Orson Scott Card’s historical magnum opus is doing very well for us, with the trade edition headed into a second printing. If snagging a first printing hardcover is important to you, now’s not a bad time to get your order in.

Starting today, we’re serializing “Saturday Night at Eddie’s,” the standalone novella that opens Kealan Patrick Burke’s acclaimed new novel, Currency of Souls, due to ship in early February.

Welcome to Eddie’s Tavern, the only functioning waterhole in a near-dead town. Among the people you’ll meet tonight are: Tom, Milestone’s haunted lawman, who walks in the shadow of death; Gracie, the barmaid, a wannabe actress, doomed to spend her hours tending bar in a purgatory of her father’s making; Flo, the town seductress, who may or may not have murdered her husband; Cobb, a nudist awaiting an apology from the commune who cast him out; Wintry, the mute giant, whose story is told only in cryptic messages scribbled beneath newspaper headlines; Kyle, the kid, who keeps a loaded gun beneath the table; and Cadaver, who looks like a corpse, but smells real nice, and occupies his time counting stacks of pennies.

And then there’s Reverend Hill, who will be in at eleven, regular as clockwork, to tell them who’s going to die, and who’s going to drive.

Welcome to Eddie’s, where tonight, for the first time in three years, nothing will go according to plan.

Limited: 750 signed numbered hardcover copies: $40
Lettered: 15 signed copies housed in a custom traycase: $250

From Publishers Weekly:
“…a gripping horror novel whose motley cast of characters drink the evening away in a seedy bar, Eddie’s Tavern, in a dying town called Milestone. Each is stained by–and may even have caused–an ugly death that still haunts him or her… At the haunting conclusion, escape proves only a brief respite from damnation.”

From the Agony Column:
“Burke writes one memorable sentence after another, ratchets the action up at an alarming pace and by the time the going gets weird, you know that Burke is a pro… You get that collection of odd personalities, each with a great backstory. But you get those backstories in the context of a really, really eventful night at the ol’ Tavern. Lives will end, at least for a short while. Undeaths will begin. Murders will committed and if not solved, perhaps they’ll get resolved.”

Today, in the penultimate chapter of Elizabeth Bear’s Lucifugous, the murderers aboard the zeppeling Hans Glucker are finally unmasked. Look for the long novella that opens her mosaic novel, New Amsterdam, to wrap up in fine form tomorrow.

In inventory, appearing soon, we have a 27,000 word original novella, “Vacancy” by Lucius Shepard, another novella, “Saturday Night at Eddie’s” by Kealan Patrick Burke, plus short fiction by R. Andrew Heidel, Joe R. Lansdale, and John Scalzi. All of it will appear FREE on the SubPress site over the next few months, along with book reviews by Dorman Shindler, and columns by Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch, and Norman Partridge.

As we near issue 8 for Subterranean magazine, the last print issue, we’ll be gearing up the content on our site to take its place, all of it for FREE. Keep your eyes peeled for all of the above and more over the next few months.

While we’re at it, don’t forget Cherie Priest’s novella from Dreadful Skin. The Wreck of the Mary Byrd, the 25,000 word novella that opens the novel, is a definite treasure, old penny dreadful style entertainment, with some modern sensibilities mixed in.

The rest of January and February are just packed with new titles — we have no fewer than eight brand new limited editions due between now and the beginning of March, including:

– Tales from the Woeful Platypus by Caitlin R. Kiernan ($20 trade)
– In Other Words by John Crowley ($35 limited)
– Missile Gap by Charles Stross ($35, second printing)
– The Sagan Diary by John Scalzi ($45 limited, $20 trade)
– Currency of Souls by Kealan Patrick Burke ($40 limited)
– MirrorMask by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean ($125 limited, $500 lettered)
– Dreadful Skin by Cherie Priest ($25 limited)
– You’re Not Fooling Anyone… by John Scalzi ($35 limited)

Remember, U.S. Shipping is FREE on all preorders!

We’re nearing the finish line on both of these projects. The books are done and awaiting pickup from the printer, which will happen as soon as we have definite ship dates for the slipcases. Ray Bradbury’s Farewell Summer will be first out the door, in the next 10-14 days, followed by Stephen King’s The Green Mile, which will start shipping at the end of the month. We’ve lined up extra help for the GM shipping marathon, which we expect will take a couple of weeks.

Amber Benson and Christopher Golden’s dark fantasy novella, The Seven Whistlers, just received its first review, in Green Man Review, and here’s a taste: “Benson and Golden, the novel’s authors, shrug off the seductive baggage of poetic rococo in favor of a low-level, hackle-raising atmospheric menace, which serves to heighten the impact of the otherworldly happenings that form the center of the story.”

The Seven Whistlers is in stock and shipping.

As of Tuesday, all preordered copies (customer, dealer, and distributor) for The Seven Whistlers (Amber Benson and Christopher Golden) and Dead Names (Simon) will be en route via UPS and USPS.

This week we’re shipping out first all orders for Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn: the Lost Version, and, as the week progresses, Rite: Short Work, the first short story collection (over 450 pages) by fantasy best-seller Tad Williams.

Also due to be finished this week, though unlikely to be shipped just yet, is The Jack Vance Treasuy, which is selling very well. Get your order in now, as our other career retrospectives (by Philip Jose Farmer and Robert Silverberg) have pretty much sold out on publication. This one does not look to be much different.

This week we’re releasing a huge (over 140,000 words, 450+ pages) short story collection by fantasy bestseller Tad Williams. Rite contains short stories and novellas, three teleplays, four nonfiction pieces, and short introductions to each tale. Given Tad’s legion of fans, we expect this title to sell out prior to publication. As an added bonus, each of the short stories features a full page illustration by acclaimed artist Mark A Nelson. Rite is over 80% sold out on publication.

From Library Journal:
“Characterized by a wickedly keen sense of humor and, at times, a feel for the poignant, Williams’s stories offer insights into the author’s career as well as his growth as a writer.”

From Booklist:
“As he says in the introduction to this collection, most of his short fiction has been written for anthologies. The stories here are therefore rather varied… Williams introduces each piece, which makes these even more of a treat for his fans.”

Signed Hardcover:

$40

Very late this month — or very early in February — we’ll release Kealan’s newest novel, Currency of Souls. Starting late next week, we’ll be serializing “Saturday Night at Eddie’s,” the standalone novella length section that begins the novel.

In the meantime, here’s Kealan in a very different mood than the novel.
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Publishers Weekly was most kind and generous to us recently, with very positive reviews of both Cherie Priest’s novel, Dreadful Skin, (Limited Edition $25) and Peter Crowther’s short story collection, The Spaces Between the Lines (Limited Edition $40).

PW on Dreadful Skin:
“A runaway Irish nun pursues a murderous werewolf across post-Civil War America in this riveting Southern gothic from Priest (Wings to the Kingdom)…the haunting characters will keep readers turning the pages. When one must become a monster in order to kill a monster, can the hunt still be justified. This book raise tantalizing philosophical questions about good and evil as well as the roles of hunter and prey.”

and on The Spaces Between the Lines:
“British author Crowther (The Longest Single Note) shows impressive versatility in this collection of 12 weird tales that evoke a variety of moods ranging from wonder to horror… these stories are grounded in believably wrought emotions that make their strangeness both credible and affecting.”