The History of Malarkey

 Malarkey Books was formed in 1904 by Gary “Mule Face” Malarkey, a small-time outlaw who no-gooded his way up and down Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. While not an official member, he rode for a time with the Doolin Gang and became enchanted with the Missouri outlaw Little Britches, whom he is said to have helped escape custody in the Oklahoma Territory in 1895. His love for Little Britches would prove to be unrequited. Despondent, he set out with few supplies for a new start in California, but gave up the journey when he looked at a map.

He roamed the region for the next several years, committing minor robberies here and there, evading capture, and saving his money, until he had enough to quit the outlaw game forever and set up as a bookseller. He sold mostly dime novels about ruffians, con men, and outlaws, including a book he reportedly penned himself (under the nom de plume Jonathan Barnard Jr., about his former inamorata, Little Britches. Entitled The Big Adventures of Little Britches, it was lost to history, although some say the original manuscript is hidden in a lockbox in some old overgrown hideout in southwest Missouri. Mule Face Malarkey sold books for the next twenty years out of a one-room shack in Redings Mill, Missouri, until his death in 1924 when a sinkhole opened up under his shop. Most of the stock was lost, but Gary’s nephew Hank Malarkey inherited the business, which consisted of two boxes of detective novels that hadn’t been delivered yet when the shack got sucked into the earth, and a semi-feral cat named Ben. The original Malarkey Books store has long since been paved over but the outlaw spirit remains.