From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture.

Containing over 47 stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train - a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes.

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright. 

In The Best Cases of The Continental Op, an original compilation of eight stories from Skyboat Media, the Op walks, stalks, and runs down the steep streets of San Francisco to solve crimes of blackmail, murder, stolen identities, and arson, and each story contains so many twists and turns you’ll be hooked until the very (surprising) end.... 

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler is back with a new anthology that has gathered the intel on the world's greatest secret agents, declassified here for the first time.

From the very beginning of its two-decade run on radio, Suspense was tops in thriller entertainment! Its first year on the air brought together stories from such outstanding masters of the genre as John Dickson Carr, Dashiell Hammett, and Edgar Allan Poe! Tune in to 20 tense classics from Radio's Outstanding Theatre of Thrills - starring Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, Susan Hayward, Richard Dix, Lou Merrill, Agnes Moorehead, Frank Readick, Alice Frost, and more.  

It's a rainy night in postwar Seattle. There's a crime to be solved, and an investigator is needed. But it's a dangerous profession! Sometimes the source of a scream is elusive, sometimes a surveillance job goes south, and sometimes someone's got their gun sight set on you! From out of the Pacific Northwest come 24 more adventures produced by Jim French. Phil Harper stars as Harry Nile, with Pat French as his all-knowing assistant Murphy. It's new-time radio drama produced in the classic style.

No bigger fad swept across postwar radio than that of the hard-boiled private detective - and nobody had more fun with their wink-and-nudge take on the genre than the producers, writers, and cast of The Adventures of Sam Spade. Dashiell Hammett's legendary private eye had a sardonic sense of humor, which wavy-haired, rugged-voiced Howard Duff played to perfection.

The Vampire Archives is the biggest, hungriest, undeadliest collection of vampire stories, as well as the most comprehensive bibliography of vampire fiction ever assembled. Dark, stormy, and delicious, once it sinks its teeth into you there’s no escape.

Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade is hired to locate a client's sister by tailing the sister's companion. Spade's partner Miles Archer takes on the assignment, and quickly both Archer and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner's death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters, and they are all after a legendary statuette of a falcon that had long ago been made for King Charles of Spain. Encrusted with jewels, it is worth a fortune.

Raymond Chandler’s famous private eye, Philip Marlowe, comes to life in this 44-episode collection of season one of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe radio show, featuring the original cast recordings originally aired on the CBS Radio Network from 1948-1950. The Adventures of Philip Marlowe was a fan favorite for its no-nonsense, hard-boiled approach to crime solving and is presented here in 44 commercial-free episodes. 

From the darkest, foggiest, most rain-swept streets of your imagination come The Great Radio Private Eyes! Detectives, investigators, shamuses all - here's a legion of radio's best-remembered gumshoes taking on all comers in a wide-ranging collection of thrill-packed cases of crime. They're all here! From Bulldog Drummond to Candy Matson, from the urbane world of The Falcon to the grubby dockside world of Pat Novak - get set for classic radio drama at its most compelling!

Enjoy the adventures of Max Latin, the detective who doesn't want to be a detective! Author Norbert Davis mixed the classic hard-boiled style with humor, making Max Latin unique in pulp fiction. Appearing for five screwball stories in Dime Detective, this new edition includes an authoritative introduction by fellow Dime Detective scribe John D. MacDonald.

Why we think it’s a great listen: You thought he was a stodgy scientist with funny hair, but Isaacson and Hermann reveal an eloquent, intense, and selfless human being who not only shaped science with his theories, but politics and world events in the 20th century as well. Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos.

He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.