Vintage Photo Album: Here is Your Disguise Part II

This is your disguise to infiltrate the retinue of the mad vizer Halit Ali Mustafa. To be successful in this disguise, you must be able to traverse this room without touching the floor. (Auction Here – Ends 12/6)

This is your disguise for wrestling the legendary Kolkov’s stratagem from Dr. Leonid Morrow, who refuses to play with human beings in order to keep it secret. (Auction Here – Ends 12/7)

This is your disguise to hide among the graceful but horribly violent tinsel tree people of Beta Centuari. (Auction Here – Ends 12/7)

This is your disguise to penetrate the fortress of Dr. Yen Wan and assassinate the British turncoat, Sir Julian Wimplebottom. (Auction Here – Ends 12/28)

This is your disguise to impersonate famed tattooed lady Artoria Gibbons. (Auction Here – Ends 12/28)

Pinup of the Week: Dime Mystery May 1940

Dime Mystery 1940 05

Looks like one of the main goals of these red hooded secret society types in 1940 involved mummifying beautiful women. See here for a cover with almost the same subject. It took them four months to get her wrapped up, and it looks like Smith retired. His younger ex-pirate acolyte has taken the reins. Good luck to you, gentlemen.

GIRLS FOR
SATAN’S BIRDCAGE
FASCINATINGLY DIFFERENT
MYSTERY-TERROR NOVELETTE BY

HARRISON STORM

SPINE-TINGLING
MYSTERY NOVELETTE

BEWARE THE
BONELESS DEATH!
by WYATT BLASSINGAME

darkinthedark does not claim copyright on these images. If you are the copyright holder and object to their presence here, please contact me and I will remove them.

* Search for Shudder Pulps on eBay *

Vintage Photo Album: Here is Your Disguise

Golden Ladies 1936

This is your disguise for an adventure on The Planet of the Deadly Golden Amazons. (Auction Here – Ends 12/7)

This is your disguise for your trip to the land of vampiric velvet furniture. (Auction Here – Ends 11/26)

Here is your disguise for the Russian leg of your race around the world in eighty days, circa 1890. (Auction Here – Ends 12/2)

Here is your disguise for infiltrating the warren of the Spoon Brides. Beware! (Auction Here – Ends 12/4)

This is your disguise and only hope for survival on the island of singing bellhops. (Auction Here – Ends 12/6)

This is your disguise for living among the polar werebears of Manchuria. Don’t forget to smear your face with seal blubber before disembarking. (Auction Here – Ends 12/6)

This is Valeska Suratt. Valeska Suratt! Please examine the furniture and don’t miss the busts and figures in the background. (Auction Here – Ends 12/4)

Tiny Pitchfork Mob Two

Allow me to save some of you two trips to the bookstore: THE HAUNTING OF TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA sounds like it would be about famous ghost-hunting spots, unsolved mysteries, and hotel suites haunted by doomed lovers who met infamy. Not so. Here instead we find a history of European occultism, an entire chapter about Edgar Cayce, more chapters about past lives, spiritualism, astrology, and the New Age movement. Please don’t trust me to judge a book like this. I am not the intended audience. Fans of conspiracy theories who enjoy history should, at the very least, get a kick or two out of this voluminous, heavily-researched tome.
The Haunting of Twentieth-Century America by William J. Birnes and Joel Martin2011Forge

Ho. Ho. Ho. I LOVE the writing of Liz Williams, whose Detective Chen series I absolutely adore. My rat army has orders to pick up any Liz Williams novels they may find. 15% supernatural romance, 30% drug-induced fever dream, 10% science fiction and 60% dark fantasy, THE POISON MASTER schemes to bring freedom to a planet populated by humans but ruled by cruel trans-dimensional giant WTF insect things that don’t make any sense and I don’t know how else to explain what happens here. Hmmmmm. OK. How about this? A woman is forced to go on the lam and is subsequently pulled into a treacherous multi-world intrigue after she accidentally kills a rich divorcee with recreational hallucinatory drugs (that she happens to take a lot of herself, being an apothecary). With nowhere else to turn, she finds herself employed by the Poison Master, a rich assassin from another world who CLAIMS to want to overthrow the insect things. But can he be trusted? Did I mention that she’s helplessly attracted to this dangerous man? His daughter calls our heroine a “junky”. I’m not doing a good job of describing this book. It’s a good book!
The Poison Master by Liz Williams2003Bantam Books

