Stella M. During : Popular romance writer whose pedigree proved quite a challenge. Originally published on 2 December 2009, this essay has...

Here's the first of a couple of tales I'm classifying as "Mysterious Tales of Romance Writers". I've covered a fair nu...

One of the greatest pleasures of doing Bear Alley is that it puts me in touch with so many interesting people. A week or so ago I heard out ...

(* Reposted from 1 June 2007 as I've managed to add some more illustrations.) I'm not sure when and how many of these appeared -- pr...

Talk about giving with one hand and taking away with the other... The post this week brought all sorts of goodies. The three new books I exp...

Barry Forshaw's two-volume British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia runs to two volumes and a total of 867 pages. Rather than the usual c...

The Art of Henry Coller by Gordon Howsden Henry Coller (1886-1958) was a commercial artist and illustrator whose fame rated just a few lines...

Harold William Hailstone was a cartoonist and illustrator who contributed to many magazines during his long career as an illustrator. Born i...

Following on from the success of the first Erotic Comics volume , which examined the early history of the genre, Tim Pilcher's second vo...

KEN LANGSTAFF (1918-2008) by Robin Langstaff I am writing to pay tribute to my late father, Charles Kenneth Langstaff, who died suddenly on ...

Like everyone else with a soul, I'm enchanted by snow. Of course, I'm not forced to go out into the snow first thing on a Monday mor...

In my occasional role as researcher for the Science Fiction Encyclopedia , Crime Fiction Bibliography and other tomes, I stumble across a n...