Rinehart and Black Mask: Open Road Opens Doors

A couple of emails from the good folks at mysteriouspress.com/Open Road Media that I want to pass along to my readers.

First, Open Road has released as e-books thirteen books written by Mary Roberts Rinehart. She's mostly remembered (rather unfairly, I think) as the queen of "Had I But Known," whose stories often featured brave heroines (and some uncautious men as well) who insisted on venturing into dark cellars and the like with little regard for, or knowledge of, the dangers they faced. The books appear to be mostly from later in Rinehart's career, and they include a couple of gems I have never read, such as The Swimming Pool and The Yellow Room. They don't include her first two books, The Circular Staircase and The Man in Lower 10, but those two classics are out of copyright and available elsewhere. If you've never read Rinehart, whose books were tremendously popular during the first half of the 20th century, you have a treat in store.

Balancing "Had I But Known" with "Hard-Boiled," mysteriouspress.com/Open Road Media has also announced plans to release stories from the original Black Mask magazine, now in digital formats. They'll be publishing monthly, beginning on August 27th. If you don't know Black Mask, it was one of the most influential pulp publishers in the first half of the 20th century, introducing and publishing Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Norbert Davis, and many other early hard-boiled writers. If you're a fan of hard-boiled stories, this is major news. Here's a link to a description of one of the reissued stories on the Open Road site.

As I've said before, I'm delighted to see mysteriouspress.com and Open Road Media releasing e-book versions of so many classic authors in many different genres. Most have long been out of print. I hope a new generation of readers will discover these wonderful books and stories.

Comments

[Margot Kinberg]

Les - I couldn't be happier about this news. It's so very nice to hear about these companies that are making those classic stories available to new generations. I know I sound like a broken MP3 - er - record ;-) about this, but it is a great development.

[Les Blatt]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Margot. The phrase "classic mysteries" applies to many more writers than merely Agatha Christie and the other so-called "crime queens" of the Golden Age. I do hope a lot of these too-rapidly-forgotten works find new audiences.