Fredric Brown Books In Order

Ed and Am Hunter Books In Order

  1. The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947)
  2. The Dead Ringer (1948)
  3. The Bloody Moonlight (1949)
  4. Compliments of a Fiend (1950)
  5. Death Has Many Doors (1951)
  6. The Late Lamented (1959)
  7. Mrs Murphy’s Underpants (1963)

Outer Limits Books In Order

  1. The Outer Limits : Volume Two (1997)

Novels

  1. Mitkey Astromouse (1941)
  2. Murder Can Be Fun (1948)
  3. The Screaming Mimi (1949)
  4. Here Comes a Candle (1950)
  5. The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches (1951)
  6. The Far Cry (1951)
  7. Night of the Jabberwock (1951)
  8. What Mad Universe (1951)
  9. The Deep End (1952)
  10. We All Killed Grandma (1952)
  11. Madball (1953)
  12. Project Jupiter (1953)
  13. His Name Was Death (1954)
  14. Martians, Go Home (1955)
  15. The Wench Is Dead (1955)
  16. The Lenient Beast (1957)
  17. Rogue in Space (1957)
  18. The Office (1958)
  19. One for the Road (1958)
  20. Knock Three-One-Two (1959)
  21. The Mind Thing (1961)
  22. The Murderers (1961)
  23. The Five-Day Nightmare (1962)
  24. Homicide Sanitarium (1984)
  25. Before She Kills (1984)
  26. The Freak Show Murders (1987)
  27. Thirty Corpses Every Thursday (1987)
  28. Pardon My Ghoulish Laughter (1987)
  29. Red Is the Hue of Hell (1990)

Omnibus

  1. A Prize for Edie / Earthmen Bearing Gifts (2010)

Collections

  1. Space on My Hands (1951)
  2. Angels and Spaceships (1954)
  3. Honeymoon in Hell (1958)
  4. Nightmares and Geezenstacks (1961)
  5. Paradox Lost (1973)
  6. The Best of Fredric Brown (1977)
  7. The Best Short Stories of Fredric Brown (1982)
  8. And the Gods Laughed (1985)
  9. From These Ashes (1985)
  10. Daymare and Other Tales from the Pulps (2007)

Novellas

  1. The Star Mouse (1941)
  2. Murder and Matilda (1949)
  3. Hall of Mirrors (1953)
  4. Keep Out (1953)

Anthologies edited

Ed and Am Hunter Book Covers

Outer Limits Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Omnibus Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Novellas Book Covers

Anthologies edited Book Covers

Fredric Brown Books Overview

The Fabulous Clipjoint

1948 Edgar Award Winner! Ed Hunter is eighteen, and he isn’t happy. He doesn’t want to end up like his father, a linotype operator and a drunk, married to a harridan, with a harridan in training stepdaughter. Ed wants out, he wants to live, he wants to see the world before it’s too late. Then his father doesn’t come home one night, and Ed finds out how good he had it. The bulk of the book has Ed teaming up with Uncle Ambrose, a former carny worker, and trying to find out who killed Ed’s dad. But the title is as much a coming of age tale as it is a pulp. Author Brown won the Edgar award in 1947 for this spectacular first effort.

The Dead Ringer

In most murder cases, the setting stays put, if nothing else. But when murder comes to visit the J. C. Hobart travelling carnival, the entire operation has moved town before Captain Weiss can gather any tangible leads. For young Ed Hunter, the case throws him together with a gorgeous redhead from the posing show, but as another murder occurs, and then a third, he and his Uncle Am find their hands full with more than just their ball game concession. In a strange atmosphere of freak shows, show girls, and an escaped chimpanzee, Ed and Uncle Am take it upon themselves to find the killer on the loose a killer who chooses his victims according to size.

The Bloody Moonlight

Ed and Am have gotten away from the Carney life. These days, they’re working for the Starlock Detective Agency. Ed’s first case is a wealthy client trying to sound out whether an investment’s worth it. But then he finds a body with its throat cut, and hears some external howling that might just be from a werewolf.

Murder Can Be Fun

Brown’s novel about an ex reporter who, disenchanted with his career writing a radio soap opera, looks to create a new show, dubbed ‘Murder Can Be Fun,’ and change genres. Things get dicey when killings happen, using our heroe’s unpublished scripts as a template. With its chess playing and references to Alice in Wonderland, one suspects a Spanish admirer for Mr. Brown, as the great Arturo Perez Reverte also wrote a book about chess playing, before taking it to new heights with a Dumas inspired mystery. This book was also published as ‘A Plot for Murder.’

The Screaming Mimi

His name really was Sweeney, but he was only five eighths Irish and he was only three quarters drunk. But that’s about as near as truth ever approximates a pattern, and if you won’t settle for that, you’d better quit reading. If you don’t maybe you’ll be sorry, for it isn’t a nice story. It’s got murder in it, and women and liquor and gambling and even prevarication. There’s murder before the story proper starts, and murder after it ends; the actual story begins with a naked woman and ends with one, which is a good opening and a good ending, but everything between isn’t nice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here Comes a Candle

Here Comes a Candle is Fredric Brown at his most audacious in a novel that was far ahead of its time. It is the story of Joe Bailey, whose young life is at a crossroads. Not only is he involved with a tough Milwaukee racketeer and two completely different women, but he is haunted by childhood trauma. Psychologically complex and told in an array of stylistic variations, it is a tour de force with a savagely ironic ending not to be soon forgotten.

