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January is here and that means a new crop of books entering the Public Domain. You probably heard about The Great Gatsby but for fans of Pulps and genre fiction there are other books that can now be downloaded for free. Here’s my picks from over 6000 new public domain volumes. Because of the way copyright laws work in the US, the new books are from the year 1929. (So if you missed previous years, feel free to look at earlier times for more great books.) I know for me it is always a thrill to see which Edgar Rice Burroughs novels will be available to everyone. This year we have many other famous authors like Agatha Christie, H. Russell Wakefield, Leslie Charteris and James B. Hendryx. But we all have our own favorites. These are just some of mine.
As for genres, I have grouped them loosely. I could, for instance, have put Northerns and Dog Books in separate piles. But since most of them are both, this just muddies the waters, so I kept it simple and put them all under Adventure. Here’s to plenty of good reading in 2025.
Science Fiction
Edgar Rice Burroughs in book form is usually later than in the magazines. He wrote Tarzan at the Earth’s Core in 1929-30 but it is the earlier Tanar that shows up in a book. The Monster Men was ERB’s take on Frankenstein…middling. His Synthetic Men of Mars was similar and better.
The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Short Stories of H. G. Wells by H. G. Wells
Tanar of Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tom Swift and His House On Wheels by Victor Appleton
The Woman Who Couldn’t Die by Arthur Stringer
Horror
Beware After Dark is actually one of the best collections of Horror stories before 1930. Besides all the Victorian ghost story retread, Harre has Lovecraft, Bassett Morgan, Sue Carleton and Beatrice Grimshaw. He obviously knew Weird Tales and appreciated it. This was also the year of W. B. Seabrook’s non-fiction book The Magic Island that all the Horror anthologies like to dip into for zombie and Voodoo stories. One of E. F. Benson’s best collections, The Room in the Tower finally shows up.
Beware After Dark by T. Everette Harre
The Magic Island by W. B. Seabrook
Old Man’s Beard by H. Russell Wakefield
The Room in the Tower and Other Stories by E. F. Benson
Fantasy & Folklore
You have to remember that “Fantasy” as a book category isn’t really a thing yet. So you will see folklore and myths here as well as children’s literature like the Dr. Doolittle books. I especially recommend the French Canadian The Flying Canoe if you like Strange Northerns. For the older reader there is James Branch Cabell’s The Way of Ecben.
The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy by Padraic Colum
Aladdin and Ali Baba (illustrated)
Arabian Romances and Folk-Tales by Habeeb Ibrahim Katibah
Dr. Doolittle’s Caravan by Hugh Lofting
Dr. Doolittle in the Moon by Hugh Lofting
Dr. Doolittle’s Post Office by Hugh Lofting
The Flying Canoe by J. E. deRossingnol
The Heroes by Charles Kingsley
The Mabinogion (Ellis & Lloyd edition)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Brian Stone version)
The Stray Lamb by Thorne Smith
The Way of Ecben by James Branch Cabell
The Wonder Book For Boys and Girls by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
Mystery
Plenty of familiar names here, and boy, are some of these guys prolific! Edgar Wallace and J. S. Fletcher pumped them out. We also get early Agatha Christie and Leslie Charteris. Daredevil by Charteris features Inspector Teal but not the Saint. Some classics like E. C. Bentley, S. S. Van Dine and some Pulps like George F. Worts.
The Adventures of Heine by Edgar Wallace
The Bishop Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine
The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers
The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace
The Diamond Murders by J. S. Fletcher
The Emperor of America by Sax Rohmer
The Eye of Osiris by R. Austin Freeman
The Father Brown Stories by G. K. Chesterton
The Golden Hades by Edgar Wallace
Great Detective Stories of the World by Joseph Lewis French
The Greenfield Mystery by George F. Worts
Murder by the Clock by Rufus King
Nicholas Goade, Detective by E. Philip Oppenheim
Old Lattimer’s Legacy by J. S. Fletcher
The Omnibus of Crime by Dorothy L. Sayers
Paradise Court by J. S. Fletcher
Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie
The Ransom for London by J. S. Fletcher
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Scarab Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine
The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie
The Terrible People by Edgar Wallace
Trent’s Last Case by E. C. Bentley
Adventure
As I said above, the Adventure selections range. There are animal stories like Felix Salten’s Bambi, which isn’t really a children’s book by today’s marketing. (For more, go here). Dog books from Hinkle and Terhune as well as classics with good illustrations. Some of my favorite Northern writers are here with James B. Hendryx, Ridgwell Cullum and John Buchan (six years away from becoming the Governor General of Canada). Renfrew of the Royal Mounted by Eskine would be made into a Radio show, movies and a TV show. For more, go here.
Barbary Bo: A Story of the Barbary Pirates (illustrated)
The Big Shot by Frank L. Packard
Black Storm by Thomas C. Hinkle
Bomba the Jungle Boy Among the Slaves by Roy Rockwood (John W. Duffield)
Bugle, A Dog of the Rockies by Thomas C. Hinkle
Connie Morgan Hits the Trail by James B. Hendryx
The Courts of Morning by John Buchan
Lad of Sunnybank by Albert Payson Terhune
Man of the North by James B. Hendryx
The Mystery of the Barren Lands by Ridgwell Cullum
Renfrew of the Royal Mounted by Laurie Y. Erskine
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe (illustrated)
The Romantic Prince by Rafael Sabatini
The Runagates Club by John Buchan
The Secret of Sea-Dream House by Albert Payson Terhune
Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted by J. G. Rowe
The Swiss Family Robinson by David Wyss (illustrated)
Temple Tower by H. C. McNeile (Sapper)
Western
The Westerns are dominated by Zane Grey, the highest paid Pulpster of them all. He even beat out Edgar Rice Burroughs in that respect. The original Western is often said to be Owen Wister’s The Virginian. It was written before 1929 but had an edition that year. I had to include Harold Bindloss because the town of Bindloss, Alberta is named after him.
The Fighting Caravans by Zane Grey
The Frontiersmen by Harold Bindloss
The Hash Knife Outfit by Zane Grey
Rustlers of Beacon Creek by Max Brand
Sentinel of the Desert by Jackson Gregory
White Wolf’s Pack by Hal Dunning
Conclusion
I know I left out many BIG books of 1929 like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel, Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica and several others. They are there if you want them but I’ll stick to my Pulpy classics. I’m more interested in The Maltese Falcon, which enters the public domain (the magazine version). Will we see a traffic jam of Sam Spade novels the way we did with Sherlock Holmes over the last decade? I’m okay with that. Books entering the public domain, for me anyway, isn’t about the grandchildren of famous authors no longer getting any money. (Eight more years and The Hobbit will be up for grabs!) It’s about icons becoming available to all of us. Do I read pastiche Sherlock? Sure when it’s written by Fred Saberhagen or Loren D. Estleman. It’s just nice to have the option, to see the experimentation.
Stories shouldn’t be written in stone but should grow and mutate and become something else. The public domain insures this. Remember for every book I selected here there is 98.7% of books I did not. Part of that is I have no interest in books about religion, accounting, gardening or business. But also there were many in the genres I like that did not grab me. Their authors have been forgotten while others have passed the one hundred year test. (In this case, the 95 year test.) Writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs deserve to be discovered by generation after generation. His creations live and breathe in the hands of new writers like Will Murray. That’s what I look forward to each year.
Enough rambling. Go read some books!
Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror from RAGE m a c h i n e
It’s been a good while, but isn’t The Monster Men more directly a take on The Island of Dr Moreau than Frankenstein?
Scientist creating monsters in vats, numbering the experiments. The original title was “Number Thirteen”. Perhaps a bit of both.