Argo Press

P.O. Box 4201, Austin, Texas 78765-4201, USA
MICHAEL AMBROSE, Publisher charspot01@austin.rr.com (512)263-5027

1 JANUARY 2003

ARGO PRESS PUBLISHES NEW FANTASY NOVEL BY ALBERT J. MANACHINO

The Box Hunters
Albert J. Manachino

Argo Press, 2002
ISBN 0-9634181-5-7

trade paper, 6x9, 264 pp color cover & 36 B&W text illustrations by Larry Dickison

$16.95 plus $3.00 S&H U.S.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Argo Press, P.O. Box 4201, Austin, TX 78765-4201 USA

MICHAEL AMBROSE,
(512) 263-5027
charspot01@austin.rr.com

Argo Press announces publication of The Box Hunters, a new fantasy novel by Albert J. Manachino. The Box Hunters is the story of the Ems, a not-so-typical family on summer vacation in a place where not a single thing is normal.

It was a chance to "go somewhere for a change." So the Ems found Margrave: $75 a month, 150 rooms all to themselves, no other tenants.

But there were neighbors.

The wizards, Brown and Chain. Captain Fearless, part-time superhero. And don't even ask about Boes and Ransome.

Who were all these people? Box hunters ...

The Box Hunters is a rare combination of wacky whimsicality and ominous foreboding, a roller-coaster ride through a fun house that changes into a haunted house, then back again.

Albert J. Manachino, a veteran short-story writer for fantasy magazines, has previously published three collections. The Box Hunters is his first novel. The book features a full-color wrap-around cover and three dozen black-and-white text illustrations by prolific Canadian artist Larry Dickison.

Albert J. Manachino has received wide critical acclaim. "Manachino is an original, his work a voice that comes straight from the heart with no compromise," says best-selling fantasy author Charles de Lint. "His stories are absurd and logical, hilarious and serious, all at once, a melting pot of strange and whimsical ideas, astute observations of contemporary life and sharp insightss into the human psyche."

"Albert J. Manachino's stories are quite wonderful and unapologetically strange," according to William Browning Spencer, author of the critically acclaimed novel Zod Wallop. "You might call these stories surreal pulp fiction (a collaboration, perhaps, between William Hope Hodgson and Franz Kafka). Wildly inventive, they waste no time, cutting right to the chase. In a single volume their cumulative oddness produces its own unsettling logic. Lovers of the macabre and fantastic should be utterly delighted."

The late Frank Belknap Long, legendary science fantasy writer and compeer of H. P. Lovecraft, had this to say: "Albert J. Manachino has a perceptive awareness of the precise point in a story when an abyss of ultimate horror should be allowed to widen."

And Ray Bradbury said of Manachino's collection Noctet, "Grand fun all round."

Albert J. Manachino, a longtime resident of Hicksville, Long Island, New York, is a father and grandfather, WWII navy veteran, and retired postal worker. Since 1975 he has published hundreds of short stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies and has received awards for Best Fiction Writer and Best Comic Writer (for his cartoon series with Kevin Duncan).

Manachino is the author of two chapbooks (Night of the Ghulstak Races, G.F. Edwards, 1979; Dark Bible, Argo Press, 1985) and three story collections (Thes Box Hunters & Others, Potboiler Books, 1985; The Odd Lot: Selected Works, Dark Regions Press, 1993, Noctet: Tales of Madonna-Moloch, Argo Press, 1997).

To read an excerpt from The Box Hunters simply click the relevant links at the top of this page. To read more of Manachino's short stories please visit the Archive section.

PUBLISHERS OF THE BOX HUNTERS, BY ALBERT J. MANACHINO • CHARLTON SPOTLIGHT, EXPLORING THE HISTORY OF THE CHARLTON COMICS GROUP