PlanetSlade.com

"A golden nugget in its own right." - Londonist.com. “A great piece of research.” – Dr Graham Seal.

This book opens with my essays about three remarkable treasure hunts and the widespread chaos they caused. These involve a 1904 newspaper circulation drive that got wildly out of hand, Kit Williams’ remarkable Masquerade puzzle book of 1979 and Lobby Lud, the human quarry set loose for another paper’s readers to hunt down in 1927 London. Buy it here.

*****

"A fine piece of work." - British Cartoon Archive. "An immense, assured, sprightly essay." - The Browser.

Just wo of the rave reviews for my definitive essay on Andy Capp creator Reg Smythe, which now occupies the first half of this PlanetSlade paperback. Elsewhere in the book, you'll find a history of the recent court battles over key superhero characters' ownership, Johnny Winter's war on Jonah Hex, and a selection of my other work on comics and cartooning. Buy it here.

*****

An incredible piece of research. [...] Had me morbidly transfixed." - Jon Wilks, editor of Tradfolk.co

Jon's talking there about the book's Corkery's Farewell essay, just one of the 20 Victorian execution songs I've included. Each chapter has the song's full lyrics and my extensive research on the true crime story which inspired it. All this plus a chance to hear the songs in performance and a deep dive into Australia's outlaw ballads too. Buy it here.

The book that inspired Radiolab's new five-part podcast series The Vanishing of Harry Pace

I spent the last six months of 2020 working with Radiolab's Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee as they prepared a podcast series based on my 2014 Black Swan book. In January 2021, as they went off to make the actual episodes, I got down to rewriting the book to incorporate all the new information and insights we'd discovered. You can buy the new, expanded, 2021 edition here.

The book rock critic Greil Marcus called "a dauntingly complete and fascinating piece of work"

After a couple of years out of print, my acclaimed murder ballads book is back! The 2015 Soundcheck Books edition dropped out of print when its publisher shut up shop. That was frustrating because Soundcheck's demise happened to co-incide with the book's appearance on Radiolab's 2019 podcast series Dolly Parton's America, which prompted quite a bit of interest in it just as there were no longer any copies to sell. Now the rights have reverted to me, and I've put out a new self-published edition using the original text (with a brand-new cover). Buy it here as a paperback or here as a Kindle e-book.

“Witty, expansive & well researched.” “Fascinating back & forth history.” “A real eye opener.”

Those were just three of the satisfied comments from Amazon buyers who enjoyed this book’s original 2013 edition. Now available in paperback for the first time, this updated edition adds 40 pages of brand new interviews bringing the Cross Bones story bang up to date, plus 18 of my own colour photographs showing the site’s key features and its most determined champions.