Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner

Sent to the printer... Single volume with two full collections of this "detective" -- The Old Man in the Corner, and The Case of Miss Elliott. Also includes the story, "The Glasgow Mystery," which was left out of the former collection (originally published as in 13 stories in Royal Magazine).

Uncle Abner Mysteries

Sent to the printer... Collection of the 22 Uncle Abner short stories by Melville Davisson Post. Classic American detective fiction.

Early Father Brown

Sent to the printer... Finally got around to this one. The earliest Father Brown mystery collections, the only ones in the public domain in the US.

November Joe

Sent to the printer... Another classic Sherlockian-style detective, this one is a Canadian tracker. Great stories.

African Millionaire

Sent to the printer... Classic criminal rogue fiction, same category as Raffles.

Foreign Finches

Sent to the printer... Foreign Finches in Captivity (1899 reprint) with 60 full-color plates.

Mokele-Mbembe

Sent to the printer...

Bestiarium Cryptozoologicum

The latest (and last for now) collection of classic short stories with cryptozoological themes. Sent to the printer.

Sherlock Holmes Vols. 1-3

Sent to the printer, three volumes of Sherlock Holmes stories. Just about all of them, except for the 10 stories in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes that are still under copyright in the U.S. (The agent never replied to my inquiry for licensing them.) Cover image is William Gillette, an actor who portrayed Holmes in early stage-plays, from a 1907 issue of Vanity Fair.

Ancient Haunts

Sent to the printer, a collection of two short volumes of ghost stories: The Stoneground Ghost Tales, by E. G. Swain, and Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye, by Arthur Gray (Master of Jesus College, Cambridge).

Robert H. Benson

Sent to the printer... The Supernatural Stories of Monsignor Robert H. Benson: The Light Invisible, A Mirror of Shalott.

Raptors of the Northeast

Sent to the printer... Raptors of the Northeast, by Thomas Bosakowski and Dwight G. Smith. 200 pages, with full color images.

After Dark Series

Two more sent to the printer: (Ambrose) Bierce After Dark, and (Nathaniel) Hawthorne After Dark.

A Spectrum Unseen

Sent to the printer... Invisible men, children, and creatures in classic science fiction and fantasy.

Anthropologica Incognita

Sent to the printer. Next in the classic themed sci fi / fantasy short story anthology series, focusing on wild men, strange apes, fantastic races, etc.

Cleek, Vols. 1-3

Sent to the printer. Three volumes, which includes 8 different Hamilton Cleek mystery titles. Hamilton Cleek was a fictional detective created by Thomas W. Hanshew, and continued by his wife (Mary E. Hanshew) when Thomas died in 1914.

Iron Age America

Sent to the printer... Iron Age America Before Columbus, by William D. Conner. Relates the history of investigations into the mysterious iron furnaces of southern Ohio and elsewhere, from the theories and excavations by the late Arlington Mallery (author of Lost America) up to the present day.

Dwarfs of Mount Atlas

Sent to the printer... The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas: Collected Papers on the Curious Anthropology of Robert Grant Haliburton.

Haliburton proposed the existence of a small-statured tribe in the Atlas Mountain range, using legends, stories, and eyewitness sightings to support his theories. Sadly, after he died, his theories disappeared without any further proof or disproof.

Lacemaking

Another for the Textile Arts category... Sent to the printer.

The Heroic Milton

Sent to the printer. Collects Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.

Tourmalines

Sent to the printer: The Tourmaline / The History of Mount Mica of Maine, U.S.A. Two book reprint collection (short books, comes out to about 194 pages at 5.5 x 8.5) with full color drawings of variously colored tourmalines. Color books always take a bit longer to put out, as LSI requires I get a proof copy before approving. Should be available mid-August.

On a related note, I'm trying to cut down on green cover books (as that color is supposed to be poor for sales, go figure), but I went with the mint green with pink circle, as a nod towards "watermelon" tourmaline, a very interesting mineral.

John Silence (Algernon Blackwood)

I always wished Blackwood had done more John Silence stories. In any case, this is a collection of the six (often lengthy) stories he wrote. Sent to the publisher, available soon. It is priced competitively with the old Dover edition.

