The first review of Kage Baker’s Illustrated Short Company novel is in, and we think it sums the book up perfectly. According to the always perceptive Colleen Mondor at Bookslut: ““Rude Mechanicals takes place in Hollywood in 1934, and is from start to finish one of those excellent screwball comedy romps that I am unashamedly fond of. If you exchanged the cyborgs Lewis and Joseph for Myrna Loy and William Powell in any one of the Thin Man movies, you would have a version of Rude Mechanicals that fits on AMC any night of the week.”

We’ll take that, though we’re certain AMC never envisioned anything like the Golden Age of Hollywood gone weird illustrations J.K. Potter provided.

Okay, so this entry is mostly an excuse to show off the cover art for Philip Jose Farmer’s Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories, which matches up nicely with the cover for Pearls from Peoria. In addition to an unpublished novel, a bunch of short stories, and another novel beginning, Bottomless Pit is graced with more than 50 black-and-white interior illos. At only 250 copies, this nearly 400 page book will be a true rarity for Farmer fans. We’ve just sent out to have ARCs produced. Look for the book itself this summer.

The new review from Booklist for The Shadows, Kith and Kin — shipping later this week — bookends the PW rave quite nicely: “Never one to remain hemmed in by a specific genre, Lansdale runs the gamut of fanciful motifs from pure horror to whimsical fantasy in his new story collection. Lansdale’s world is by turns darkly apocalyptic or comically surreal, and its inhabitants are loners, losers, and mass murderers… Whatever creative tricks Lansdale pulls out of his sleeve, his writing never fails to deliver an emotional kick while it stirs the imagination”

This fall, we’ll be releasing a 120 page novella set in the author’s signature world of Coyote.

Allen Steele’s novels about the frontier planet Coyote — Coyote, Coyote Rising, and Coyote Frontier — have become one of the most critically acclaimed series of the last decade. Yet there remain stories about humankind’s new home that have not been told. The River Horses is one of those tales.

Taking place between the events of Coyote Rising and Coyote Frontier, this standalone novella tells the story of Marie Montero and Lars Thompson, two veterans of the revolutionary war against Earth who have been exiled from the colonies. Sent out to explore the unmapped regions of Coyote, they are accompanied by Manuel Castro, a posthuman Savant who was once the lieutenant governor during the Union occupation. The three of them don’t trust one another, but in order to survive the challenges of the wilderness, they must find a way to work together. Yet Coyote has a way of changing people…and once they encounter the river horses, nothing will ever be the same again.

A tale of adventure, suspense, and romance, The River Horses is the latest chapter of an epic by a Hugo-winning author.

Limited: 500 signed numbered copies: $35

We’ve just received the first review of The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, from Publishers Weekly.

“This curious time-travel novella from Hugo-winner Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others) is a gracefully told lesson about accepting fate—or, as better suits this medieval Arabian setting, the will of Allah… Half lyrical Arabian Nights legend and half old school cautionary SF tale, this skillfully written story and its theme of insurmountable fate may comfort as many readers as it makes uncomfortable.”

The author and designer Jon Berry are hard at work to bring Merchant together in time for its summer release.