AGE OF ACES will be back at PulpFest again this year where we will be debuting our new titles!

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!

AFTER a year-long Covid delay, Age of Aces Books has returned with two new books. We’ll be premiering them at PulpFest 2021 this week.

First up is The Black Falcon by Arthur J. Burks.

Selected by Black Jack Pershing himself for an impossible assignment, Lt. Evan Post was volunteered to drive Germany’s top five aces out of the sky. Orders were sent ahead to see that he was given every cooperation by any allied post of command he would work out of. With the biggest, blackest, ugliest bird painted on his red plane’s fuselage, Post worked the list. And with every German Ace he downed, Evan Post became known as The Black Falcon!

Arthur J. Burks never met a story he couldn’t write. Although he was known to be able to craft a story about anything suggested to him, he was probably best known for his weird menace and detective stories. He wrote six stories with The Black Falcon for Sky Fighters magazine, with a nice continuity running through them. So much so, when he published the sixth story, two years after the initial five, The Black Falcon was a mythic character the young recruits had only heard of.

Stories Include: The Black Falcon (Oct 33), The Balloon Buster (Feb 34), Falcon Fury (Mar 34), The Falcon Flies High (Apr 34), Claws of the Falcon (Jun 34), and Black Falcon’s Return (Jul 36).

Our second book is the ninth and final volume of Donald E. Keyhoe’s Captain Philip Strange Adventures—Strange Rivals.

Captain Philip Strange is back in nine more weird WWI stories! A mental marvel from birth, who used his talents on stage as a boy, Philip Strange is now known as “The Phantom Ace of G-2″ by the Allies during WWI and the verdamnt Brain-Devil by the Boche. In these stories from the end of the series run, The Brain-Devil’s arch nemesis, Karl von Zenden, the quick-change Man of a Thousand Faces resurfaces to wreak havoc and cause more trouble—from aerodromes peopled with corpses to pirate staffels to German Officials dropped over Paris to gases of forgetfulness to all of England disappearing! Von Zenden does his worst! Thankfully, we have have Captain Philip Strange on our side to stop them in some of his strangest cases yet from the pages of Flying Aces magazine!

Stories Include: Dead Man’s Drone (Jun 37), Skeletons From the Sky (Dec 37), Scourge of Oblivion (Apr 38), Pirate Squadron (Jun 38), The Gray Face Ace (Oct 28), Strafe of the Skull (Dec 38), Raid of the Wraith (Mar 39), Flight of the Phantoms (Aug 39), and When England Vanished (Nov 39).

In addition to our two new titles, we’ll have all of our previous titles that are still in print as well as some fun extras include an 11″ x 14″ art print of all 64 splash opens for the Philip Strange stories in order from “A Squadron Shall Perish” to “When England Vanished”. If you’re at the show, stop by, say “Hi” and pick up a copy. (Quantities are limited.)

AGE OF ACES will be back at PulpFest again this year where we will be debuting our two new titles!

Our first is the penultimate volume in our Captain Philip Strange series—back this time with eight more weird WWI stories spanning the run of the series in Strange Deaths! A mental marvel from birth, who used his talents on stage as a boy, Philip Strange is now known as “The Phantom Ace of G-2″ by the Allies during WWI and the verdamnt Brain-Devil by the Boche. Just when you thought there were no more ways to die in war, the Germans come up with some even more gruesome ways! if you’re not just being incinerated by the sun’s ray focused through enormous lenses, you’re being gassed with a horribly disfiguring plague; drowned in a sea of blood or injected with a serum that turns you into a hyped up fighting hellion until you keel over dead; maybe you’ll be lucky and just have your own munitions blow up your entire outfit, or simply have your head chopped off and mounted on some psychotic ace’s wings. Thankfully, we have have Captain Philip Strange on our side to stop them in eight of his strangest cases yet from the pages of Flying Aces magazine!

The inseparable trio is back!, Through the dark night sky, streaking swiftly with their Hisso engines thundering, is the greatest trio of aces on the Western Front—the famous and inseparable “Three Mosquitoes,” the mightiest flying combination that had ever blazed its way through overwhelming odds and laughed to tell of it! At point was Captain Kirby, impetuous young leader of the great trio; on his right was little Lieutenant “Shorty” Carn, the mild-eyed, corpulent little Mosquito and lanky Lieutenant Travis, eldest and wisest of the Mosquitoes on his left! Flying in a V formation through four exciting hell-bent tales from the pages of Popular Publication’s Battle Aces—”The X-Gun Flight” (Jan 32), “The Iron Ace” (Feb 32), “The Flying Dreadnought” (Jun 32), “The 20-Ace Patrol” (Jul 32)—all illustrated by John Fleming Gould!

In addition to these two volumes we’ll have all of our other titles that are still in print as well as our 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!

AGE OF ACES will be back at PulpFest again this year where we will be debuting our two new titles!

