A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1895 — all 16 pages of painted-cover fiction magazines that launched science fiction, horror, and hardboiled crime, free to page through at ComicBooks.com.

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A complete issue · 16 pages · 1895

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 916

1895 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 916 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

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Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 916 — page 16 of 16 — 16 / 16

About this issue

Beadle and Adams published this serialized adventure in issue 916, volume 36. The featured story, credited to Edward L. Wheeler (author of the Deadwood Dick novels), is "The Shadow Coffin," a mystery-adventure set in Roaring River, Nevada, a silver mining camp noted for its hydraulic mining operations and the falls that power them. The narrative opens when a mysterious shadow-coffin appears suspended in mid-air within the crowded barroom of the Lullaby Roost hotel. Inside the spectral coffin appears the corpse of Joseph Mainard, the proprietor himself, who faints upon witnessing the apparition. The mysterious stranger Center-fire (also called Edgar Vandorn) arrives immediately after and becomes the focus of suspicion. Mainard recovers and offers Center-fire five hundred dollars to identify the prankster responsible, despite questioning whether it was truly a trick or something more supernatural.

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