Ancient and Medieval Dyes

Sent to the printer. A brief but informative and easy-to-read text on the various animal and vegetable dyes used before modern chemical synthetic dyes.

Chesterton Vols. 4-6

Sent to printer. Same basic cover as the first three volumes. It will be interesting to see if these do as well as the mostly fiction volumes.

Volume 4: Heretics, Orthodoxy, What's Wrong with the World

Volume 5: All Things Considered, Tremendous Trifles, Alarms and Discursions

Volume 6: The Defendant, Varied Types, A Miscellany of Men, Other Stories

Foolish Questions

Sent to the printer. I wish I was able to offer this as a smaller format book, as at 7 x 10, with a single panel on each page, I wasn't able to fit two on a page, and there's a lot of white space under each one. Still, it's better than not putting it out at all -- I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with some horizontal format golf comics I scanned years ago. The back cover, btw, just has two 1913/1914 color postcards with the same theme that I added; the inside comics are all black-and-white. See book details at Foolish Questions.

Mokele-Mbembe Book Update

I was hoping to receive Bill Gibbons' text for his upcoming Mokele-Mbembe book before today, as he's now in route with team for MonsterQuest to Cameroon. But, he had some last minute material he wanted to add, so it should be forwarded to me sometime after the 16th. Images (with art by Bill Rebsamen) will also be forthcoming. We may be doing this book in color; I'll have to look over the material to determine if that is the best direction.

The book will cover the history of expeditions for the cryptid, and review the current evidence. Bill said the present MonsterQuest expedition is unlikely to get anything new, as it is the wrong time of year, but he hopes to return in November. Assuming no difficulties, I'd like to have this book available by June.

Poe After Dark

Sent to the printer... Poe After Dark: 18 Tales of Mystery, Madness, and the Macabre.

Update: Book details here.

Raffles

And, finally (for now), the criminal escapades of Raffles, Gentleman Thief.

Invertebrata Enigmatica

Sent to the printer. (I think I'm going to stick to faux Latin titles for this subset of anthologies with crypto-related themes.)

Phantom Bouquets: Skeletonizing Leaves

Sent to the printer... Book information here.

Nature Notes 2

And the second volume of Al's newspaper columns... These are 300 and 320 pages each, will run $19.95, and Al already has a ready audience, so he'll probably sell most copies direct.

Nature Notes 1

Uploaded to the printer... A compilation of Al's newspaper columns covering a wide range of plant and animal subjects, with an emphasis on species here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Revision: Shadows from a Veiled Creation

I've sent a revision for the text of my early anthology, Shadows from a Veiled Creation. This will bring the text block into my current margin/text block preferences. The old one was too close to the edges, really. Also, my prior notion on the copyright status for Charles Williams' short story in the US was incorrect, and that has been corrected (and appropriate permissions acquired). This means I can open the book up to the UK/European market as well. (And, there's been a price increase to put it in line with my current strategy. It'll be $19.95 for the 504 page book.)

Out of the Sand: Egyptian SciFi / Fantasy

Just sent to the printer: Out of the Sand: Mummies, Pyramids, and Egyptology in Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Maybe it's just me, but I think I created an inadvertent optical illusion, placing the subtitle over wavy sand lines; makes them look a bit crooked.)

Pym

Sent to the printer: Pym, which includes both Poe's A Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (including all figures, not found in several recent Gutenberg-based reprints), and Jules Verne's sequel, An Antarctic Mystery.

Flora Curiosa

Sent to the printer... Flora Curiosa: Cryptobotany, Mysterious Fungi, Sentient Trees, and Deadly Plants in Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy

Eight-Legged Marvels

Sent to printer (finally): Eight-Legged Marvels: Beauty and Design in the World of Spiders

About Time

Just uploaded to the printer, About Time: The Forerunners of Time Travel and Temporal Anomalies in Science Fiction and Fantasy. 15 stories from 1819-1916 that rely on time travel, time shifts, and other temporal tamperings before the "golden age" of science fiction.

Mussels are Big

I'm amazed at the good start that Al Spoo's Pearly Mussels of Pennsylvania has had. Particularly as it's not a cheap book. Besides having a wide local readership, though, (Al does the nature column for the Lititz paper), I guess freshwater mussels are fairly important conservation-wise, so he's gotten lots of orders from state and federal employees (F&W, USGS, etc.). Will be interesting to watch how it does in the long run. He's gotten some nice compliments for the artwork. Al's next project is a compilation (or two) of his newspaper column, and then maybe we'll look at some other overlooked species in PA. Maybe snails...

