Just a quick note to let everyone know that all orders (direct, retail, and wholesale) for Kage Baker’s steampunk extravaganza, Not Less Than Gods, have finished shipping.

In addition, Booklist has just weighed in with a positive review that highlights the novel’s relation to Kage’s Company series, and ends: “Baker builds a fantastic alternate Europe with a deft historical touch and spins an excellent spy story around it. Not Less Than Gods is a satisfying addition to the annals of the Company that is also an engaging stand-alone novel.”

Here’s a first look at Maurizio Manzieri’s cover for Peter S. Beagle’s new novella, Return, a welcome revisiting of the setting for his Innkeeper’s Song stories. With the cover completed, Maurizio will begin work on the interior illustrations for Peter’s novella.

In other Beagle news, copies of his mammoth retrospective collection, Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle, are finished, awaiting pickup at our printer. We’ll keep you posted when this much-lauded volume reaches the top of our shipping queue. Speaking of Mirror, Book Page is the latest venue to cover the book, quite generously, calling it “a lesson in how to tell timeless stories with heart, wit and grace… These are stories to soften the hearts of even the most jaded reader.”

SF Reviews.net is the latest to chime in about John Scalzi’s dark fantasy novella, and we thank them for their generous praise: “In its surprising final third, when assumptions are overturned, beliefs are challenged, and our heroes’ sense of what’s right and wrong in the universe is thrown into chaos, The God Engines shifts into high and redlines right across the finish. The climax is as visceral as anything Scalzi’s ever done.”

After a bit of a delay while we waited for the author to fit the signature pages into his schedule, we’re pleased to announce that the third installment of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, Grave Peril, is winging its way to our printer. We’ll post more info, including a tentative release date, as soon as possible.

We’re pleased to be able to offer you one of the most impressive oversize art books we’ve ever seen. Knowing Darkness is one gigantic, overwhelming book.

We’re handling orders for this one a little different than normal. We’ll be accepting orders for only $525 per copy, including US shipping, which is more than $350.00 off the normal retail price.

Once our March 5 order deadline passes, we’ll pull Knowing Darkness from the SubPress site and place our order with Centipede Press. Please note that we regret given the size and weight of this book that we will only be able to accept US orders for it. We just can’t guarantee that copies shipped internationally will arrive in undamaged condition.

Finally, to make this an even better deal for our customers, the first 50 to order will also receive a Free copy of our own Stephen King Goes to the Movies, which features two-color printing throughout, as well as a number of full-color plates by Vincent Chong.

Please see the book page for full details.

Update: We sold out of our 50 copies of the limited edition within a few hours of announcement, but are still taking preorders for the Trade Hardcover.

Our friends from PS Publishing are about to release another of their nifty Ray Bradbury collections, Long After Midnight, and we’ve managed to lock in some copies for our customers.

Be advised that the signed slipcased version is limited to only 200 copies, and we expect to sell out of our allotment quickly. For those not interested in the deluxe version, we’re also offering the unsigned trade hardcover, with the dust jacket image from the limited edition printed right on the book itself. These PS editions are the perfect reason to dip back into classic Bradbury. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Finally, remember that US Shipping is FREE on PS Publishing titles.

You can add Dorman T. Shindler, writing for the Denver Post, among those who’ve been won over by Connie Willis’s WWII time travel novel Blackout. As Dorman writes, “Blackout is a tour-de-force return to the novel form by a woman who is one of Colorado’s best novelists, one of America’s finest writers and who has more than earned her place among the greats of science fiction — Robert Heinlein, included.”

We thought we’d sold through our allotment of the new Gene Wolfe limited edition, The Sorcerer’s House, but were mistaken. We have roughly 20 copies of the limited hardcover left to sell, and 9 of the traycased edition, so get your order in quickly if Mr. Wolfe’s new novel is of interest.

We’ve been told by PS Publishing that the books should be shipping before long.

As we’ve noted before, we ran into a snag with Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles: the Complete Edition, which is only now being sorted out.

All of the hand marbled paper to cover the books’ boards was initially supposed to be delivered the first week of January. It’s February 20, and our printer doesn’t have all of the paper yet. The good news is that final shipment is in the US, clearing customs.

We’ve seen and approved the printed but not yet bound pages for TMC, meaning the books will head straight to the bindery as soon as that second half of the marbled paper reaches our printer. After the books are bound, we’ll send copies out to have the slipcases (for the numbered edition) and traycases (for the lettered edition) constructed. This usually take anywhere from 6-8 weeks.

We’ll post more news when the books have been bound, with a few photos if we can manage them.

Our thanks to everyone for their patience as this complex project comes together. We think Bradbury’s many fans will be pleased with the end result.

We have two new collections to announce by masters of the short story, one new and one classic.

Jay Lake’s new collection of short stories represents his favorites of his own work, both current and classic. With an emphasis on recent publications since his last collection in 2007, The Sky That Wraps showcases his reach in fantasy, science fiction, and the ambiguous territory in between. This volume includes two all-new stories, “Coming for Green” and “To Their Late Escape”, as well as previously uncollected fan favorites “The American Dead” and “The Sky That Wraps The World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black.” Twenty other stories round out this wide-ranging survey of Lake’s work.

Philip Jose Farmer may no longer be with us, but we’re proud to continue our history of publishing his work. The latest, Up the Bright River, is a 120,000 word compendium of short stories that show off the many worlds Farmer created and worked in, including the first appearance of the last three Riverworld tales in a Farmer collection. Up the Bright River is very much a celebration of Phil’s wide ranging legacy, lovingly edited by Gary K. Wolfe.

Both titles are well underway, and slated for publication this fall.