Our first is the lastest in our Captain Philip Strange series—back with six more weird WWI stories in Strange Squadrons! A mental marvel from birth, who used his talents on stage as a boy, Philip Strange is now known as “The Phantom Ace of G-2″ by the Allies during WWI. From his very first adventure, Captain Philip Strange has rooted out only the most bizarre battalions commissioned by Germany in the Great War. When flying coffins circle the air, or severed hands drop from the sky, the call goes out for the Phantom Ace of G-2 Intelligence. For the Allies know that only the so-called “Brain-Devil” and his aides can out-fly the zombie traitors and human bombs, or out-spy fiends like The Mask and the Man with the Iron Claw! When World War I gets weird, only America’s own “Phantom Ace of G-2” has a ghost of a chance against the supernatural slaughter. Captain Philip Strange in his strangest cases yet from the pages of Flying Aces magazine!

We’re doubling down on Keyhoe this year, as our other title is the second half of the Jailbird Flight Stories that ran through all three of Popular Publication’s air anthology titles. Starting in Battle Aces in September 1931 running through the end of it’s initial publication run when they switched to Battle Birds at the end of 1932 and into Dare-Devil Aces in 1934.

The Jailbird Flight: The Devil Flies High. They had all been sentenced to a living death and all bore The Convict Brand! The Jailbirds were recruited from the military prisons of Britain, France, and America. Real men, molded in the harsh fires of life, dishonored perhaps in the eyes of the Army—but men with red blood and courage. Hard fighters, some of them hiding bitter memories, but all of them ready to follow their leader, “Killer” Kirby, down a flaming suicide trail on the most dangerous missions of the Great War! Rather than wither behind bars—they were given the chance to die fighting!

In addition to these two volumes we’ll have all of our other titles that are still in print as well as our 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!

Age of Aces will be back at PulpFest again this year where we will be debuting our two new titles!

First, we have the lastest in our Captain Philip Strange series—back with six more weird WWI stories in Strange Spectres! A mental marvel from birth, who used his talents on stage as a boy, Philip Strange is now known as “The Phantom Ace of G-2″ by the Allies during WWI. “Horrors of war” takes on a whole new meaning when WWI erupts with paranormal activity: Flaming planes piloted by charred skeletons; Battleship crews that mysteriously vanish; Medieval knights falling from the sky; The spirit of the Red Baron himself haunting the frontlines! When World War I gets weird, only America’s own “Phantom Ace of G-2” has a ghost of a chance against the supernatural slaughter. Captain Philip Strange in his strangest cases yet from the pages of Flying Aces magazine!

Our other title is from the pen of Frederick Painton, a prolific pulp author and venerated newspaper man. We’ve collected eight of his stories that ran in the pages of Sky Birds magazine in 1935 and are publishing them under the title Squadron of the Dead. The Squadron of the Dead contained all the hellions of ten armies! Men without hope; men courting death; men who loved to kill; men who laughed and fought, drank and cursed, lived hard, and died harder. Americans, British, Russians—even Germans—made up their ranks, and only one bond held them together: Death lay ahead of them. They were assigned the grim missions no other squadron dared to take—for they had all been condemned to die!

Painton’s Squadron of the Dead is a departure from our usual titles that feature a scrappy band of aviators flying through various adventures. Each of the eight stories in Painton’s Squadron of the Dead is the story of a different pilot who has been condemned to death and sent to the squadron to serve out his sentence. And die they did, dropping spies, bombing impossible places, strafing infantry for harassed Allied battalions. These men flew recklessly, savagely, knowing they could live again only when death really claimed them. Then their names would shine once again in the casualty announcements and they would be posthumously awarded the Legion d’Honneur.

In addition to these two volumes we’ll have all of our other titles that are still in print as well as our convention exclusive—Arch Whitehouse’s Coffin Kirk. So if you’re planning on coming to Columbus for PulpFest this year, stop by our table and say hi and pick up our latest releases!

PulpFest 2013 gets underway on Thursday, July 25th and the whole Age of Aces crew will be in attendance. We’ll be promoting our new book—our biggest yet—Battling Grogan and the Dragon Squadron. “Battling” Grogan is an American flyer in command of the Chinese Dragon Squadron fighting to repel the invading Imperial Japanese. The stories are written by Robert M. Burtt who is probably best known as co-creator and writer of such radio classics as The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen, Captain Midnight, and Sky King.

Since we wouldn’t have the third Philip Strange book ready in time for the convention, we decided to try to get together a special book just for sale exclusively at the convention. In looking around at what we had scanned and ready to go, we hit upon Coffin Kirk by the prolific Arch Whitehouse. These six stories of Coffin Kirk and his trained-gorilla tail-gunner Tank and their fight against “The Cirlcle of Death” were available in our Age of Aces Presents section a few years ago. We removed them when we were intending on releasing them as an eBook online so it seemed only natural to put them out as a print book.

We had initially planned to offer the book only at the convention, but we thought we’d make it available on Amazon for the week of the convention for those who can’t attend, but would still like to pick up a copy of the book.

Art Director Chris Kalb show off our two new titles.

So stop by our table and meet the crew and check it out or pick up any of our other titles at special Pulpfest discounts. If you can’t make it—keep your eyes on ageofaces.net to find out more about our new books. And hurry over to Amazon where, for a limited time, you can pick up a copy of The Adventures of Coffin Kirk!

