The introduction and the text, I should say!

Oh, I have corrections to make!

My info got a bit confused, the reprint is of Wills' first Boscobell book, Author in Distress, the same one mentioned in the blog post! As as it turns out, J.F. Morris _is_ connected with the rerelease, he's contributing the foreward!

FIRST BOOKS: Author in Distress - Cecil M. Wills THE STORY: Novelist Gervoise Trevellyan is an Author in Distress (1934). And first time mystery writer Cecil Wills wastes no time in getti...

In a blog post, J.F. Morris (not affiliated with RH) called Sgt. Boscobell one of the best detectives of the Golden Age. (prettysinister.blogspot.com/2022/06/firs...)

Add this long-forgotten gem of detection to your rapidly-growing library of Ramble House reprints from the good ol' days of British crime. They just don't write 'em like this any more. Map on back cover by Gavin O'Keefe.

Luckily Detective-Inspector Geoffrey Boscobell is on the case and before long the poisonous machinations of a murderous fiend (or is it fiendess?) are exposed.

Back in 1936 a speedy motor vehicle was an accident waiting to happen, so it was a good time for British mystery writer Cecil M. Wills to come up with a corker of a tale involving a Keelerian will, a nasty feudal lord with a heavy accelerator foot, and plenty of marital discord.

The cover to the Ramble House edition of FATAL ACCIDENT, mostly black with the title words making a T-shape crossing on the A. Cecil M. Wells, A 'Boscobell' Adventure. A Ramble House Mystery.

Ramble House is working on a rerelease of Fatal Accident, a Boscobell mystery from 1936 by the character's creator Cecil Wills. ramblehouse.com/fatalacciden...

We hope you enjoy our specialized version, which also has a new foreward by Ramble House newcomer Chase Griffin! As always, contact Gavin directly (address on the item's page on our site) for a discount!

The Ramble House edition, which we call "The Forbidden Inversion," has a twist: the stories are printed in reverse order. It starts with the mostly-happy romances, then The Yellow Sign signifies a decent into madness, ending with the unsettling unreliable narrator tale The Repairer of Reputations.

Maybe the intent was to start the word off with horror, then to lighten it with happier tales to produce a feeling of relief in the reader? A lot of people would say that doesn't really quite work.

It contains ten stories, but it's mostly the first four that are truly horror. The fifth, "The Demoiselle d'Ys," is a love story with an element of time travel to it. The remaining stories are mostly traditional romances.

These stories were grandfathered into the Cthulhu Mythos by Lovecraft himself, and also by others, who referred to it to lend verisimilitude to their own stories.

Yet, The King in Yellow has always had a certain displeasing aspect to it.

The works are mostly self-contained, but they all feature the script of an uncanny play, "The King in Yellow" of the title, that causes madness and despair in those who read it.

The King in Yellow was admired by H.P.Lovecraft and members of his circle, as well as many to follow, for containing four exquisite examples of horror: "The Repairer of Reputations," "The Mask," "In The Court of the Dragon" and "The Yellow Sign."

The cover to the Ramble House "Forbidden Inversion" edition of The King in Yellow. The cover image, by our own Gavin O'Keefe, is of a yellow recreation of a playing card King of Hearts, with the title and author's name over it, the upside-down King is more or less normal, the rightside-up version though the king has a skull, and it looks like his sword is thrust into it!

Aah we're back! Ramble House is back for 2026 with the website finally updated for HTTPS, and a new book, a reprint of Robert Chamber's classic (or at least halfway so) work of weird horror THE KING IN YELLOW! You can get it here: ramblehouse.com/thekinginyel...

We're still alive! Hopefully I can get a new post up soon!

Based on law school seminars that Nevins taught for more than 20 years, Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law is a deep dive into law and legal professionals as depicted in popular culture, and how audience understanding of law was shaped by it.

The cover to Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film, by Francis M. Nevins.

The other new book from Ramble House is also by Francis Nevins, Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film. www.ramblehouse.com/Judges.htm

This volume is a follow-up to a previous book by Francis Nevils on Ellery Queen, this time with Nevins hoping to do more justice to Manfred Lee's contributions to the stories.

The Ellery Queen books are named for their protagonist and the pen name used by their authors, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee, who wrote 40 books about their character. Nevins knew Dannay and considered him like a grandfather to him, but knew much less about co-author Lee.

The cover to Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection by Francis M. Nevins. More text reads "The story of how two fractious cousins reshaped the modern detective novel." The cousins are pictured: Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.

Ramble House has two new books out! The first is Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection, compiled by Francis Nevins, two-time winner of The Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. www.ramblehouse.com/EQ.htm

Review | In praise of three ‘unimportant’ books Delving into the unusual worlds of Reid Byers’s “Imaginary Books,” Paul Valéry’s “Monsieur Teste” and “The Anthologist’s Folly,” edited by Johnny Mains.

The Anthologist's Folly got written up in the Washington Post by Michael Dirda: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...
It mentions that the book contains the until-recently hard-to-find story The Hole and the Pit, the only novel by lyricist Adrian Ross.

The cover of the book The Anthologist's Folly, edited by Johnny Mains. It shows an illustration of a stone tower in the woods being struck by lightning.

The Anthologist's Folly is a collection of eldritch horror stories curated by award-winning editor Johnny Mains. It collects stories from Bram Stoker, Algernon Blackwood, Oswell Blakeston, A.J. Alan, and other horror authors. Its page on Ramble House's website: www.ramblehouse.com/Anthologists...

Other work has gotten in the way lately, but we're still around! Expect a new post soon.

As always, contact Gavin directly (email address on the book's page) for a discount and the best shipping rates.

Editor Johnny Mains certainly put in the heavy lifting in compiling this volume, which brings together many lost stories. Some of his work has seen wider exposure: one story appeared in Weird Tales, and one was adapted in the 70s as an episode of Night Gallery.

But in his writing he wasn't always unsympathetic to the native people, and some of his stories have a supernatural element where the colonizers come out the worst for ignoring their beliefs and practices.

Cook was a master of supernatural horror, fed by the superstitions of the natives he played a role in subjugating. It should be noted that he was a product of his time, and his stories contain some content many would find objectionable today. His post in Borneo ended due to a native uprising.

Most of Cook's work has only been published once before now. The book contains all his short fiction, except for the possibly-lost tale "The Owl's Warning," from Pep Stories, October 1927.

Oscar Cook spent over a decade of his early adulthood as part of the British colonialist project in Borneo, and the experience marked and shaped both him and his writing for the rest of his life. He wrote memoirs (Borneo: Stealer of Hearts) and 38 short stories, of which 37 appear here.