Wildside Press imprint: 1733 books

In Plato's "Ion," Socrates discusses with the titular character, a professional rhapsode who also lectures on Homer, the question of whether the rhapsode, a performer of poetry, gives his performance on account of his skill and knowledge or by virtue of divine possession. It is one of the shortest of Plato's dialogues.

DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU! A madman has marked you for death. He follows you in the woods. He climbs the tree outside your window. He knocks on your door at midnight. He lusts for you. His raging desire will not rest until his lovely knife finds your delicious body. He has killed...

If Kate Archer had known just what the invitation entailed, she most certainly would not have succumbed to the pleading of June Gladstone to spend a month’s vacation at her father’s luxurious farm. Kate had met June at school, and, although four years her senior, had gone out of her way...

Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor is a Shakespearean satire by James Branch Cabell, first published in 1940. Cabell had incubated a Shakespeare satire for decades, and based his tale on the Saxo Grammaticus, an epic saga that recounts the story of the mythic Hamlet.

On the far side of the room was a door and beyond that door were Pole and Dowell, two of the men who had murdered old Sothoron and old Sothoron’s wife. He knew they were there. How he knew it he could not have explained. So far as his trained senses had been able to discover, there had come from the next room during his long wait the sound of neither voice nor motion...

Based on the Victor Hugo novel of the same name (penned when the author was only twenty-one), this macabre play begins in a morgue. The fearsome outlaw, Hans of Iceland, whose face has been seen by no one, determines to kill a regiment of Musketeers that he blames for the death of his son. His revenge...

"My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him." -- Neil Gaiman Who are those six mysterious figures that...

DANCE TO THE TUNE OF THE GUN! The cops told Joe Moran he was through as a private eye. They’d revoked his license, taken away his gun permit, and given him orders to get out of the state. They’d had enough of his two-fisted methods and the trickery by which he’d short-circuited the law...

This volume collects 9 classic science fiction stories by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Included are: "The Rule of the Door," "Petty Larceny," "On the Dotted Line," "Judgement Day," "Secret Weapon," "The Perfect Punishment," "A Slight Case of Limbo," "D.F.C.," and "Wings of Song." Also included is the original 1967...

Thomas Burnett Swann was a brilliant fantasy writer who died in 1976. He wrote primarily about the ancient Greek and Roman world, blending myth with romance and adventure. A reviewer in the Village Voice sums his work up well: "Swann's neo-romantic fantasies of the past are unique. He uses the stuff...

A young woman, the last passenger on a late night bus, gets to talking with a kindly bus driver about two murders that recently occurred.

In five short stories and one long novelette, Rufus King introduces Colin Starr, a young physician whose medical knowledge enables him to detect murder where a less able doctor would have signed a certificate of death from natural causes. Because of his shrewd understanding of human psychology as...

Rufus King (1893–1966) was an American author of Whodunit crime novels. He created four series of detective stories: the first one with Reginald De Puyster, a sophisticated detective similar to Philo Vance; the second one with his more famous character, Lieutenant Valcour; Colin Starr, who appeared...