What's New from Beb Books
Specializing in Vintage Fantasy and Adventure stories from the last century.
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"Under Construction"
Please bear with me as I try to up-date this site. Mission Statement: As a boy I loved the great fantasy adventure novels reprinted by Ace Books Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Cummings, Otis Adelbert Kline, Homer Eon Flint.... They were and are the epitome of fine writing. But not all of the great fantasy from the teens and twenties of the last century has been reprinted or were reprinted in unacknowledged abridged, butchered editions. Beb Books is going back to the original pulp appearances of these great stories, OCRing the text directly from those pages to produce a true, accurate text, newly laid out in easy to read type, printed with cost mindful inkjet technology on 8.5 x 11 inch paper, side stapled, to make these great stories available again to a new generation of fans. |
First we have Draft of Eternity by Victor Rouseau, reprinted from June 1918 issues of All-Story Weekly. Draft begins in a New York City sanatarium for rare mental illnesses where one of the doctor is given an overdose of a strong drug that causes him to pre-live the events centuries from now when New York is in ruins, Mongols control the city and is the illegimate son of Og, the king. Came he survive the plots of rival Prince Yuri and claim his heritage, will he fulfil the prophecy of freeing the enslaves white race, will he win the hand of the woman he loves? Or must he lose all before winning everything? The story is a literal page-turning, fast moving, engaging and unpredictable. I'm tempted to call this a work of swords and sorcery, even though there is no wizardry involved because it feels so much something Robert E. Howard might have written, or at least surely have enjoyed. Continuing our Secret Agent "X" reprint program we present two further volumes, "The Hooded Hordes, number eight in the series, and Faceless Fury, the twenthy-fifth thrilling "X" adventures. In "The Hooded Hordes" an army of masked men threatened the nation. They claim to be the "Defenders of the American Constitution (DOAC) but "X" suspects that they are being fooled by a sinister mastermind whose goals are not to help the jobless and downtrodden but massive personal wealth, but can even the Man of a Thousand Faces penetrate the close ordered ranks of the DOAC? The "Faceless Fury" is a huge man, face wrapped in bandages leaving a trail of bodies, faces burned down to the bone, clutching a child's wooden block with a single letter on it. Why are he killing these people. How is he killing these people. What weird message is he trying to spell out with these wooden blocks? It's going to take all of Secret Agent "x's" cleverness to fit out this puzzle.
The Secret Agent "X" titles are"
The Torture Trust -- Secret Agent "X" #1, February, 1934
City of the Living Dead -- Secret Agent "X" #5, June? July?, 1934
Octopus of Crime -- Secret Agent "X" #7, September, 1934
If I can maintain a pace of eight novels reprinted a year I should be able to reprint the entire series in the next four years. Click Here to see a list of all our in-print Secret Agent "X" books.
Fang Tung, Magician by H. Bedford-Jones
The Curse of Capistrano 1st Zorro adventure by Johnston McCulley
The Labrynth by Francis Stevens
I attended my first Windy City Pulp and Paperback Show this year. Had a good time, sold a few books. I brought three new Secret Agent "X" with my to the show.. I hope to have a couple more ready for Pulpcon later in July as well as a number of vintage adventure stories from the pages of All-Story Weekly New for the Windy City show were:
The Spectral Strangle -- Secret Agent "X" #2, March, 1934.
Ambassador of Doom -- Secret Agent "X" #4, May, 1934.
Hand of Horror -- Secret Agent "X" #6, August, 1934
Click Here to see a list of all our in-print Secret Agent "X" books.
I brought nine new Beb Books titles to Pulpcon this year. Four of them were Secret Agent X novels I had announced at the Windy City Pulp Show (via flyers). The others were vintage adventures from All- Story magazine that Kevin Cook had lent me for the express purpose of reprinting. A few thoughts about each. The Fear Merchants was another of the stories written by Paul Chadwick, in fact the last he wrote for the series. This is about an arson/insurance fraud ring. It features the two separate detective agencies the Agent had by then sponsored. This is kind of like The Shadow's many agents, and a logical development of the secret agent idea, since he clearly needs more "boots on the ground" to help him track down these master criminals. Again a lot of time is spent trying to find leads to the case. And here there's the added problem of the agent's girlfriend being framed from one of the arson jobs. The Murder Monster was one of only four stories that Emile C Tepperman wrote. Here a group of young college graduates, heirs to comfortable fortunes look for kicks in crime but freeing a gang of criminals and turning them into will-less drones. But then one in the group turns on the others and it's a race to save them from....the murder monster. The story seems more scattershot than Chadwick's but still is involved and makes the agent work for the solution much the way Chadwick did in his stories. City of Madness is one of G. T. Fleming-Roberts's stories. It's much later in the series. The crime is more espionage oriented. There's more of a romance between the Agent and his girlfriend and between the Agent's agent and the femme fatale in this story. The action is more headlong with one convenient lead after another falling in the Agent's lap. I suspect that the things that I like best about Secret Agent X were things that most people liked least about him.
All Beb Books are printed on 8.5" x 11" paper using economical inkjet technology and stapled on the side, to provide you with thrilling adventures from yesterday at a low, low affordable price. |
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