Archaeology and False Antiquities

Sent to the printer...

Bog-Trotting for Orchids

Sent to the printer...

Cryptofiction: Beyond the Great South Wall

Here's the wraparound for a classic (1901) cryptofiction novel, Beyond the Great South Wall, by Frank Savile, sent to the printer.

Mussels Cover

The Pearly Mussels of Pennsylvania, by Al Spoo (coming soon)

Pearly Mussels Sent to Print

I've sent Al Spoo's The Pearly Mussels of Pennsylvania to the printer. Full-color plates of 66 freshwater species, extant and extirpated, from the Keystone state. At about 210 pages, 8.5 x 11, it will retail for $59.95. (And, believe it or not, that's about average for shell books...) A 40% discount will be made available to booksellers who order direct from Coachwhip Publications.

A Year at the Shore: Cover

And the wraparound for the cover. Nothing fancy. This is a small book, 5.5 x 8.5, but runs about 182 pages or so. Being a "color" book (to allow for the color plates) it is a tad more expensive than most of my titles, but it's a book that is rarely reprinted. (The only other available right now is little more than a black-and-white photocopy...)

A Year at the Shore: Plate Samples

Some of the images from Gosse's A Year at the Shore.

Finishing Up

Almost finished with Al Spoo's Pearly Mussels of Pennsylvania. Waiting for the CIP data block, need to do the cover next week.

Also, finishing up Philip Henry Gosse's A Year at the Shore, which will be a small-size paperback with full color plates (36 of them) illustrated by Gosse (in 1870). The book is about the various small marine life that can be found along the coast of Britain. Great images, and Gosse's passionate descriptions of fascinating sea life.

Something To Look Forward To (In 2019)

Sad to say, but I've postponed my edition of Gould's Case for the Sea-Serpent due to copyright reasons. While going over a last-minute consideration, I ran across mention that when a book is published outside the US more than 30 days before the US edition, the copyright policy must follow the first country's rules. Drat it all. The US edition was published 4 years after the UK edition, with no substantial changes as far as I know. This means my edition can't be published until 2019. (Unless I can track down and make arrangements with the Gould estate; unlikely, but I'll make inquiries.) [To the lucky few who ordered copies prior to my cancellation, you've got a very, very limited edition.] What's killing me is there is a Singing Tree reprint from the 1960s or so, and I'm pretty sure they considered the text public domain. But... that's the way it goes.

Case for the Sea-Serpent

Sent to the printer... Here's the wraparound, nothing fancy, same basic design (and same size) as my Oudemans and Lee sea serpent reprints.

UK vs US Copyright

I'm trying to finish up my reprint of Gould's Case for the Sea-Serpent this evening, and after a little investigation realized that I'll only be able to offer US distribution of the title, rather than US/UK as with most of my books. UK copyright is life of author + 70 years, which means this book won't be public domain in the UK until 2018, another ten years. Because it had a US printing in 1934, without copyright renewal, it is public domain here. While my UK sales are trifling, I was expecting to sell at least a few copies over there, so this is a little annoying, but not much I can do about it. (Technically, my books would be "published" in the US, and "printed" in the UK, but I'm too uncertain of legal liability in this instance to take a chance.)

Gould's Loch Ness book would also have the same copyright period in the UK, but it never had a US printing (as far as I know). So, in the US, it won't be in the public domain until 2029, 95 years after publication in the UK. So, we won't be seeing reprints of those (legal ones, at least), unless the Gould estate gives permission.

Similarly, I would love to reprint Gandar-Dower's The Spotted Lion, but it's not in the public domain, and I have no idea how to get hold of his estate.

Sneak Peak

Here's a quick look at a sample plate from the currently in-production book on Pennsylvania freshwater mussels, by Al Spoo. This is the Round Hickorynut.

Catching Wild Beasts

Sent to the printer: Catching Wild Beasts Alive.

Humbugs of the World

Sent to the printer: Barnum's Humbugs of the World.