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Here’s a nice two-minute promo for Donald Westlake’s e-books from Open Road/Mysterious Press, featuring Otto Penzler, Brian Garfield, Lawrence Block, and William Link (Columbo and Murder, She Wrote) speaking Westlake’s praises. “Meet Donald Westlake” // Open Road has released thirteen Donald Westlake titles to date, including three rare sleaze titles co-authored with […]  Note: New content will be light to non-existent for the next week or two, as I travel to celebrate a belated Christmas and an on-time New Year with my family back home. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this (very) hurriedly-written summary of 2010. I hope that your holidays have been and will […]
Hard Case Crime’s printer and distributor, Dorchester Publishing, isn’t quite shutting its doors, but it is going to a purely e-book and print-on-demand format. This is unfortunate, to say the least. In addition to mailing me the newest Hard Case Crime novel upon release through their wonderful book club, they were unfailingly polite and extraordinarily responsive the couple of times I had to deal with their customer service department. This is bad news, and I wish the best to those employees who I assume are losing their jobs. What does this mean for Hard Case Crime? Publisher Charles Ardai promises that the imprint will continue. Titles #67 and #68 will be coming out but are delayed until next year. The information in the above two paragraphs is drawn from the Hard Case Crime newsletter (in its entirety below the fold). The second paragraph may sound like wishful thinking, but it’s apparently not. Via Bill Crider is the following from Subterranean Press: We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just reached agreement to publish an exclusive Hard Case Crime volume, which will also be the first in the series to debut in hardcover. Volume #69 will resurrect a pair of early Lawrence Block novels: 69 Barrow Street and Strange Embrace, bound back to back in the classic “doubles” format, featuring brand new art by Robert McGinnis. You can look for more details, including ordering info, later this year, with a projected publication date in the first half of 2011. (Subterranean Press will also be bringing us the Block/Westlake sleaze omnibus Hellcats and Honeygirls in October.) Subterranean Press is unlikely to be placing these novels in major chain booksellers, so if you want 69 Barrow Street and Strange Embrace–and you should!–you’ll probably have to order it. Please don’t forget. (I’ll be reminding you.) I promote Hard Case Crime here so often, some of you must wonder if I’m on their payroll. I’m not. I don’t get promotional copies either–I’ve purchased every single Hard Case Crime book I own, which is all of them. Many of you know how hard it was to get the Parker books for many, many years. Obviously, there are lots of people who like the Parker books. However, there didn’t seem to be enough to keep them in print and available to the general public. Mysterious Press reprinted several of them but could not generate enough interest to make it past The Jugger, despite the release of Payback and Stark’s revival of the character in Comeback and its follow-ups. Not enough people were on board. I’m convinced that enough people would have been on board had the books been publicized better. And I don’t just mean by the publishing company. It’s our job as readers and fans to publicize as well. If we don’t? Well, we might just end up paying $100 or more for a used copy of Butcher’s Moon and owning a book that it’s impossible to discuss with others because no one we know will have read it or can read it. Hard Case Crime is doing crime fiction fans a tremendous service by bringing these books back into print. Buy them, read them, tell your friends about them. Get them into multiple printings. Don’t let them vanish, like the Parker books did for so long. And help to assure that Hard Case Crime is able to continue doing the great work it is doing. Full text of the 8/8/10 Hard Case Crime newsletter below the fold. When I was doing my initial writeup on Subterranean Press’ upcoming omnibus volume of three vintage Lawrence Block/Donald Westlake sleaze novels, Hellcats and Honeygirls, I found the original covers for two of the included books, A Girl Called Honey and So Willing. I wasn’t able to find the original cover art for the […] Subterranean Press has released Glen Orbik‘s cover art for their omnibus of three vintage sleaze novels co-written by Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake, collectively entitled Hellcats and Honeygirls (previously covered here). They also announce that they will be publishing one and likely two more volumes of pseudonymous Block (but not Westlake) […]
Wonder Publishing Group has just released Donald Westlake’s 1961 sleaze novel, Campus Doll, as an eBook. It is available for Kindle from Amazon and some other formats from Barnes & Nobles’ Fictionwise. As a bonus, it’s cheap, listed at $5.99. While it’s always great news when rare Westlake becomes available, I can’t help but be a little disappointed in the announcement. I wish there was a print-on-demand option for those of us not yet enamored with reading full-length novels on a computer screen or who can’t afford a Kindle or an iPad. But with something like Campus Doll, we’re lucky to have it at all and I feel a bit churlish for complaining. For we who are behind the times, Subterranean Press has announced an October publication date for an omnibus of three early sleazy collaborations between Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake (writing as Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall, respectively). Titled Hellcats and Honeygirls, it will contain A Girl Called Honey, So Willing, and Sin Hellcat (AKA A Piece of the Action) as well as a new introduction by Block. It retails for $30, and can be pre-ordered here. I don’t believe cover art for Hellcats and Honeygirls is online yet, but it will be by Glen Orbik, who has done some memorable work for Hard Case Crime. Vintage cover art below the fold. |
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