April 25, 2025
1 new Phantom Detective Audiobook, 2 new eBooks, and 5 featured products from Radio Archives this week!
All new and featured products are discounted the first week.

Featured: previously released
Volume 3

Andy and Virginia Mansfield were not new to radio with Turn Back the Clock. Virginia was originally a dancer and eventually performed with everyone from Paul Whiteman and Eddie Albert to Eddie Cantor. She and Andy performed together in Vaudeville, while Virginia’s career as a staff singer for various radio stations carried her from Cincinnati to Los Angeles. Some sources identify the Mansfields as being one of the first married couples to perform on television, possibly as early as 1937. It’s also believed that Turn Back the Clock was one of the first shows to have commentary from the hosts accompanying the songs they played.
Andy Mansfield made no secret of his love for music of the past on Turn Back the Clock. Proudly informing listeners at least once every episode that the show’s musical selections came from his own personal collection, Andy provides concise, yet detailed information on the various songs from the past, often including their original recording dates and artists and even where listeners might have heard them previously. According to some sources, Mansfield’s assortment of music was so substantial that he had to build a shed simply to store his collection.
Virginia Mansfield was born in Covington, Kentucky and started her show business career as a classical dancer at the Martin Beck Theater in New York. She also made her mark as a singer, performing with Eddie Cantor, Eddie Albert, Paul Whiteman and others. Landing a gig as a staff singer on WWW in Cincinnati, Virginia would make her way to Los Angeles and work for various stations there. Her marriage to Andy Mansfield in 1933, however, led to the work that they are both remembered for the most. The couple first worked together on radio on NBC’s Andy and Virginia before essentially inventing the oldies radio show format with Turn Back the Clock.
Enjoy twenty episodes restored to sparkling audio quality on Turn Back The Clock, Volume 3 from Radio Archives.
Featured: previously released
Volume 16

Around Dodge City and in the territory on west -- there’s just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers -- and that’s with a U.S. Marshall and the smell of “Gunsmoke”! “Gunsmoke” starring William Conrad. The story of the violence that moved west with young America -- and the story of a man who moved with it. I’m that man, Matt Dillon, United States Marshall -- the first man they look for and the last they want to meet. It’s a chancy job -- and it makes a man watchful...and a little lonely.
The strength of Gunsmoke as a whole largely relied on the depth of every figure in each episode, from small quirks given to one time only roles to complex histories woven into the recurring cast.
Doc Adams’ back story slowly unfolded during Gunsmoke’s first few years across the radio waves. Grumpy and grim, McNear slowly took the edge off of Doc, and Dodge City’s resident medical become more fully fleshed out over the passage of years – which helped to make him perhaps the most intriguing Gunsmoke character of all.
Yet when the real story of Doc Adam’s past was finally revealed in the January 31, 1953 episode titled “Cavalcade” it rocked some established myths about Doc. Doc was really Calvin Moore, educated in Boston. He practiced as a doctor for a year in Richmond, Virginia. During that time, Doc was involved with a beautiful young woman who was also being courted by a wealthy young man. Determined to win the young lady’s affections, the other suitor forced Doc into fighting a duel with him. After killing the man in a fair duel, Doc was forced to flee Richmond because he was a Yankee outsider. The young woman fled after him and they were married in St. Louis, but their wedded bliss was short lived. Two months later, she died of typhus. Broken hearted, Doc wandered throughout the territories until he settled in Dodge City seventeen years later under the name of “Charles Adams”.
Listen to the Sparkling Audio Quality in Radio Archives restoration of Gunsmoke, Volume 16.
The Crooked Mile River Murders
by Robert Wallace
Forged in war, The Phantom Detective wages a one-man battle on crime! Solving impossible mysteries and delivering his own justice, he is the underworld’s masked nightmare!
When Muriel Havens discovers the corpse of a famous Swiss scientist, the Phantom is plunged into a baffling trail of crime and intrigue which has repercussions the world over! Richard Curtis Van Loan goes on the manhunt when a ruthless murderer stalks big game!
Oftentimes readers of Pulp magazines in their Golden Age of publication read the wild, over the top stories for one reason - escape. Looking to get out of the humdrum of the Great Depression or War era America, fans of all ages marveled to the adventures of larger than life heroes and insane villains. The Phantom Detective met this qualification to be a Pulp Hero, but also stood out in his own unique way as a relatable character to fans of all ages. Though born into wealth, Richard Curtis Van Loan became a self-made man when he decided to become The Phantom Detective. Undertaking to train himself in every aspect of crimefighting, including disguises and escape techniques, Van Loan crafted his own destiny. He also did this without a super scientist father, a likely mystical training in a far-off land, or any other such devices. Granted, he had wealth that many of his readers did not have at his disposal, but still, Van Loan was in many ways a regular joe who saw a need and came up with a very unique way of helping fill it. Yes, he is introduced in the earliest stories as a world renowned detective, but later tales fill out how he came to be such by his own dedication and sheer will, why law enforcement around the world respects a masked man so much, something that many of his counterparts before, during, and after his series did not enjoy.
The Crooked Mile River Murders was originally published in the January 1948 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.
5 hours - MP3 regular price $9.99
Featured: previously released
Death's Diary
by Robert Wallace
Forged in war, The Phantom Detective wages a one-man battle on crime! Solving impossible mysteries and delivering his own justice, he is the underworld’s masked nightmare!
White orchids spell death in this action-packed tale of The Phantom Detective’s perilous pursuit of a master criminal whose diabolical, gruesome crimes follow each other in a grim procession. Death’s skeleton hands ever reach for him — yet the masked sleuth eludes their grisly clutches and continues in his courageous struggle against criminal forces. His ability, his resourcefulness, his ruthlessness in fighting crime have won him the title of Scourge of the Underworld. Follow him on the perilous pursuit of a master criminal — a fiend incarnate whose nefarious activities will chill you to the marrow.
With issue twelve of The Phantom Detective magazine, the house name of ‘G. Wayman Jones’ was retired and the author credited with most, if not all the first eleven stories of this character, D. L. Champion mostly moved onto other series. In order to continue the series, another house name was created, that of Robert Wallace. The parade of authors who would add to The Phantom Detective’s library of tales as Wallace is voluminous and includes Laurence Donovan, Edwin V. Burkholder, Norman A. Daniels, who wrote more than 36 of them, Anatole F. Feldman, C. S. Montanye, Laurence Donovan, Ryerson Johnson, Henry Kuttner, Ralph Oppenheim, Norvell W. Page, Paul Chadwick, Paul Ernst, Ray Cummings, and Emile C. Tepperman.
As a pen name, ‘Robert Wallace’ was not simply pulled from thin air. Hoping readers would relate the name to a well-known British author of thrillers, Edgar Wallace, Thrilling Publications would use the same house name on short stories and novel length tales outside of The Phantom Detective series.
‘Death’s Diary’ was originally published in the February 1934 issue of The Phantom Detective Magazine and is read with pulse pounding intensity by award winning voice actor Milton Bagby.
Featured: previously released
by Riley Hogan
Read by Bill Coale

