James BraveWolf addresses the erosion of humanity and its so-called "connectivity" in this book of insightful essays. Human beings are allowing technology to replace their everyday experiences and feelings with programmed entertainment, creating a false illusion of life. And, the author asserts, that is no accident. These people are referred to as "taste-makers" by some, but BraveWolf refers to them as "the Leviathan." "Technology can take away reality and replace it with an artificial copy," BraveWolf writes. "The self-absorbed superficiality that has replaced the world is total now. But the...

From the pulp era comes twenty-two hardboiled stories of hardboiled suspense. You'll meet embittered detectives, shifty conmen, and henpecked losers -- sad people trying to escape their dreary lives. Charles Boeckman wrote for pulps and slick magazines, while pursuing a full-time career as a musician. His jazz background figures into several stories, reaching a two-fisted crescendo. The stories in this anthology were originally published in various pulp magazines -- and now they appear together, wrapped in a breath-taking cover by Robert A. Maguire.

In the pages of A Date With the Executioner, you will become intimately acquainted with the sister of a charismatic man who killed without remorse and faced the ultimate punishment. A Date With the Executioner is a non-fiction/true crime story, with only the names changed to protect the innocent. But more than just a crime thriller, this story, told through the sister's eyes, relates how from a young age her normal family life was disrupted by her brother's erratic behavior which hinted early on at a destructive personality. She relates how her tormented mother was constantly turned aside by...

Bold Venture Press proudly presents PULP ADVENTURES #17, featuring an all-star line-up -- from the backwaters of post-Civil War Texas, the Prohibition-era of New York City, to an interior world several centuries in the future In "The Kidnapped Midas" by Johnston McCulley, a stingy skinflint is satisfied with his "life well lived," until The Thunderbolt holds him hostage, and demands he pay his own ransom "I'll Make the Arrest" by Charles Boeckman depicts an embittered police lieutenant who assures everyone that he'll arrest a murder suspect -- until the case turns personal. "Caverns of Ith"...

Can two avowed hoarders of comic books, paperbacks, hardcovers, movie memorabilia, etc., etc., make room in their lives for each other? A grizzled hobbyist of old paper magazines decides to gather collectors and vendors for a weekend of swapping tall tales and lurid artwork. Four decades later, another collector picks up the torch and stumbles. The power of love convinces him to trod on...but in which direction? Can two obsessive book lovers merge their inventory into one collection?

Charles Boeckman's biography often reads like the stuff of pulp fiction. He left home in the early 1940s and became a jazz musician, traveling the country, kicking around from New York City to New Orleans. In between gigs, he purchased a used typewriter and pounded out hardboiled stories. Eventually, the legendary Popular Publications editor Mike Tilden purchased one of his stories for Detective Tales. After that accomplishment, Boeckman's stories appeared in Dime Detective, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Manhunt, and many others. He established a body of work that outlived its pulp...

Judson P. Philips rubbed elbows with movie stars and directors. He owned a newspaper and scratched out columns in others. He penned hundreds of stories in pulp magazines, digests and slick magazines, under a trio of pen names. His words flooded radio, television and film. He faced down Newsweek editors, owned an equity summer stock theater and boosted many ingenues to fame. He filled pulp magazines like Argosy with stories about tough detectives, smooth-talking criminals, and down-and-out athletes who make Rocky-like comebacks. As "Hugh Pentecost," he graduated into the...