A complete, restored issue of Pulp Fiction from 1888 — 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 · 1888

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 560

1888 · Free to read

Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 560 — page 2 of 16 — 2 / 16

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About this issue

This issue of Beadle and Adams' dime novel series (Vol. XXIII, No. 560, April 17, 1888) features "The Gold Queen's Secret: A Romantic Story of Real Border Life" by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, author of various frontier tales. The serial follows sixteen-year-old Gordon Lillie, an Illinois youth traveling west seeking fortune, who rescues fourteen-year-old Ruby Rolston from two highwaymen on a desolate highway. One pursuer—the discharged farmhand Luke Dorlan, nicknamed "Black Ben"—is killed in the ensuing gunfight; the other escapes. Andrew Rolston Jr., Ruby's brother, arrives to assist. The family, grateful for Gordon's heroism, offers him employment as a clerk at their banking house. Gordon accepts, later advancing to night watchman at the bank. The narrative establishes a romantic framework involving the young protagonists and suggests complications ahead involving the escaped highwayman Black Ben.

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