February Best Sellers

The top-selling items through our retail arm for February. Keep in mind we specialize in collectible items and niche categories, so it’s going to look a little different than your traditional best-seller list!

  1. Star Wars: Thrawn Treason by Timothy Zahn
  2. The Beginner’s Guide to Pulp Fiction by Jonathan W. Sweet
  3. DeForest: A Small-town Wisconsin History by Jonathan W. Sweet
  4. Charlie the Choo-Choo by Stephen King as Beryl Evans
  5. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  6. Son of Zorro 1947 movie serial DVD
  7. Minnesota’s 50 Greatest Baseball Players by Jonathan W. Sweet
  8. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
  9. 13 Demon Street Complete TV series DVD
  10. ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

We’ll be at the Rosemount Writers Festival

For all of our Minnesota readers, some more event news.

We’ll be at the Rosemount Writers Festival coming up March 21. Admission is free, and the show runs from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Steeple Center, 14375 S. Robert Trail in Rosemount.

For aspiring writers, there’s also a great lineup of speakers and workshops.

Our emphasis will be on our Minnesota books, but we will have copies of all of our books there.

Minnesota Not-So-Nice pulp stories

By Jonathan W. SweetMinnesota pulp

Our latest collection of pulp stories, Minnesota Not-So-Nice: Retro Pulp Tales from the North Star State, is now available.

It includes a new novella by yours truly, as well as additional stories from vintage pulps including Thrilling Wonder Stories and Popular Detective. It was inspired by the real-life criminal history of Minnesota and the Twin Cities as a haven for organized crime in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

January Best Sellers

By JONATHAN W. SWEETThe top-selling items through our retail arm for January. Keep in mind we specialize in collectible items and niche categories, so it’s going to look a little different than your traditional best-seller list!

  1. The Beginner’s Guide to Pulp Fiction by Jonathan W. Sweet
  2. Charlie the Choo-Choo by Stephen King as Beryl Evans
  3. The Masked Marvel movie serial DVD
  4. The Shadow 1940 movie serial DVD
  5. Minnesota’s 50 Greatest Baseball Players by Jonathan W. Sweet
  6. Dracula by Bram Stoker
  7. The Stand by Stephen King
  8. A Time to Scatter Stones by Lawrence Block
  9. The Adventures of Captain Marvel movie serial DVD
  10. Chiefs 1983 CBS mini-series DVD

Book Review: Sherlock Holmes: The Affair of the Chronic Argonaut

Holmes coverSherlock Holmes: The Affair of the Chronic Argonaut by Fred Adams Jr./Published by Pro Se Press * 5/5 stars

I feel like a broken record every time I review a Fred Adams Jr. book. But it’s worth saying again: Adams is quite possibly the best writer working in new pulp today. I have yet to read a bad book or story by him.

This short book (142 pages) collects two Sherlock Holmes novellas by Adams. In the first, Holmes and Watson have to solve a locked room mystery with only a piece of yellow paper as a clue. As the murders mount, the two must venture to Limehouse (Chinatown) to solve this weird series of killings.

In the second, the under-construction tunnels of the London Underground are the site of cannibalistic murders, with an odd man delivering advance notice of the killings.

Both are quick, enjoyable reads. A caveat for Holmes fans: I’ve read more non-canon Holmes stories than those by Arthur Conan Doyle. That means I’m not the best judge of how these stories fit in that canon. These stories both rely on the occult and sci-fi elements to explain their mysteries, so if that deviation from Holmes bothers you, these aren’t the stories for you.

That said, if you want a good read and an enjoyable mystery, check out this book.