We’ll be debuting the second volume of our Captain Philip Strange series at PulpFest on Friday. So if you’re in attendance stop by our table and meet the Age of Aces crew and pick up a copy of Captain Philip Strange: Strange Enemies (and The Three Mosquitoes: The Thunderbolt Ace if you haven’t yet).

He hope to see you there!

Yes, the first book in our new series, Captain Philip Strange: Strange War is here and just in time for the 80th Anniversary of the publication of his first appearance in Flying Aces Magazine in August of 1931!

We were at the PulpFest in Columbus, Ohio this weekend premiering our new book. Strange War has six exciting stories of “the Phantom Ace of G-2″ with an introduction by Sid Bradd and all beautifully wrapped up in an exciting new design by Chria Kalb. Keyhoe’s Brain-Devil takes on all manner of pterodactyls, flaming fire balls raining down from the sky and demon aces with the help of Tom and Noisy Jay—the twin aces of G-2 affectionately known as the Jay Birds.

The Captain Philip Strange stories ran for nine years—from 1931 through 1939—in the pages of Flying Aces magazine. And we’re already preparing the second volume which will collect the Fraulein Doktor stories—Strange’s former love, now nemesis due to circumstances brought about by the war. (This book will be out later this year.)

Strange War should be available at Amazon very soon—it sometimes takes a day or two for them to add the book to their system. And speaking of PulpFest, for those who couldn’t attend, here are some links to download the various flyers he had out for people to pick up:

• Our General Aviation Titles Flyer
• Captain Philip Strange: Strange War
• The Adventures of The Three Mosquitoes: The Thunderbolt Ace

Age of Aces will be at Pulpfest in Columbus next week where we will be unveiling our latest exciting book—Captain Philip Strange: Strange War by Donald E. Keyhoe.

In Donald E. Keyhoe’s imaginings, the stormy skies of World War I are filled with giant pterodactyls, mystic fireballs and demon aces. But America has it’s own unnatural secret weapon: Captain Philip Strange. A mental marvel from birth, he was so terrifyingly effective that the Allies referred to him as “The Phantom Ace of G-2.” But to the Germans he was “The Brain-Devil,” whose penetrating green eyes were both a legend and a nightmare.

Keyhoe’s Philip Strange stories ran for nine years—from 1931 through 1939—in the pages of Flying Aces magazine. This first volume in our new series contains six exciting tales of terror skies! It also features an introduction by Sid Bradd and is beautifully wrapped up in an exciting new design by Chris Kalb!

So stop by our table and meet the crew and check it out or pick up any of our other titles at special Pulpfest discounts. If you can’t make it—keep your eyes on ageofaces.net to find out more about our new book.

The great thing about PulpFest, besides seeing all those gorgeous pulps in one place, is the people you meet. One such kindred spirit is Arlene Hilfer, an english professor at Hiram College in Ohio, who we first met at last year’s show. She had a keen interest in PulpFest 2009 (her first convention) having just taught a pulp class at her small college using Erin Smith’s Hard-Boiled and Otto Penzler’s The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps as the primary texts. Like a sponge, she soaked up everything the pulp collectors and publishers could throw at her in one Saturday afternoon — and that’s a lot. She listened to my breathless spiel about The Spider Vs. The Empire State and even ordered a copy. (We had sold out of it on Friday.) We heard from Arlene again after the show when she reported that her granddaughter’s boyfriend had scooped up her copy of Empire State, and she had to order another one. Love it!

We were back at PulpFest last weekend for the 2010 show, and so was Professor Hilfer. She reports that last year for her pulp class she added the infamous “Ku Klux Klan issue” of Black Mask to the syllabus, something that the Mecham brothers of Girasol Collectables had turned her on to at the convention. This fall, with Hiram suggesting the theme of “war” for the school year, she is planning to have her students read The Spider Vs. The Empire State as part of the class. Fantastic! Tom Krabacher, who wrote the introduction to the book was at the show too, and he, Arlene and I had a rousing discussion about The Spider, the Depression, and what she might do with her students this semester. Who knows, they may even have an assignment to contribute original content to FightTheEmpireState.com. Watch this space for developments!

The Age of Aces team had a blast at PulpFest 2009 this past weekend! This was our first time at a pulp gathering as official dealers, and though it mostly tied us to our table I think it was actually more fun because it gave us the opportunity to interact with so many pulp fans and curious people from Columbus. This was also a rare chance to hang out with some of the contributors to our books, like Scott Cranford, Don Hutchison, Sid Bradd and Thomas Krabacher. (more…)

The Age of Aces team is currently at PulpFest where we have just debuted our newest release, The Spider Vs. The Empire State! The book is a huge hit and we’ve sold out of it on our first day! In hindsight, we could have brought more than 25 copies with us. We’ve stepped up our presence at the con and are having a great time. The topper to the day is that the book just became available on Amazon.com, and now everyone can get it! (Including the disappointed folks we meet on the floor tomorrow.)