I’m glad there’s no Half Price Books anywhere near my Oklahoma City home, because I might be broke if there were.

Earlier this spring, while in Austin, Texas – auditioning for a game show with friends in a desperate and ultimately failed bid at easy fortune –  we went not once, but twice, to Half Price Books. I’d been to an HPB only once before, a couple summers ago in Dallas, and it was like book heaven.

Granted, they have tons of used books that are mutilated and sticky like everyone else, but what I like are the stacks of publisher’s remainder books, usually in perfect shape and marked down to criminally low prices. Luckily, I found a bunch of virtual steals…

Upon walking in, something called THE WIDE WORLD: TRUE ADVENTURES FOR MEN caught my eye from its prominent center display. It’s a nice hardback that reprints stories – all ostensibly real – from a pretty-much-forgotten pulp magazine of the same name from the 1890s through the 1960s. Brave he-man exploits of lion wrasslin’, mountain climbin’ and sea divin’ abound. Wisely, compiler Paul Safont chose to include the pages as they appeared, retaining the charm of the antiquated layout – outlandish illustrations, suspect photos, ridiculous ads and all. This is more of a book to be glanced through than actually read, because the article titles – including such memorable monikers as “Bandsaw Amok,” “Over Niagra Falls in a Rubber Ball!,” “A Fight with a Leopard,” “The Professor in a Bear Trap” and, perhaps best of all, “Buried Alive by a Dead Elephant” – are always better than the account that follows. Still, it’s the kind of hidden gem – imported from the UK – you only find at closeout, and for that, I’m grateful.

I had seen CREEPSHOWS: THE ILLUSTRATED STEPHEN KING MOVIE GUIDE by Stephen Jones on many a Barnes & Noble shelf over the years and never seriously considered buying it, but seeing HPB’s stack of them – all mint, all eight bucks – I couldn’t pass it up. And I’m glad I didn’t. For King fans, this is essential. Jones covers each King adaptation in detail, full of juicy behind-the-scenes stories, candid gossip and tons of cool photographs, from stills to posters. For every great King flick (say, SALEM’S LOT), there’s a wretched one (say, RIDING THE BULLET), and it’s equally a blast to read about either. There are many I hold dear to my heart (CREEPSHOW, CAT’S EYE), some I’ve grown to love (PET SEMATARY, CHRISTINE) and others I want nothing to do with ever again (THE LAWNMOWER MAN). Personally, I think once they started being adapted for TV, they pretty much went to shit. If nothing else, reading this book will increase your Netflix queue.

I’m told that finding perfect-condition copies of DRAWN & QUARTERLY volumes 3 and 5 – at $6.98 and $7.98, respectively – was the steal of the trip, as well as the century. I have to agree. These erratically published, oversized anthologies highlight some excellent comics artists from the other side of the world. The highlight of both volumes are the lengthy “Monsieur Jean” stories by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. It’s slice-of-life-and-love stuff that has a sense of realism about it, elevates the graphic format, and is heartbreaking without being depressing. Jason Little’s “Safety Instructions” is a stroke of genius, as is R. Sikoryak’s “Dostoyevsky Comics,” which recasts the Russian author’s classic CRIME AND PUNISHMENT as a Golden Age-era Batman comic. (His TALES OF THE CRYPT version of Brontë’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS is less successful.) There are some nice full-page sketches from Seth, and two excellent pieces by Michel Rabagliati about a boy named Paul. Volume 3 has a tribute to GASOLINE ALLEY creator Frank King; I always thought that strip was lame, but the early Sunday ones reprinted here reveal it to be a direct descendant of LITTLE NEMO.

Scattered throughout the horror and mystery sections were these black-spined paperbacks from Britain’s Wordsworth Editions’ “Tales of the Mystery & The Supernatural” line, all reprinting classic chill-lit from long ago. I found several, but at the risk of maxing out my Visa, I had to settle for three: THE CASEBOOK OF CARNACKI – GHOST FINDER by William Hope Hodgson, THE HAUNTED HOTEL & OTHER STORIES by Wilkie Collins and RETURN FROM THE DEAD edited by David Stuart Davies. The latter is a collection of short stories all dealing with mummies, from authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe. I have probably a majority of the tales already in other volumes, but with me loving mummy fiction of yore, I couldn’t turn it down. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE BEST HORROR FROM FANTASY TALES edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton
• THE BEST HORROR STORIES OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE edited by Frank D. McSherry, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh
• HORROR: ANOTHER 100 BEST BOOKS edited by Stephen Jones & Kim Newman
• H.P. LOVECRAFT’S BOOK OF THE SUPERNATURAL edited by Stephen Jones