@ramblehouse
Ramble House is a tiny two-person publishing outfit, selling books from ramblehouse.com. We specialize in pulp, weird and out-of-print work. We helped popularize Harry Stephen Keeler. Please take a look at our books! (Many NSFW)
We hope you enjoy our specialized version, which also has a new foreward by Ramble House newcomer Chase Griffin! As always, contact Gavin directly (address on the item's page on our site) for a discount!
The Ramble House edition, which we call "The Forbidden Inversion," has a twist: the stories are printed in reverse order. It starts with the mostly-happy romances, then The Yellow Sign signifies a decent into madness, ending with the unsettling unreliable narrator tale The Repairer of Reputations.
Maybe the intent was to start the word off with horror, then to lighten it with happier tales to produce a feeling of relief in the reader? A lot of people would say that doesn't really quite work.
It contains ten stories, but it's mostly the first four that are truly horror. The fifth, "The Demoiselle d'Ys," is a love story with an element of time travel to it. The remaining stories are mostly traditional romances.
These stories were grandfathered into the Cthulhu Mythos by Lovecraft himself, and also by others, who referred to it to lend verisimilitude to their own stories.
Yet, The King in Yellow has always had a certain displeasing aspect to it.
The works are mostly self-contained, but they all feature the script of an uncanny play, "The King in Yellow" of the title, that causes madness and despair in those who read it.
The King in Yellow was admired by H.P.Lovecraft and members of his circle, as well as many to follow, for containing four exquisite examples of horror: "The Repairer of Reputations," "The Mask," "In The Court of the Dragon" and "The Yellow Sign."
The cover to the Ramble House "Forbidden Inversion" edition of The King in Yellow. The cover image, by our own Gavin O'Keefe, is of a yellow recreation of a playing card King of Hearts, with the title and author's name over it, the upside-down King is more or less normal, the rightside-up version though the king has a skull, and it looks like his sword is thrust into it!
Aah we're back! Ramble House is back for 2026 with the website finally updated for HTTPS, and a new book, a reprint of Robert Chamber's classic (or at least halfway so) work of weird horror THE KING IN YELLOW! You can get it here: ramblehouse.com/thekinginyel...
We're still alive! Hopefully I can get a new post up soon!
Based on law school seminars that Nevins taught for more than 20 years, Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law is a deep dive into law and legal professionals as depicted in popular culture, and how audience understanding of law was shaped by it.
The cover to Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film, by Francis M. Nevins.
The other new book from Ramble House is also by Francis Nevins, Judges & Justice & Lawyers & Law: Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Fiction and Film. www.ramblehouse.com/Judges.htm
This volume is a follow-up to a previous book by Francis Nevils on Ellery Queen, this time with Nevins hoping to do more justice to Manfred Lee's contributions to the stories.
The Ellery Queen books are named for their protagonist and the pen name used by their authors, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee, who wrote 40 books about their character. Nevins knew Dannay and considered him like a grandfather to him, but knew much less about co-author Lee.
The cover to Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection by Francis M. Nevins. More text reads "The story of how two fractious cousins reshaped the modern detective novel." The cousins are pictured: Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.
Ramble House has two new books out! The first is Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection, compiled by Francis Nevins, two-time winner of The Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. www.ramblehouse.com/EQ.htm
The Anthologist's Folly got written up in the Washington Post by Michael Dirda: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...
It mentions that the book contains the until-recently hard-to-find story The Hole and the Pit, the only novel by lyricist Adrian Ross.
The cover of the book The Anthologist's Folly, edited by Johnny Mains. It shows an illustration of a stone tower in the woods being struck by lightning.
The Anthologist's Folly is a collection of eldritch horror stories curated by award-winning editor Johnny Mains. It collects stories from Bram Stoker, Algernon Blackwood, Oswell Blakeston, A.J. Alan, and other horror authors. Its page on Ramble House's website: www.ramblehouse.com/Anthologists...
Other work has gotten in the way lately, but we're still around! Expect a new post soon.
As always, contact Gavin directly (email address on the book's page) for a discount and the best shipping rates.
Editor Johnny Mains certainly put in the heavy lifting in compiling this volume, which brings together many lost stories. Some of his work has seen wider exposure: one story appeared in Weird Tales, and one was adapted in the 70s as an episode of Night Gallery.
But in his writing he wasn't always unsympathetic to the native people, and some of his stories have a supernatural element where the colonizers come out the worst for ignoring their beliefs and practices.
Cook was a master of supernatural horror, fed by the superstitions of the natives he played a role in subjugating. It should be noted that he was a product of his time, and his stories contain some content many would find objectionable today. His post in Borneo ended due to a native uprising.
Most of Cook's work has only been published once before now. The book contains all his short fiction, except for the possibly-lost tale "The Owl's Warning," from Pep Stories, October 1927.
Oscar Cook spent over a decade of his early adulthood as part of the British colonialist project in Borneo, and the experience marked and shaped both him and his writing for the rest of his life. He wrote memoirs (Borneo: Stealer of Hearts) and 38 short stories, of which 37 appear here.
A sepia-tone photograph of British author Oscar Cook, on the cover of the Ramble House book His Beautiful Hands: The Short Fiction of Oscar Cook, Edited & Introduced by Johnny Mains
A new book from Ramble House, His Beautiful hands: The Short Fiction of Oscar Cook, collected and edited, with great effort, by Johnny Mains! www.ramblehouse.com/HisBeautiful...
Lupoff met with Gores to get his permission to write Marblehead, a story in the same vein.
The introduction tells us that, while both Lovecraft's Book and Marblehouse are fictional, Lupoff spoke to several people who had known Lovecraft in life about him. Marblehead was inspired by Joe Gores' Hammett, a fictional action story with real-life author Dashiell Hammett as the hero.
A map with the legend "Locale of Political Intrigue: 'MARBLEHEAD'" Th emap shows locations in the town of Marblehead, and an inset depicts part of New England, with the sites of Marblehead, Salem, Providence and Boston pointed out, as well as (some ways to the south) New York City.
Ramble House founder Fender Tucker wrote an introduction that lays out the history of Marblehead here: www.ramblehouse.com/marbleheadin...
"[...]there is a sort of car chase from Providence to Salem in a classic 320-horsepower SJ Duesenberg at the nerve-wracking speed of 35 mph!"
The cover to Marblehead: A Novel of H.P. Lovecraft, by Richard A. Lupoff. Three faces look forth from the cover. The face in back wears a swastika pin, and a copy of Mein Kampf is in the upper-left. Yikes!
Arkham House published mystery and horror writer Richard Lupoff's (RIP 2020) Lovecraft's Book in 1985, but it was a heavily cut down version of a much larger version called Marblehead. Marblehead was lost until 2012 when Ramble House published the complete novel: www.ramblehouse.com/marblehead.htm
We don't know the copyright status, he was popular enough though that presumably someone can still publish them? What RH publishes is a companion, it describes the stories but doesn't quote more than short bits.
[“As he fed the cat with Executive Mansion cutlery, the First Lady asked: “Don’t you think it is shameful for Mr. Lincoln to feed tabby with a gold fork?” Her husband replied: “If the gold fork was good enough for Buchanan I think it is good enough for Tabby” and continued feeding the cat.”]