We’re proud to announce hot new writer Cherie Priest’s hardcover debut, a mosaic novel, sixty thousand words long, Dreadful Skin, due in February, featuring numerous full-page black and white illustrations by Mark Geyer.

I ducked into a niche between a cabin and the pilot house and hiked my skirt up enough to reach down into my garter holster. I’ve heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal.

We’d see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman.

* * * * *

Jack Gabert went to India to serve his Queen. He returned to London a violently changed man, infected with an unnatural sickness that altered his body and warped his mind.

Eileen Callaghan left an Irish convent with a revolver and a secret. She knows everything and nothing about Jack’s curse, but she cannot rest until he’s caught. His soul cannot be saved. It can only be returned to God.

In the years following the American Civil War, the nun and unnatural creature stalk one another across the United States. Their dangerous game of cat and mouse leads them along great rivers, across dusty plains, and into the no man’s land of the unmarked western territories.

Here are three tales of the hunt.

Reader, take this volume and follow these tormented souls. Learn what you can from their struggle—against each other, against God, and against themselves.

Limited: 1500 signed hardcover copies: $25

Important note: We’ll be serializing the first third of this penny dreadful, “The Wreck of the Mary Byrd,” on the SubPress site this October.

Posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 11:14 am.