Subterranean Press Featured Title

Our latest John Scalzi ebook is available. The Tale of the Wicked (Kindle|Nook) is Scalzi’s lone foray into short (6,000 words) space opera.

Captain Michael Obwije of the Confederation Armed Forces has been hunting a Tarin battle cruiser in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. But when he orders his own ship in for the killing blow, the hot pursuit turns into a potentially more dangerous situation. One with implications for the entire Confederation.

It’s only $.99, so what are you waiting for?

We’re deep into production on Caitlin R. Kiernan’s newest collection, Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart. The art is done, the book is designed and being proofread, and Caitlin has turned in the material for the second collection that will accompany the Signed, Limited Edition:

The Yellow Book is a hardcover containing 20,000 words of ultra rare and uncollected fiction: the 10,000 word original, “Ex Libris” a tale of Lovecraftiana in which a box of malevolent books turns up at an estate sale, and “The Yellow Alphabet,” the third and final installement in Kiernan’s The Alphabetos Triptych (which also includes “The Black Alphabet” and “The Crimson Alphabet”).

At long last, we’re shipping the Signed Limited edition of Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings. Alexander Preuss once again has provided the cover as well as a number of full-color interiors.

A few quick notes:

• Last Argument won’t be available via large online retailers or wholesalers. Your best bet to secure a copy is to order direct.
• We have a few other Abercrombie limiteds planned (Best Served Cold, The Heroes) and will be happy to match numbers for those titles.

Glen Hirshberg’s magnificent new collection, The Janus Tree and Other Stories, is in stock and shipping. Its contents boast a number of tales that have appeared in various Year’s Best volumes, as well as a few upcoming in same.

If that’s not enough to nudge you, here’s a bit of the praise the book’s drawn:

“Spellbinding…offbeat and distressing…atmospheric, superb…Hirshberg is one of the greatest contemporary authors of dark fantasy.” —SFRevu.com

“Hirshberg delivers plenty of creepy, strange tales in his third collection…{He} is a master of the disturbing.” —Publishers Weekly

In addition to George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, we’re publishing a very deluxe edition of his debut novel, Dying of the Light, this summer. All of the book’s elements are in hand, including multiple gatefold illustrations and fifteen pen-and-ink interiors by Tom Kidd.

For those unfamiliar with the novel…

For countless millennia, the planet Worlorn has been “creation’s castaway,” a cold, barren world drifting aimlessly through the darkness between the stars. When it wanders near the constellation called The Wheel of Fire, Worlorn experiences a brief, bright period of light and life and becomes the setting for an extravagant, multi-cultural celebration: the Festival of the Fringe. A few short years later, when the planet has moved on and the festival has ended, the light begins to die once again.

Into this realm of eternal twilight comes Dirk t’Larien, a rootless interstellar traveler. Dirk has come to Worlorn in response to a summons from Gwen Delvano, the woman who deserted him years before, the woman he has never stopped loving. Desperate to reconnect with Gwen, his “mistress of abandoned dreams,” he finds himself enmeshed in the unforeseen complexities of a world marked by alien sexual and domestic arrangements, unbridgeable cultural barriers, and rigid codes of conduct that can have lethal consequences. It is a world in which words carry extraordinary weight and names have the power to shape—and destroy—a life.

First published in 1977, Dying of the Light was George R.R. Martin’s first novel, and it immediately announced the presence of an extraordinary storyteller. More than thirty years later, it continues to stand as a singular accomplishment: an intimate epic in which the pleasures of grand-scale world building and the subtleties of human relationships stand seamlessly side-by-side.

Some titles are worth bringing back. We think so with Lawrence Block’s early novels, Strange Embrace and 69 Barrow Street, an opinion shared by The Agony Column: “But the memories are strong enough to inspire Hard Case Crime to team up with Subterranean Press for an absolutely stunning hardcover re-issue of two super-duper sleazefests in the beloved “Ace Double” format. Lawrence Block is the stuff of literary legend now, a mystery writer who claims to be retired while working harder than the girls in a Madonna video… Hard Case Crime and Subterranean Press have gone all out on this double. The new art is by Robert McGinnis and it is superbly sleazy; gorgeous and evocative. Publishing a hardcover version of the old Ace Double format is gutsy, but ultimately very cool. And at $30, the price is great as well. Here are two books in one volume that are well worth reading and a hoot to own. These books put their goods on display right there on the covers; twice, in case you missed it the first time, either now or back then.”

We’re readying our new edition of Joe R. Lansdale’s seminal novel, Act of Love, for the printer, which means that reviews are starting to appear. The first, and a most welcome one, is from Publishers Weekly: “Thirty-two years after its original release, Lansdale’s pivotal first novel still retains its shocking horror and clarity. A new and clever short story, ‘A Bone Dead Sadness,’ in which a much older Hanson investigates a long-ago disappearance, is a jarring contrast to the stark brutality of the novel. Both showcase Lansdale’s clean, crisp writing and deft characterization, as well as descriptions vivid enough to give the most jaded reader nightmares.”

Our edition includes the classic novel, a brand new novelette featuring Marvin Hanson, the novel’s protagonist, as well as a cover by Timothy Truman and copious interior illustrations by Glenn Chadbourne.

We’ve unleashed another John Scalzi ebook on the world, available, as you might expect, for the Kindle and Nook:

“When his city council representative is hit by a bus, David Sawyer decides to run for the newly-vacated seat. One problem: He’s a human in an alien-majority district that hasn’t voted in a human in half a century. Can Sawyer pull it off in a race that includes a politically smooth, physically gelatinous front runner, a carnivore whose entire platform is on the right to consume pets, and two literally bile-spewing sisters? A tale of aliens, politics and humor from the author of Old Man’s War and The Android’s Dream.

It’s priced at an ultra-reasonable $.99, so why not have a try? After all, it is election season.

We’re delighted to announce our Brian Lumley project for 2012. No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories is a companion to his other retrospective volumes: The Taint and Others Novellas and Haggopian and Other Stories.

Read on for the full details:

Prior to the first American Publication of Brian Lumley’s ground-breaking, dead waking, best-selling Necroscope ® in 1988—the first novel in a long-lived, much-loved series—this British author had for twenty years been earning an envious reputation writing short stories, novellas, and a series of novels set against H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic Cthulhu Mythos backdrop. In addition and for a further twenty years Lumley’s non-Mythos Fantasy, SF, and Horror stories have been appearing on a regular basis in some of the world’s most famous publications; for example The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales, along with anthologies such as Karl Edward Wagner’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, Charles L. Grant’s Final Shadows, and Kirby McCauley’s Frights, among others.

With his multiple-award-winning literary career now spanning over four decades, Lumley continues to write his superior fictions, examples of which from each of those decades can be found in this current collection, where Weird Tales itself is represented by no less than five stories!

And so, to complete a trilogy of volumes begun with the Lovecraft-inspired The Taint and Other Novellas, and followed by Haggopian and Other Stories, Subterranean Press is now proud to offer No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories, a handpicked collection of Brian Lumley’s best macabre tales…

We have five Advance Reading Copies of Tad Williams’ upcoming collection, A Stark and Wormy Knight, to give away to good homes.

Want to win? Make sure you’re signed up for our email newsletter. Shortly after Friday, January 13, 2012, we’ll draw the email addresses of five lucky winners from our subscription list, contact them, and send the ARCs on their way as soon as we have confirmed addresses.

Easy enough, right?

So please, sign up for our email newsletter—which you can do on the right hand side of our site’s main page.

Thanks, as always, for your ongoing support, and good luck in the giveaway.