Houdini's mystery tale.

Harry Houdini. NYPL.

Over on the Harry Houdini Circumstantial Evidence blog, Joe Notaro reproduces parts of the serial The Zanetti Mystery (1925), featuring the "genius faker and arch-rogue" Zanetti (future blog posts will have additional chapters). The tale was published under Houdini's name, but Notaro believes it was ghostwritten by Fulton Oursler (aka mystery author Anthony Abbot).

U-DE bookplates: Houdini et al.

Calimedico Library
bookplate, UC-Berkeley
William Augustus Brewer
Bookplate Collection

Among the approximately 3,000 items in the online William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection from University of Delaware Library (which will eventually number 13,000 items), bookplates from the following individuals are represented:

• Calvin Coolidge
• Harry Houdini
• Illustrator Howard Pyle (teacher of N. C. Wyeth)
• Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR
• Theodore Roosevelt

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

BPL: "Cool and Collected" exhibition.

Among the items of the Boston Public Library's "Cool and Collected" exhibition that you can see online at Flickr:

• Scrapbook of Houdini memorabilia: see pages here, here, here, and here

• 1895 ad for Houghton Mifflin

• 1916 season pass, Boston Red Sox

About the image: Houdini poster, ca. 1909. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.