Swords and Magic
For generations, the freedom loving Cossacks battled their enemies; the Ottoman Turks and Crimean Tartars for the supremacy of the rugged Steppes. Frustrated by the constant raids of these reckless, horse-riding warriors, Constantinople prepares a major campaign that will end the Cossacks and their way of life forever.
Realizing they are severely outnumbered against such a Turkish reprisal, the Cossack Headsman seeks out the sorcerer Alexsandr with a bold scheme. He wants Alexsandr to enter the realms of magic and enlist the aid of magical creatures of Slavic myth as allies. With the help of his friend, Commander Marko and the battle-hardened Bohun, the wizard must summon all his skills, both martial and arcane, to fulfill his sacred mission and in doing so save his people.
In the grand tradition of Robert E. Howard and Harold Lamb, writer Riley Hogan spins a tale of tested comrades about to risk all in a dangerous quest that, if they survive, could lead to the greatest victory in Cossack history. Read with stirring excitement by Bill Coale
8 hours - MP3 regular price $15.99
New eBook
Total Pulp Experience. These exciting pulp adventures have been beautifully reformatted for easy reading as an eBook and features every story, every editorial, and every column of the original pulp magazine.
The Phantom Detective! The name alone conjures up action and adventure. From the same publisher that brought you The Black Bat, Captain Danger, The Crimson Mask and The Green Ghost came one of pulpdom's best-known detectives. Scourge of the underworld, The Phantom, as he was called, aided the Law with his sweetheart Muriel Havens. His first adventure was published in February 1933 and they continued for 170 thrilling exploits until the Summer 1953 issue. The Phantom Detective returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
New eBook
Total Pulp Experience. These exciting pulp adventures have been beautifully reformatted for easy reading as an eBook and features every story, every editorial, and every column of the original pulp magazine.
A steely-eyed private dick with an unshaven jaw of granite... a gat of dull gun-metal gray sags heavily under his armpit... he works the seamy underbelly of the city, coming up against squinty-eyed thugs, weasels who value human life less than the coins jingling in their pocket, and red-lipped bimbos with hot breath, wide eyes and long silky legs. The stories are hard, gritty and action-packed. They fairly scream, "pulp!" This was what Private Detective Stories offered beginning with its first issue in June of 1937. It came from the same publisher who brought you Blazing Western, Candid Detective, The Lone Ranger Magazine, Speed Adventure Stories and Speed Mystery. In all, 134 issues were published until the magazine closed in June of 1949. Private Detective Stories returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Featured eBook
by Frederick C. Davis writing as Curtis Steele
Total Pulp Experience. These exciting pulp adventures have been beautifully reformatted for easy reading as an eBook and features every story, every editorial, and every column of the original pulp magazine. As a special bonus, Will Murray has written an introduction especially for this series of eBooks.
Jimmy Christopher, clean-cut, square-jawed and clear-eyed, was the star of the most audacious pulp magazines ever conceived — Operator #5. Savage would-be conquerors, creepy cults, weird weather-controllers and famine-creating menaces to our mid-western breadbasket... these were but a few of the fiendish horrors that Jimmy Christopher was forced to confront. Operator #5 returns in vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Radio Archives Pulp Classics line of eBooks are of the highest quality and feature the great Pulp Fiction stories of the 1930s-1950s. All eBooks produced by Radio Archives are available in ePub and Mobi formats for the ultimate in compatibility. If you have a Kindle, the Mobi version is what you want. New Kindle's use ePub. If you have an iPad/iPhone, Android, or Nook, then the ePub version is what you want.
Comments From Our Customers!
Todd Wallace writes:
Phantom Detective Audiobook. It was very easy to purchase the audiobook, and the quality of the book's narration is excellent.
If you'd like to share a comment with us or if you have a question or a suggestion send an email to [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!
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