New Wildside Press freebie for this Tuesday:
The Second Golden Age of Crime & Mystery Megapack™ featuring vintage stories by the late Ruth Chessman (
IMDB).
I first encountered Ruth Chessman’s work when browsing back issues of Manhunt magazine—and I was immediately intrigued. Manhunt was a noir/hardboiled digest-sized mystery magazine, and female bylines were uncommon. A quick check showed that she also published stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine as well as a 1965 middle-grade novel called Bound for Freedom, which was adapted as a movie.
She must have instilled her love of crime writing in her family, since her daughter turns out to be none other than mystery writer Jane K. Cleland—who was kind enough to grant us permission to reprint her late mother’s work. (Jane also supplied us with copies of hard-to-find stories.)
Ruth Chessman was a very good, if far too infrequent writer. This collection assembles most of her published short fiction. Enjoy!
Also, a reminder that the following is expiring tomorrow:
Humble Comics Bundle Forbidden Comics supporting Banned Books Week, full of quality graphic novels which have been challenged or banned in various places, including fiction and non-fiction works by Alan Moore, Jaime Hernandez, volumes of popular comics Elfquest and The Boys, the very moving Barefoot Gen about the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, and more (plus an audiobook at the top-tier level, read by Wil Wheaton of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame).
Two or so titles are repeats from previous HBs, but if you didn't pick those up long ago, now is a good time to get them. The $12-ish average is close enough to the $15 top-tier that you might as well splurge and get the lot.