Crossover Cover: The Last Christmas

 

Are you a fan of F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series?

Then you'll love this book, in which Jack encounters not only a Sax Rohmer villainess, but also a former agent of a certain slouch-hatted, .45-wielding pulp hero!

For more details, consult my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, which will be published by Meteor House! As with the first two volumes, the new tome is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Recalled

This anthology includes two stories with crossovers. Once is Nancy A. Collins' Return to Hell House, also available as a separate e-book, which I covered in a previous post. The other is "Recalled" by F. Paul Wilson. A man using the name Theodore Gordon attempts to turn the residents of a suburban neighborhood against each other, but winds up being thwarted and exposed by Repairman Jack. This story is a sequel to Richard Matheson’s “The Distributor,” Theodore Gordon’s first appearance. Since Repairman Jack's adventures take place in the CU, so does Matheson's story.

Crossover Cover: Infernal Night

This story is available in the all-crossover print anthology FaceOff, as well as a separate e-book. Private investigator Michael Quinn and urban mercenary Repairman Jack cross paths when Jack is hired by the wealthy Jules Chastain to retrieve an ancient ring from his family mausoleum, which he is afraid to go into himself lest he suffer the wrath of Madame de Medici, the ring’s previous owner. Madame de Medici is a recurring character of Sax Rohmer’s, appearing in “The Key to the Temple of Heaven,” “The Black Mandarin,” and “The Treasure of Taia.” Since Wilson's character Repairman Jack and Madame de Medici are in the CU, this crossover brings in Graham’s Michael Quinn, a private eye who works with curio shop owner Danni Cafferty in acquiring and, when necessary, destroying powerful artifacts.

Crossover Covers: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

This anthology of new stories featuring Edgar Rice Burroughs' characters has three stories with crossovers. One is "Tarzan and the Land That Time Forgot" by Joe R. Lansdale. Traveling back to civilization in the O-220 zeppelin after another visit to Pellucidar, Tarzan and the ship’s crew find themselves shipwrecked on the island of Caprona. Tarzan first traveled to Pellucidar in the O-220 in Burroughs’ Tarzan at the Earth’s Core. The destruction of the O-220 in Lansdale’s story must be an exaggeration, as Tarzan used it to travel to Pellucidar again in both 1960 and 1986, as seen in the Sunday Tarzan comic strip stories "Dead Moon of Pellucidar" (aka "The Jewel of Pellucidar") and "Back to Pellucidar," respectively. Tarzan will make at least two more trips to Caprona (aka Caspak) in the future, as seen in the comic book Tarzan in the Land That Time Forgot and the Sunday Tarzan strip story "Return to the Land That Time Forgot." In F. Paul Wilson's "The Dead World," David Innes refers to the Minunians, the Ant Men of Africa. Innes discovers Pellucidar was created by an alien race called the Fashioners. The Minunians are from Burroughs’ Tarzan and the Ant Men. The description of the Fashioners makes it clear they are meant to be the Great Race of Yith from H. P. Lovecraft’s "The Shadow Out of Time," thus connecting Burroughs’ Pellucidar series to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Peter David's "Moon Maid over Manhattan" is a sequel to Burroughs’ The Moon Maid. Barsoom and John Carter are mentioned. This story takes place in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Alternate Universe, or ERB-AU for short.

Crossover Cover: Fix

Repairman Jack has a chance encounter with a female spy known only as Chandler, and winds up working with her to prevent a deadly toxin from being unleashed on New York City.

Wilson’s “fixer” Repairman Jack is already in the CU, and this crossover brings in the main character of Konrath and Peterson’s Codename: Chandler series. Through various crossovers, the inclusion of Chandler brings the following works into the CU: Konrath’s respective series featuring Harry McGlade, Phineas Troutt, and Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels, and his novel Disturb; Konrath’s Afraid, Endurance, Trapped, and Haunted House, all written as by Jack Kilborn; Peterson’s Val Ryker series; Blake Crouch’s Abandon, Famous, and Snowbound, the Andrew Z. Thomas series, and the Letty Dobesh series; Garth Perry’s A.J. Rakowski stories; Henry Perez’s Alex Chapa novels; Jeff Strand’s Andrew Mayhem series; Tom Schreck’s Duffy Dombrowski Mysteries; Bernard Schaffer’s Superbia trilogy; Tracy Sharp’s Leah Ryan series; Jude Hardin’s Nicholas Colt series and the spinoff Jack Reacher Files series, set in the same continuity as Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series; Iain Rob Wright’s Sarah Stone series; and Crouch, “Kilborn,” Strand and Wilson’s novel Draculas, which mentions The National Tattler, a fictional tabloid from Thomas Harris’ novel The Silence of the Lambs. The Clayton family seen in Schaffer’s Guns of Seneca 6 series is descended from Superbia’s Cole Clayton, while the hero of Konrath’s Timecaster series (written as “Joe Kimball”) is Jack Daniels and Phineas Troutt’s grandson, and a recurring villain in that series is descended from characters in Afraid and Haunted House. Both series take place in alternate futures to the CU.

Crossover Cover: The Keep

A group of Nazis stationed in a small castle in the Transylvanian Alps find themselves falling victim to the keep’s owner, who appears to be a vampire. Among the books in the keep’s library are the du Nord translation of The Book of Eibon, De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn, Cultes des Goules by Comte d’Erlette, The Pnakotic Manuscripts, The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, Unaussprechlichen Kulten by von Juntz, and the Al Azif by Abdul Alhazred. This book is the first chapter of F. Paul Wilson's Adversary Cycle, part of his Secret History of the World, which also includes his Repairman Jack novels and a number of other connected novels and short stories. The appearance of various tomes from the Cthulhu Mythos in The Keep brings the Secret History into the CU, with the exception of the final novel in the Adversary Cycle, Nightworld, which involves apocalyptic events, and as such must take place in an AU.