While we’re on the subject of authors I’ve been reading lately, let’s talk about something by Mr. Kim Newman, author of Anno Dracula. Wonder what it would be like to read a book that followed the century-spanning lives of one of the older vampires from Anno Dracula? Our monster isn’t really a vampire that drinks blood so much as a vampire that finds sustenance in human terror and BAD DREAMS. This novel had: So. Much. Promise. Too bad the full last half of it was our protagonist’s experience of a bad dream created by this vampire to entrap and murder her. More like murder her with boredom. We read as she wanders through a hundred and some-odd pages of dreams that really should have been terrifying, considering the author and subject matter, but more closely resembled those dreams where you are looking for something but you can’t find it and everyone in the restaurant breaks into song and then suddenly you’re walking down a hallway looking for the bathroom but there’s a foot of water on the floor and you wonder if that’s water from the bathroom because if that’s the case then you might want to look for higher ground and here you are wearing your best shoes. Oh wait! Is that a character from that Pulitzer prize winning play? He knocks back a shot of whiskey and turns to the bar. He doesn’t know that his fiancee’s lover is about to march in with a gun, but suddenly it’s raining and the bridge is washed out. What were you looking for again? You can’t find it. Am I boring you yet? ZZZZZZZZZZZ. Somebody wake me up!
Bad Dreams by Kim Newman1990Carroll & Graf Publishers

Many thanks to TOR/FORGE for the review copy of The Haunting of Twentieth Century America.

A Small Pitchfork Mob of Short Reviews

This is happening more and more lately, and I’m just going to roll with it. It seems like every time I turn around, I’ve read several books and need to review them all, post-haste. So here they are.

Wow! What a lurid cover! Make sure you enlarge that baby to get the full effect. Another 1960s Corinth anthology of weird menace pulp fiction from the 1930s, DEATH’S LOVING ARMS AND OTHER TERROR TALES is entertaining, annoying, interesting, and wholly gratuitous. We have here five stories in total: “Death’s Loving Arms” by Hugh B. Cave, “Vampire Meat” by Frederick C. Painton, “Blood Magic” by G.T. Fleming-Roberts, “From Out the Shadows” by Frances Bragg Middleton, and “Village of the Dead” by Wyatt Blassingame. All of them have that pulpy fast-paced tough-guy prose and feature ready men who either save their damsels in distress or nearly fall victim to murderous exotic jungle ladies. Like your typical Scooby Doo mysteries, almost all reveal a mundane source for what seemed to be a supernatural mystery. Snoresville “Village of the Dead” wins the worst offender award for being ridiculously sexist and overtly racist in detailing the victimization of a crippled girl and her sister by some inbred bayou hicks. “Vampire Meat” wins best in show for being short but sweet with a mad scientist, high body count, and an ending that cries out for a cackling crypt keeper.
Death’s Loving Arms and Other Terror Tales – 1966 – Corinth Publications. This book is out of print and rare, but shows up on eBay from time to time. Search here.

The latest issue of RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT is in, and it is subtitled STRIKINGLY TRUE. All I have to say about this book is that there is a clown who puts fish hooks in his eye sockets and then uses them to pull his face all out of shape AND THE PICTURES WILL GIVE YOU NIGHTMARES FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I love these books! Really I do.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Strikingly True
2011Ripley Entertainment

One man’s desperate search for his lost daughter leads him to perform a dark piece of magic that simultaneously blinds him and makes him able to see the supernatural creatures and ghosts who live among us. The protagonist’s name, “Jeremiah Hunt,” speaks volumes and even sets expectations, doesn’t it? Yes, yes. A straight-up supernatural mystery novel, EYES TO SEE delivers the goods in a no-fuss no-muss manner. We have here the tough cop turning up the heat on our brave protagonist, the sensitive witch who is falling in love with him, and the mysterious Russian black marketeer who cannot help but become his trusty sidekick. All of them are working to solve the mystery behind a horrifying string of bizarre murders before it’s too late. Looking for a lightweight supernatural thriller to read in between all that serious literature you’ve been poring over? Look no further.
Eyes to See (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) by Joseph Nassise2011Tor Books

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Graham Annable was selling a book titled HIDDEN. If you are fan of Annable’s creepy short animations, and you’ve been holding off from picking up a copy of this marvelous little gem, wonder no longer – or continue to wonder NOW, because it’s sold out. Like his short films, the book is well illustrated, impeccably paced, and deliciously creepy.
Hidden by Graham Annable – 2011 - Kabinett (is that his own imprint?)

Many thanks to TOR/FORGE for review copy of Eyes to See. Also thanks for Ripley’s Entertainment for the review copy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

The flying monkeys let our technician out for a minute and he snuck away into the light of day. Thanks for your patience during this difficult transition.
I ated Tinkerbell.

Fhtagn Spoken Here.

... the attic, a vast raftered length lighted only by small blinking windows in the gable ends, and filled with a massed wreckage of chests, chairs, and spinning-wheels which infinite years of deposit had shrouded and festooned into monstrous and hellish shapes.
The Shunned House
H.P. Lovecraft




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