Forgotten Books: THE FREDERICK NEBEL LIBRARY from Black Dog Books (2012-2015)

Frederick Nebel's best work appeared in the pages of Black Mask and Dime Detective. You can pick up any of the nine Altus Press volumes featuring MacBride & Kennedy, Cardigan, and Tough Dick Donahue, and be amazed at his command of hardboiled prose. He was one of the top three best writers for those magazines, and you know who the other two are.

But prior to - and while - writing for those detective mags, he turned out a lot of air adventure stories set in the South Seas, a somewhat smaller - but still significant - chunk of Northwest stories, and a lesser number of South Seas adventures without the airplanes. And it was all good stuff. I can't say it rises to the level of his detective work, but it was certainly a cut or two above most pulp fiction in those genres. 

A few years back, Tom Roberts put out these six collections featuring some of those high-flying, cold climate and warm climate adventure stories, and all are well worth your notice. The Black Dog Books site is not accepting orders at the moment, but they're all available as Print On Demand from Amazon. (I had a little involvement with a couple of them myself, but don't let that stop you!)

Altus Press has also done three volumes (so far) covering similar territory, and they're great too. 

In case you missed it, yesterday I posted pics of Black Dog's LESTER DENT LIBRARY (HERE)

The LESTER DENT LIBRARY from Black Dog Books (2009-2013)

The Black Dog website is not currently accepting orders, but all these are available on a Print On Demand basis from Amazon.

Recent cool stuff from Black Dog Books

Get 'em HERE.

Black Dog Library: H. BEDFORD-JONES

Black Dog Gallery: The TALBOT MUNDY Library

Black Dog Gallery: The FREDERICK NEBEL Library

The LESTER DENT Library - from Black Dog Books

All available HERE.

The Art of TOM ROBERTS (Part 9)

Pulpy goodness from Black Dog Books, 2008. 

A Black Dog classic - from 2000. 

From Crippen & Landru, 2002.  (Thx to R. Robinson)

Parts 1 thru 8 of The Art of TOM ROBERTS are HERE.
Next week: Nooses galore.

The Art of TOM ROBERTS (Part 8)

This is one of favorite TR covers, from 2006. The mystery. The menace. The subtlety. Damn.

Here's a nice action scene from the Black Dog chapbook days of 2000. And this one had a bonus - another illo on the back.

Here's another in the Crippen & Landru Lost Classics series, from 2010. The nurse looks suspiciously like the same lady who posed for the bar wench on the Sabatini book The Evidence of the Sword (HERE). That was Tom's wife.

Once again, I must pay tribute to the scanning skills of Mr. Richard Robinson.
More Roberts art next week.
Parts 1 thru 7 are HERE.

The Art of TOM ROBERTS (Part 6)

Our tribute to Mr. Roberts rolls on, with this Crippen & Landru cover from 2007. This time all three scans come to us courtesy of the Richard Robinson University Library. 

This one's from Black Dog's Olden Days of 2002.

And Tom paints like an Egyptian for this Black Dog cover from 2011.

CORRECTION: In case you missed our late update to last week's post, The Raygun Revival cover credited to "Tom Roberts" turned out to be by a whole 'nother Tom Roberts, about whom this Tom and I know nothing. Sheesh, how embarassing. 

More artistic wonders next week.

See our growing gallery of Tom's work (and the other Tom's) HERE. 

The Art of TOM ROBERTS (Part 5)

Here's a cool Crippen & Landru cover from way back in 2000. The painting was later repurposed for EQMM. We'll see that some Sunday soon.

Long Live the Dead appears courtesy of the Richard Robinson Dining Room Library.

ALERT! ALERT! Just got word that the Raygun cover above is NOT by Tom Roberts. At least, not the same Tom Roberts we're talking about here. An imposter? A wannabe? A typo? I don't know, and neither does the real Tom. Sorry for misinfo.

This 2007 Black Dog Book reminds me of Baumhofer's great Doc Savage covers.

See Parts 1 thru 4 HERE. 

Continued next Sunday!