Wildside Press – Larque Press | The Digest Enthusiast

News February 10, 2021

Startling Stories No. 1

Startling Stories Vol. 34 No. 1, 2021 issue

Startling Stories [v34 #1, 2021 issue] ex. ed. John Betancourt, ed. Douglas Draa (Wildside Press, $19.99, 252pp, pulp)
1 • A Voice from the Ether • Douglas Draa • ed
• Contents Pages
2 • Cradle of the Deep • Mike Chinn • ss
20 • Invasion of the Deadly Brain from Alpha-IX • Scott Emerson • ss • illustration by Allen K.
27 • Evidence of the Mirror • Harb Kauderer • ss
36 • Mothership • Stephen Pershing • ss
50 • Timeline Murders • Janet Fox • pm
51 • Hazthrog’s Contempt • Maxwell I. Gold • ss
59 • New Life • Mark Slade • ss
65 • Red Dragon • Shadrick Beechem • ss
73 • Snack Time • Franklyn Searight • ss
88 • Amiri • Nicole Givens Kurtz • ss
93 • Sticks and Stones • John B. Rosenman • ss
98 • T. Gips and the Time Flies • Ahmed A. Khan • ss
100 • The Angry Planet • D.J. Turer • ss
107 • The Heart of a Hitman • Rie Sheridan Rose • ss
113 • The Kidnapped Prince • Cynthia Ward • ss
125 • The Outpost, Outside • Larry Hinkle • ss
130 • The Vaults of Ban-Erach. • Steve Dilks • ss
142 • Totality • Andre E. Harewood • ss
149 • Triplet Cross • Patrick S. Baker • ss
164 • Sea Bound-1 • Eddie D. Moore • ss
176 • The Blood Red Sky of Mars • Adrian Cole • ss
192 • Horizon • John Gregory Betancourt • nv
243 • Sunrise on Mercury • Robert Silverberg • ss Science Fiction Stories May 1957 as by Calvin M. Knox

Wildside Press Website
Print $19.99

News November 21, 2019

Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 5

Contents Page
John Gregory Betancourt: From the Cat’s Perch
Michael Bracken “The Show Must Go On”
Dara Carr “Emily and Elodie”
Tracy Falenwolfe “Partners in Crime”
John M. Floyd “Rhonda and Clyde”
Charlie Hughes “The Idea”
Janice Law “The Bodyguard”
Dennis Palumbo “Trigger Warning”
Keith Snyder “Blue Skies”
Elizabeth Zelvin “A Unicorn in the Harem”
Gil Brewer “Don’t Do That” (Classic Reprint)

Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 5 (Vol. 2 No. 1) (Nov. 2019)
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Editors: John Gregory Betancourt, Carla Coupe, Michael Bracken
Production Team: Sam Cooper, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Yamini Manikoth
Cover: Uncredited
6” x 9” 148 pages
Print $12.00 Kindle (coming soon)
Black Cat Mystery website

Uncategorized August 2, 2019

BCMM1: Summary

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

“The ABCs of Murder,” a humorous poem by Josh Pachter, fills out the back cover. Oddly, it’s run landscape; I suppose to maximize the type size.

Black Cat Mystery Magazine is a welcome new arrival for fans of crime fiction magazines. Its content fulfills its promise of something for all mystery readers—hardboiled, cozy, noir, crime, private eye, suspense, and thriller. Each story is a satisfying example of its sub-genre. My favorites were those by Michael Bracken, Kaye George, and Fletcher Flora; but I lean toward the dark side. If you enjoy the full range of crime fiction, you’ll love the variety here. And frankly, variety is what a great anthology is all about.

Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Editors: John Gregory Betancourt and Carla Coupe
Cover: Fotolia
6” x 9” 150 pages
POD $12.00, Kindle $3.99

Reviews July 21, 2019

BCMM No. 1’s Classic Reprint

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

“Beside a Flowering Wall” by Fletcher Flora is reprinted from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine April 1968. A spinster is visited by the lost love of her life. “The wonder was that he had [once] loved her, for she had been a plain girl, as she was a plain woman, with an odd faded look as if she had been laundered too many times in boiling water.” The crime here was the loss of what might have been, until the opportunity to erase it forever arose.

News July 9, 2019

Weirdbook No. 41

Weirdbook Vol. 2 No. 11 Issue 41 June 2019
Contents
Doug Draa: From the Editor’s Tower

Stories
Adrian Cole “Tonight I Wear My Crimson Face”
Darrell Schweitzer “The House of the Witches”
Erica Ruppertabout “The Bones”
Steve Dilks “The Idols of Xan”
Marlane Quade Cook “Conjurings”
Glynn Owen Barrass “Matriarch Unbound”
Luke Walker “The Mouth at the Edge of the World”
Alistair Rey “An Autumn Settling”
K.G. Anderson “I Know How You’ll Die”
Jack Lee Taylor “Fair Shopping”
Marina Favila “Black Aggie”
Arasibo Campeche “The Chroma of Home”
Dean MacAllister “The Last Resort”
S. Subramanian “The Crypt Beneath the Manse”
C.M. Muller “A Winter Reunion”
Leonard Carpenter “The Stravinsky Code”
Matthew Masucci “She Talks to Me”
L.F. Falconer “Wings of Twilight”
Thomas C. Mavroudis “A Pantheon of Trash”
D.C. Lozar “Juliet’s Moon”
Jean Graham “The Gargoyle’s Wife”
Justin Boote “The Melting Man”
Sean McCoy “Dead Waves”
J.D. Brink “The Proposal”
Kevin Hayman “Dark Energy”
S. L. Edwards “Christmas at Castle Dracula”
M. Ravenberg “There Was Fire”
Sharon Cullars “Them”
C. I. Kemp “For Love of Lythea”