Night of the Jabberwock

In the small town of Carmel City, it’s just another Thursday night for longstanding editor and Lewis Carroll aficionado Doc Stoeger as he puts his weekly newspaper to bed. Of course there isn’t any real news in the Carmel City Clarion, but then there never is, and Doc wishes that for once something would happen on a Thursday evening to give him a hot story to break. Before the night is through, Doc’s wishes come true and he gets tangled up in a bizarre series of events that would make for sensational reading the next morning. But will he survive to put it into print?

Project Jupiter

The title comes from Revelations 6:8, which in the King James Version says, ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’
Hook is that each section starts with ‘His name was’ or ‘Her name was.’ The book begins, ‘Her name was Joyce Dugan, and at four o’clock on this February afternoon she had no remote thought that within the hour before closing time she was about to commit an act that would instigate a chain of murders.’ The last section, just a couple of pages long, begins, ‘His name was Death, and he waited for ____.’
After Dugan, the focus moves around a few other people, primarily her boss, Darius Conn, who runs a print shop. The year before he’d killed his wife and gotten away with it, and now he’s feeling bold and very confident. He’s got a plan, and no one’s going to get in his way.

His Name Was Death

The title comes from Revelations 6:8, which in the King James Version says, ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’
Hook is that each section starts with ‘His name was’ or ‘Her name was.’ The book begins, ‘Her name was Joyce Dugan, and at four o’clock on this February afternoon she had no remote thought that within the hour before closing time she was about to commit an act that would instigate a chain of murders.’ The last section, just a couple of pages long, begins, ‘His Name Was Death, and he waited for ____.’
After Dugan, the focus moves around a few other people, primarily her boss, Darius Conn, who runs a print shop. The year before he’d killed his wife and gotten away with it, and now he’s feeling bold and very confident. He’s got a plan, and no one’s going to get in his way.

The Lenient Beast

Logical add on to the old phrase about a busybody never resting. Fred Brown’s Lenient Beast is a five part narrative telling of the perfect crime. The killer is driven not out of lust, greed or any of the usual sobs, rather ’cause he cares so much for all of us. First published 1956.

Knock Three-One-Two

Written late in his career and while at the height of his powers, KNOCK THREE ONE TWO is Fredric Brown’s tour de force of suspense. Taking place over the span of a single evening, we find a city enflamed by fear. A serial killer is on the loose, and while the maniac ties the city into knots, the lives of ordinary citizens are drawn into an inescapable spiral of greed and chance. Brown, purveyor of the surprise ending, does not disappoint. Step now into a world of shadow and anxiety. You need only knock 3 1 2.

Honeymoon in Hell

About the Story: Honeymoon in Hell appeared in the second issue of GALAXY dated November 1950. Brown’s THE LAST MARTIAN had appeared in the first issue a month previous. Brown s name on the table of contents of the first two issues, along with the names of other major contributors to ASTOUNDING Clifford Simak, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Anthony Boucher made clear that Gold was going directly after John W. Campbell s audience and the stories which he had printed were of a different order from what these writers had sold ASTOUNDING. They were darker, more socially aware, in cases Richard Matheson s COMING ATTRACTION sexually frank in a fashion inconceivable in Campbell s magazine. This novelette, dealing frankly with copulation and its desired consequences, was managed in a way far less euphemistic than had been the Campbellian norm and Brown, as he was to do often in the stories to follow, used a satirical attack which if it did not question magazine taboos certainly parodied them. The covers of pulp magazines such as PLANET or STARTLING depicted monsters putting near naked females in peril, but the narratives under the cover by design offered no equivalent. Brown s hastily married couple, sent to the Moon to see if they could breed a male child all births on Earth over recent months have been female, encounter problems emotional as well as practical. Difficult as it may be to understand sixty years later, the employment of the word hell in a magazine cover title was also an act of provocation. The story was a provocation in its entirety, although, of course and as Paul di Filippo suggests in his introduction perhaps you had to be there. About the Author: Fredric Brown 1906 1972 was the only writer to achieve equal prominence in the mystery and science fiction. NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCKY 1947 won the first MWA Edgar for first novel and all of his mysteries remain much in demand overseas where he has always been very popular. Several of those mysteries THE SCREAMING MIMI, 1958 were adapted for film. Brown s science fiction includes novels WHAT MAD UNIVERSE, MARTIANS GO HOME! and shorter work regarded as classics of the form ARENA, THE STAR MOUSE, PLACET IS A CRAZY PLACE. He was also the acknowledged master of the short short story; a famous collection, NIGHTMARES AND GEEZENSTACKS 1954 demonstrates his consistent mastery of a form self limited to a top wordage of 500. ARENA 1944 was the basis of a famed Star Trek episode, MARTIANS GO HOME! was adapted for a 1992 film; THE LAST MARTIAN was adapted for Serling s THE TWILIGHT ZONE and starred Steve McQueen at the start of his career. Poor health weak lungs forced Brown into Arizona retirement in 1963 and he published only one short story in collaboration in his last eight years. His work, forty years after his death, is increasingly prominent. About The Galaxy Project: Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field. The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn Phillip Klass and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.

From These Ashes

A collection of all 118 short science fiction and fantasy stories of one of the masters of the vignette, all his short works except two which were rewritten into parts of a novel. Introduction by Barry N. Malzberg. Dustjacket art by Bob Eggleton.

Daymare and Other Tales from the Pulps

Mystery and science fiction writer Fredric Brown 1906 1972 remains best known for his short fiction. His story ‘Arena’ in this volume became the basis for a ‘Star Trek’ episode of the same title. ‘Arena’ was also voted by the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the twenty finest SF stories of all time.

In addition to ‘Arena,’ this volume contains five more of Brown’s classic tales: ‘Daymare,’ ‘The Little Lamb,’ ‘The Geezenstacks,’ ‘The Hat Trick,’ and ‘Don’t Look Behind You.’

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