Dawn of the Noir
There are two books about to drop, and let me tell you, I fell hard for both of them.
Dangerous Turns came to me through the unofficial mayor of the horror community, Robert Parigi, and through him I was introduced to the works of author Peter Paige (née Morton Wolson), whose name some of you may know from The Nightmare Blonde, which we released in 2025. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. It’s an absolute blast.
Peter Wolson is Morton’s son (See what Mort did there?) and it’s easy to see why he loved his father’s writing so deeply. There's a lot to love. Together, we unearthed Morton’s unpublished manuscripts and turned them into a rather handsome collection, though not without some real labor.
I scanned the stories myself, the tireless Mike Watt handled the OCR, and in several cases painstakingly re-typed pages that were too old and faded to survive automation.
This release also marks the first appearance of designer and artist Amanda Dempsey, who I’ve known for over a decade. She’s a prop designer on DC’s animated shows and was the production designer on the very cursed documentary I wrote and produced, Doc of Chucky. She’s phenomenal, and you’ll be seeing a lot more of her work with us going forward.
Dangerous Turns will be released on January 31st.
The Big Breeze, meanwhile, came to me through Stephen Imhoff. When he’s not crafting Emmy-winning practical effects, he sometimes moonlights as a cover artist for us (See: Splatter Flicks, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Cube, Splice). Steve asked if he could introduce me to a gent by the name of Steven Fechter, the writer of the Kevin Bacon film The Woodsman.
Of course I said yes. What Steven sent me was so good I read it in a single sitting; I genuinely needed to know what happened next. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a sports fan, so it’s unusual to see sports iconography on an Encyclopocalypse book, but here it’s just the proscenium; the stage on which one hell of a mystery is unspooled.
The cover for The Big Breeze was illustrated by my friend Fabiano Neves, whose work some of you will recognize from the Army of Darkness comics.
The Big Breeze hits shelves February 14th.
I adore detective fiction. Hammett, Cain, Chandler, etc. Their prose is so good it makes me want to take a hammer to my own face. Truly great crime writing is rare, which is why I love the Coens, Patrick Sheane Duncan, Joe Lansdale, Pete Atkins, and Stephen King, whom Pete rightly calls “the head of our profession.”
I happened to be sent two excellent detective novels that had been quietly in the works for over a year, and I happened to find myself releasing them within weeks of each other, so I thought it was worth noting.
I’m also very happy to report that this is only the beginning. There’s a lot more detective fiction coming. We still have more of Pete’s audiobooks to release, including a few absolute bangers, as the kids say. He's got stories that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the head of our profession, I daresay. There’s also going to be a lot more Joe Lansdale audiobooks, which is one of the great perks of my day job: being “forced” to listen to books I’d happily shell out hard-earned cash for.
My long-running personal project of reviving the entire Gary Brandner library continues as well. Gary was a hell of a detective writer. He even kept a replica Maltese Falcon on his desk while he worked, which now lives as a cherished bookend in my home library. I’ve spent years quietly collecting his complete short-fiction works, much of which contains some truly incredible detective stories.
