by yours truly, and it's a hardboiled comedy that imagines what it might have been like if Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago rather than 50 books ago. The year is 1958, saucy paperback crime fiction is reigning at newsstands and bookstores everywhere as America's reading matter of choice, and a not-entirely-honest young man sets out to cash in on the phenomenon. Everything's going well until he conscripts an 18-year-old showgirl to pen the life story of the mobster she works for and instead of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, she starts making things up out of whole cloth. Except that somehow everything she writes turns out to be the truth after all. And now both the Mob and the police want to get their hands on her...

It's a mad romp, told in 50 chapters, with each chapter bearing the title of one of our 50 books. (Our first book was GRIFTER'S GAME by Lawrence Block, so the first chapter is called "Grifter's Game." Our second book was Max Phillips' FADE TO BLONDE, so Chapter 2 is called "Fade to Blonde." And so on, all the way up to Chapter 49, which is called "Gun Work," and Chapter 50, which is called "Fifty-to-One.") Crafting a story to fit these 50 titles wasn't easy -- but it was lots of fun, and long-time readers of our series will particularly get a kick out of it. Adding to the fun, Hard Case Crime co-founder Max Phillips wrote one of the book's chapters (I'm not telling which!), authors Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, and Mickey Spillane make cameo appearances, and there's a full-color section in the middle featuring miniature reproductions of all 50 of our covers.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY wrote "Breathless action and entertaining characters make this a page-turner from start to finish...With good girls, bad girls, mob kings and grifters, suspense is guaranteed." THE SEATTLE TIMES had this to say: "A wild chase through the New York underworld...it's a doozy." And just today Mel Odom, writing for BLOGCRITICS MAGAZINE, wrote, "FIFTY-TO-ONE is simply the best kind of potboiler...a great read." I hope you'll treat yourself to a copy of this book -- and I hope you enjoy it if you do.

I am also excited to announce that after the success of THE LAST QUARRY and its recent prequel THE FIRST QUARRY, Max Allan Collins has decided to write a third Quarry novel for us, QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE. That one will hit stores for Christmas next year. If you're hungry for more Quarry in the meantime, director Jeffrey Goodman has turned THE LAST QUARRY into a feature film called "The Last Lullaby," starring Tom Sizemore, and the movie has already won a number of film festival awards, including both Best Actress and the Audience Award at the San Diego Film Festival. The film hasn't yet been released in theaters, but you can find out more about it at www.thelastlullaby.com.

We've got more interesting stuff cooking, too -- including a surprise 13th book at the end of 2009 -- but that'll have to wait till a future message (none of it's quite ready to talk about yet). For now, let me just wish you a very happy start to the holiday season and remind you that nothing says "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Channukah" quite like a festively wrapped package of murder, larceny, lust, greed, and double crosses.

I'm a book club subscriber and my copy of Fifty-To-One arrived on Thursday. I haven't started it yet but it is a nice thick book and has a section of glossy color pages in the middle that has small reproductions of all the previous covers.

As i said i haven't read it yet, but seeing all those covers makes me wish i had gotten a hardcover edition.

Yep, it's available now!