RH Home Page

RAMBLE HOUSE

Celebrating 20 Years of Independent Publishing

__________________________________

September 13, 2019

Our latest release is a new edition of NO ESCAPE by R. R. Ryan.

For customers who prefer to deal directly with us, please feel free to email me at

For direct orders I will quote you a discounted price on books. Orders within the USA come with discounted or complimentary shipping (depending on order size). For overseas destinations I will always quote at-cost shipping cost.

UPDATE: We can no longer take direct orders from Australian customers for our books listed on Amazon, due to restrictions in that department. We can however continue to accept direct orders from Australian customers for any of our titles listed on Lulu.

Please note that we no longer offer the hand-made Ramble House editions (the small paperback versions in dustjacket). We are still revising this website and references to the RH handmade editions should be ignored.

Fender Tucker's books and music

A bit about Gavin L. O'Keefe

____________________________________________________________________________

Latest Books

____________________________________________________________________________

____________

No Escape by R. R. Ryan

___________

This novel is built on the theme that there is no escape for a murderer - that though undetected and unpunished by man-made laws,

he cannot hope to escape the hand of fate itself.

The story is a powerful one of a sensitive, cultured young husband driven to distraction by the ceaseless and jealous demands of his invalid, virgin wife,

and of the other woman whom he loved and desired.

Then the fateful temptation of arsenic.

The climax is totally unexpected.

It is contrived with great subtlety yet is in every way consistent with the trend of the story and with the motives and emotions of the characters.

The whole story reveals a deep understanding of human nature that raises it far above the level of the average romantic novel.

This new edition of No Escape — the first since its original publication in 1940 — includes an introduction by horror fiction authorities John Pelan and D. H. Olson.

________

____________________________________________________________________________

__________________________

_________________

______

The Mystery of Fifty-Two by Walter S. Masterman

___________

Alfred Austin is a humble clerk and up until now his life has been uneventful.

But one rainy night in London he receives a mysterious phone call from an unknown woman,
asking him to come to a house in his own street and to give a message to a Mr. Carey.
Curiosity prompts Austin to venture out on that bleak night — but once he reaches No.52,

the young woman tells him that there is no Mr. Carey at the address, and that he must be mistaken.
But shortly a terrible discovery will be made in house No.52 that drags in Austin and his wife Nora.
It would take the skill of an Arthur Sinclair to solve the case...so it’s fortunate that the very man himself heads the investigation -
even if Sinclair admits he’s doing a lot of it independently of Scotland Yard.

____________________________________________________________________________

__________________________

_________________

_______________

________

The Devil's Saint by Dulcie Deamer

__________________________

Set in an imagined Middle Ages where belief in magic and demons is unquestioned, The Devil’s Saint is a tale of witchcraft, superstition and intolerance.
It tells the story of 16-year-old Sidonia, daughter of an alleged witch, and Gervais, son of the Lord, Count Arnold.
Their passion faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles, including black magic, an evil step-mother, and blind prejudice.
Dulcie Deamer (1890–1972), an Australia author known as the “Queen of Bohemia,” is almost entirely forgotten today.
She was a well-known figure in the Kings Cross district of Sydney, and had a lifelong interest in ancient beliefs, black magic and nature mysticism.
The Devil’s Saint is a vivid love story, written in her unique descriptive style and containing rare occult delights.
This reprint of the novel first published in 1924 features a new biographical introduction by James Doig.

____

____________________________________________________________________________

__________

___________

Night Forms: Stories by Francis M. Nevins

_____

_______

This volume features twenty-eight of Francis M. Nevins’ criminous short stories, originally published between 1972 and 2004.

The author has revised his introduction and afterwords to each story for this edition; these offer insights into the events and inspirations which influenced the writing of the stories.
The author’s series characters, Loren Mensing, Milo Turner and Gene Holt, are represented in fifteen of the stories. The balance of the tales cover Nevins’ pastiches and stand-alone stories.
This is a generous and entertaining collection that will especially appeal to mystery aficionados who relish the role of legal intricacies intersecting with intrigue, fraud and murder.