Poetry
K.A. Opperman “Beltane”
Scott J. Couturier “Twin Hungers”
Ashley Dioses “The Jackal”
Joshua Gage “Our Family Ghost”
Russ Parkhurst “Le Gargoyle”

Weirdbook Vol. 2 No. 11 Issue 41 June 2019
Publisher/Executive Editor: John Gregory Betancourt
Editor: Doug Draa
Consulting Editor: W. Paul Ganley
Cover: Iuliia Kovalova
Interior Artwork: Allen Koszowski
235 pages, 6” x 9”
POD $12.00 , Kindle*
Wildside Press website

*Not available at the time of this writing

Reviews June 23, 2019

James Holding’s Leroy King

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Together, Martin Leroy and King Danforth make up the fictitious mystery writer “Leroy King,” the creation of real-life writer James Holding (1907–1997). A concept perfect for its original run of ten stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Their third outing, “The Italian Tile Mystery,” reprinted here, originally saw print in EQMM Sept. 1961.

The mystery is a puzzle, and the writing partners and their wives sleuth out its solution in this enjoyable puzzle procedural. The editor’s notes reveal a forthcoming complete collection of Leroy King stories from Crippen & Landru—The Zanzibar Shirt Mystery.

Reviews June 9, 2019

Kaye George’s Flirty Flamingo

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

The Flirty Flamingo is a strip club where an ex-cop named Fin often stations himself at the end of the bar. “Usually he let Joe, the barkeep, handle the rough customers and was only there for unofficial backup.” But when new girl Jodie Vive shares her story, Fin finds himself mangled up in high-profile politics and murder. “Flight to the Flirty Flamingo” by Kaye George is smart, tart, and fleet.

Reviews May 29, 2019

Michael Bracken’s Dixie Quickies

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

A southwestern no-tell motel with hourly rates is the scene of the crime in “Dixie Quickies” by Michael Bracken. Bodies are bad for business, so when Maria, one of several illegal immigrants who keep the sheets fresh, gives night manager Tiny Campella the news, he takes over the clean-up duties without bothering local authorities. Of course, that’s just foreplay for the action to come. Bracken’s mini-bio proclaims he’s the author of over 1200 short stories, and his impressive pedigree shows throughout this sterling example of his dandy work.

Reviews May 18, 2019

Jack Halliday’s Don’t Bank on It

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

A PI decides an unforgettable bank teller is better left forgotten in Jack Halliday’s “Don’t Bank on It.” Trouble is, she’s a person of interest in more ways than one. Nice set-up, but at just three pages, the payoff is more plot point than climax.

News April 26, 2019

Weirdbook Annual No. 2: Cthulhu

Weirdbook Annual No. 2: Cthulhu
Contents
Doug Draa: From the Editor’s Tower

Stories
Robert M. Price “The Shining Trapezohedron”
Lucy A. Snyder “A Noble Endeavor”
Cynthia Ward “Ancient Astronauts”
John R. Fultz “The Thing in the Pond”
Adrian Cole “Enter the Cobweb Queen”
Paul Dale Anderson “Tricks No Treats”
Christian Riley “Ronnie and the River”
Franklyn Searight “Cellar Dweller”
R.C. Mulhare “Yellow Labeled VHS Tape”
L.F. Falconer “Tuama”
Kenneth Bykerk “Mercy Holds No Measure”
Glynn Owen Barrass “Treacherous Memory”
Darrell Schweitzer “The Hutchison Boy”

Poetry
Deuce Richardson “Dolmen of the Moon”
Andrew J. Wilson “Lovecraftian Limerick”
Ann K. Schwader “A Wizard’s Daughter”
DB Spitzer “The Shadow of Azathoth is Your Galaxy”
Mark A. Mihalko “Ascend”
Allan Rozinski “The Solace of the Farther Moon”
Charles Lovecraft “The Stars are Always Right”
K.A. Opperman “Daemonic Nathicana”
Ashley Dioses “Asenath”
“The Book of Eibon/Le Livre D’eibon” trans by Frederick J. Mayer

Weirdbook Annual No. 2: Cthulhu
Publisher/Executive Editor: John Gregory Betancourt
Editor: Doug Draa
Consulting Editor: W. Paul Ganley
Interior Artwork: Allen Koszowski
148 pages, 6” x 9”
$13.00 POD, Kindle (Cthulhu Mythos Megapack No. 3) 55¢
Wildside Press website