First up is the third and final volume of Robert J. Hogan’s lanky cow-poke of the Western Front, Smoke Wade! Robert J. Hogan pulled from his varied experiences as a ranch hand, a pilot, and a flight instructor to breath life into Smoke Wade in 1931. This sizable third and final volume of Smoke Wade’s exploits, covering 1933-1938, collects his last 18 adventures from the pages of Battle Birds and Dare-Devil Aces, before his stories moved to the back pages of Hogan’s G-8 and his Battle Aces!

The Adventures of Smoke Wade: Volume III

FLYING through the Hell-Skies of the Western front in a Pinto-colored spad he named Jake, after his favorite ranch pony, Smoke Wade and the pilots of the 66th Pursuit fight their way out of one tight spot after another in their battle to put an end to the evil Baron von Stolz, Germany’s top Ace. But when the chips are down, don’t bet against Smoke Wade!

We’ve paired this with the first in a series of four books with Donald E. Keyhoe’s Mad Marines—Devildog Squadron—in eight Weird World War I Adventures from the pages of Sky Birds!

Devildog Squadron: The Crimson Fog

MEET “Cyclone Bill” Garrity. Square of jaw and stern of eye, he was the big, hard-boiled C.O. of the 28th Pursuit—a squadron of 27 of the maddest Marines on the Western Front: there was Hick Jones, the tall, lanky Texan who was second in command; Larry Brent, the youthful leader of B Flight; and Lucky Lane and his three lunatics—the solemn-looking Mack Tuttle, Benny Sparks, and the big Irish lug, Pug Flanagan—to name just a few. They may have been hard drinkers with no concept of regulations, but they were all two-fisted fighters in the air, able to out-maneuver, out-fly, and out-scrap any bizarre menace that came their way. They were—as the enraged Boche had labeled them, der Teufelhund Jagdstaffel—THE DEVILDOG SQUADRON!

AND, as if that wasn’t enough, we are also re-issuing our one long out of print title—Sheridan Doome! Originally presented in a retro “flip book” style back in 2008 as our 9th book, Sheridan Doome collected the two hardcover adventures of the U.S. Naval Intelligence Lieutenant Commander. Before Sheridan Doome became a staple in the pages of The Shadow magazine, two Doome hardcover mysteries were written in the mid-1930’s by acclaimed hard-boiled author Steve Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming) and edited by his wife Edythe Seims (Dime Detective, G-8 and His Battle Aces).

The Murder of the Admiral and The Murder of the Pigboat Skipper

AS CHIEF detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence, Lieutenant Commander Sheridan Doome’s job was a grim one. Whenever an extraordinary mystery or crime occurred in the fleet, on a naval base, or anywhere the navy worked to protect American interests, Doome was immediately dispatched to investigate it. Fear and dread would always precede Doome’s arrival in his special black airplane. For, in an explosion during WWI, he had been monstrously disfigured. Much of his skin had been burned away, leaving his head and face an expressionless bone-white lump of scar tissue. But behind the ugliness was a brilliant mind. Sheridan Doome always got his man.

Both Sheridan Doome books are priced to sell at $7.99 a piece!

In addition to these new books, we’ll have all of our other titles on hand as well as our previous convention exclusive—Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Kirk. So if you’re planning on coming to Pittsburgh for PulpFest this year, stop by our table and say hi and pick up our latest releases! We hope we see you there!

Bill Baxter was tired of being a stooge for the famous Mart Morrel, a guy who specialized in glory and let the War take care of itself—whose head was swollen twice as large as the Army’s best balloon! Still nobody doubted Morrel’s nerve or the fact that he could fly—it’s just that Baxter was well convinced that wind bags must come down!

• Download “The Kid from Hell” (October 1936, Dare-Devil Aces)

For more great tales by Steve Fisher, check out Captain Babyface: The Complete Adventures—For Jed Garrett, “Captain Babyface” of the American Special Agent’s Corps, his orders are simple: Kill Mr. Death! But who is Mr. Death? One of Germany’s brightest chemists and inventors, he had grown weary of life and entered a monastery near Alsace-Lorraine. But war came and the monastery was bombed. Severely injured, German surgeons patched him back together, though he was left horribly disfigured. And now, sworn to vengeance against the Americans, he uses his evil genius for Germany in the “War to End All War!”

IT’S HARD to believe it’s already been ten years since we introduced you to Jed Garrett, aka Captian Babyface, and his faithful dog Click, the hell-hound, but it has. It was ten years ago today Age of Aces Books published it’s first—Captain Babyface: The Complete Adventures, gathering together all 10 of Steve Fisher’s tales of Captain Babyface and his battles against the skull-visaged Mr. Death that ran in the pages of Dare-Devil Aces in 1936.

Over the past ten years we’ve published the best names in weird World War I fiction from the tattered pages of the old pulp magazines. In addition to Steve Fisher, we’ve published work from the illustrious likes of Robert J. Hogan (The Red Falcon and Smoke Wade), Donald E. Keyhoe (Captain Philip Strange, The Vanished Legion and The Jailbird Flight); C.M. Miller (Chinese Brady), Ralph Oppenheim (The Three Mosquitoes), William E. Barrett (The Iron Ace), Robert M. Burtt (Battling Grogan), O.B. Myers (The Blacksheep of Belogue), Arch Whitehouse (Coffin Kirk), Harold F. Cruickshank (Sky Devil), William Hartley (Molloy & McNamara), and Frederick C. Painton (The Squadron of the Dead). That’s quite a list and we’ve got more to come!

We’ve tried to make our website a place to help you Journey back to an Age of Aces by not only featuring content about our books—the authors we’ve published and artist we’ve printed, but also other aspects of the old air pulps that don’t make it into our books as well—The pulp covers and the stories behind them, the lives of the aces in pictures, and their most thrilling sky fights!

And there’s free fiction Fridays when we frequently post stories that can be downloaded and read! Since it’s our tenth year we’re trying to have more frequent content up on the site and more stories—trying to increase from one or two a month to practically every Friday—and from the authors we’ve published as well as recurring website favorites—Joe Archibald’s Phineas Pinkham and Lt. Frank Johnson’s Silent Orth.

So stop back often to journey back and here’s hoping for 10 more great years bringing you the best of old air pulps in a new package!

The June and December covers of 1936 are probably the two most recognizable Dare-Devil Aces covers and we have featured both of them now on back covers of our books. Our very first publication, Steve Fisher’s Captain Babyface, featured the June cover on the back. Captain Babyface and Mr Death matched wits through ten of the twelve issues that year––their last scrap appearing in the November issue. William Hartley’s The Adventures of Molloy & McNamara started running in the July 1936 issue with the adventure we choose to use as the title for the volume, Satan’s Playmates, in the December issue allowing us to utilize it’s cover in the cover design of that book.

As 1936 gave way to 1937, Blakeslee’s covers move further away from depictions of planes in use during the late great hate and start to feature more contemporary planes in the frenetic melees depicted on the covers. Robert J. Hogan’s The Red Falcon was also printing it last stories in 1937 with the last Dare-Devil Aces Red Falcon story being published in the January 1938 issue. The June 1937 cover seemed to work best with the crimson cover of the Red Falcon’s fourth and final volume. This is the latest cover we’ve used, but fear not, this is not the last update to our covers gallery. There are more covers to come.

You can enjoy these as well as covers from 1932 through 1935 in our Dare-Devil Aces Cover Gallery!

• Download “Destroyer”  Full length novel, 1941