________________

____________________________________________________________________________

__________________________

_______________________________

_The Man Without a Head by Walter S. Masterman___

_______________________________

Derrick Gray is heir to the Manor House estate, but he is an unhappy man; having served in the First World War, he has tried in vain to stem the tide of debt his property has entailed, and when the Second World War breaks out his application to again serve his country is rejected.

Vernon, a financier living with his daughter Maisie on a house on Gray’s estate, begins to gamble habitually with Gray in the hope of winning Manor House.
When Vernon’s luck fails him a drunken proposal is made: a final roll of the dice will determine whether Vernon wins Gray’s property, or whether Maisie Vernon becomes Gray’s ward.Gray wins.
Shortly afterwards Vernon is found dead in his house, shot through the head—apparently a suicide. Other people appear on the scene to offer condolences or claim monies owed.
And then, to complicate matters, Derrick and Maisie visit a house in London and discover a headless body—shortly before the house is destroyed in a bombing raid.
In his final case, Sir Arthur Sinclair must pull out all stops to solve this most peculiar mystery.
Originally published in England in 1942, The Man Without a Head was Walter S. Masterman’s last published novel.
As a result of war-time restrictions the book subsequently became rare. Ramble House is proud to make this novel available again for modern readers.

___________

_______________

_____________________

__________________________

The Hooded Monster by Walter S. Masterman

_______________________________

An underworld crime gang is operating in London, with its agents luring moneyed men into bogus investment schemes, and leaving a trail of broken lives in its wake.

The head of the gang is known to his underllngs as ‘The Chief’, but his true identity is unknown.

This mysterious leader has built a secret underground bunker where he directs operations and instils fear into the hearts of the gang-members

by the constant threat of death by gun, poison, or the death-rays of a devilish new weapon.

When Edward Helme goes missing after being swindled by the gang, his brother Dennis is concerned and calls in Sir Arthur Sinclair to investigate.

Sinclair must employ every one of his multifarious methods of detection in order to protect the innocent parties from danger and to uncover The Chief and his minions.

Originally published in England in 1939, The Hooded Monster became scarce after the publisher’s warehouse was destroyed during The Blitz - a fate shared with Walter S. Masterman’s later books,

_____________________

_____________

___________________________________________

The Great Boo-Boo by Henry S. Wilcox

___________________________________________

Written by lawyer Henry S. Wilcox and first published in 1892 but never reprinted until now, The Great Boo-Boo is one of the strangest American novels of the 19th century.

It tells the story of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Hogg who, having embezzled money from his father’s bank in Des Moines, boards a ship bound for Fiji.

Instead, he’s shipwrecked on the island of King Monop, who owns everything and everyone in his kingdom, and lives in a palace made of crystalised human tears and blood.

But that’s just the beginning of Marcus’s adventures. The Great Boo-Boo is a unique mixture of fantasy and science fiction, social satire and farce, with bonus scenes of torture, blood drinking, nudity, homoerotism and lesbianism. This new edition features an introduction by Chris Mikul.

_________________________________________

___________________________________________

Isidore-Lucien Ducasse was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1846, and died in Paris in 1870 —
a year after his only major completed work, Les Chants de Maldoror, was published in Paris under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont.
Les Chants de Maldoror went almost entirely unnoticed when first published, but decades later the work profoundly influenced the Surrealists.
When the work was discovered by Philippe Soupault and André Breton in 1917, they hailed Lautréamont, along with Baudelaire and Rimbaud, as an important precursor to Surrealism.
René Magritte and Salvador Dalí would later complete illustrations for editions of Les Chants de Maldoror.
Elements in the work such as anti-Christian satire, confronting scenes, and surreal imagery have hitherto mitigated against a widespread popularity of the work.
But Les Chants de Maldoror has continued to inspire artists and writers around the world.
Ducasse’s incisive observations on humanity, along with notes of black humour and evocative passages of haunting beauty, cry out for a new hearing by modern readers in the 21st Century.
Gavin L. O’Keefe presents here his English translation of the work, entitled The Dirges of Maldoror.
This new interpretation is complemented by many original illustrations by O'Keefe designed especially to accompany the translation.