West of Guam (74 page)

Black Mask
was a pulp magazine launched in April 1920 by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. Though it originally published stories in a wide range of genres, it flourished as a hard-boiled crime fiction magazine and went on to publish work from such authors as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

The magazine reached its peak in the 1930s with a national circulation of more than 100,000 copies per issue. And in 1936, under Fanny Ellsworth, and thanks to the work of writers like Steve Fisher and Cornell Woolrich,
Black Mask
led another revolution toward the noir thriller.

Though World War II paper shortages and new competition from mass-market paperbacks eventually drove the pulp magazines out of business,
Black Mask
remains an institution in the crime fiction community.

Now,
Black Mask
is back.
Individual stories and collections will be republished as ebooks—with select collections to be released as paperbacks—through a partnership between Black Mask Magazine and MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.