December Best Sellers

These were our top-selling items for December. Christmas seems to have brought out the readers (or at least the book-givers), as we had our best month in the history of the business.

(As always, important to remember that we specialize in collectible items and niche categories, so it’s going to look a little different than your traditional best-seller list.)

  1. Minnesota’s 50 Greatest Baseball Players by Jonathan W. Sweet
  2. Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
  3. Deck the Pulps
  4. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
  5. Chattering Rods and Private Hawkshaws: The Best of Robert Leslie Bellem, Vol. 1
  6. Thrilling Detective Pulp Tales Vol. 6
  7. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
  8. The Beginner’s Guide to Pulp Fiction Vol. 1 by Jonathan W. Sweet
  9. Pulp from the Pyramids
  10. Thrilling Detective Pulp Tales Vol .2

Adventure star Arthur D. Howden Smith

December 29
August 20, 1923, Adventure, featuring Arthur D. Howden Smith’s first Swain the Viking story, “Swain’s Stone.”

One of the top writers at Adventure, Arthur D. Howden Smith was born on this date in 1887 in New York. He is one of the many authors featured in The Beginner’s Guide to Pulp Fiction, Volume 2.

As a teenager, Smith became an apprentice at the New York Evening Post. His career as a reporter started when he headed to the Balkans in 1907 to cover Macedonia’s revolt against the Turkish Empire.

He returned to the United States to work for the newspaper in 1908. His first story for Adventure was published in 1911. While writing for the pulp, he continued to work as a journalist.

In 1923, Smith published his first story of Swain the Viking. His best-known series, The Grey Maiden, telling the story of a famous sword through the ages, was first published in 1929.

Smith wrote a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Porto Bello Gold, in 1924, and a sequel to Kidnapped, Alan Breck Again. He also wrote several biographies and books on American history.

Smith died at the age of 58 in 1945.

Fritz Leiber, Pulp Sword and Sorcery Star

December 24

Legendary sword and sorcery writer Fritz Leiber was born 110 years ago this Christmas Eve. He is one of the writers included in The Beginner’s Guide to Pulp Fiction, Volume 1.

One of the leaders of the “sword and sorcery” genre, Leiber did most of his pulp work as the magazines were fading away.

His first pulp sale was “Two Sought Adventure,” published in the August 1939 Unknown. It introduced his most famous characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The two were, according to Lieber, his effort to make more realistic heroes than the super-humans represented by characters like Tarzan and Conan.

Fafhrd is a tall, strong barbarian, while the Mouser is a small, mercurial thief, and a former wizard’s apprentice. The majority of the stories are set in the fictional world of Nehwon (“Nowhen” spelled backwards). Several additional Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories would appear in Unknown, then in other science fiction magazines after Unknown folded in 1943.

Lieber’s stories outside the series appeared in several other pulps, including Amazing Stories and Future Fiction. Lieber’s first two novels were also serialized in the pulps in 1943, Conjure Wife in Unknown and Gather Darkness! in Astounding.

The fantasy pioneer died in 1992.

F.R. Buckley, 1896-1976

December 20

Pulp writer Frederick Robert Buckley was born on today’s date in 1896. The English writer, film critic and screenwriter is one of the writers featured in The Beginner’s Guide to Pulp Fiction, Volume 2.

Born in Colton, Staffordshire, England, in 1896, he emigrated to the United States in 1915. He went to work as a film critic for the New York Evening Mail, then joined Vitagraph Studios. He worked as a screenwriter and actor for the silent film studio. In 1916, he married actress Helen Curry, sister of pulp writer Tom Curry.

Buckley left the studio in 1918 after selling his first short story, “Getting It,” to The Black Cat. His fiction would appear in the slicks, as well as several pulps, including Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book and Western Story Magazine.

For Adventure, Buckley wrote his most famous series, featuring Captain Luigi Caradosso, an Italian mercenary during the Renaissance. The swashbuckling hero first appeared in 1924, with several more stories from 1926 to 1934, when Buckley returned to England. A second series of Caradosso stories ran in Adventure from 1940 to 1949.

From 1934 to 1970, he worked as an announcer and writer for the BBC. He died in England in 1976.