Along with his masterful Blue Rose Trilogy (Koko, Mystery, and The Throat), Peter Straub penned four novellas related to the now-classic novels. For the first time, we’ve gathered the tales together under one cover in The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories, with a fine cover illustration by Patrick Arrasmith.

We’re not alone in our estimation that these works are of major importance. Publishers Weekly graced the book with a starred review in its latest issue: “Stoker winner Straub pays a deliciously macabre visit to the universe of his expansive Blue Rose trilogy… Blue Rose fans will especially enjoy the further exploration of familiar characters and their horribly formative childhood years. Readers of dark fiction will not want to miss this chilling addition to Straub’s extensive bibliography.”

As a reminder, we still have copies of the only edition anywhere of Peter’s new novel, The Skylark, the expanded (by roughly 200 manuscript pages) version of his major novel, A Dark Matter.

In the latest issue of Publishers Weekly, Charles Stross weighed in with a Signature Review of Ted Chiang’s stunning new novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects: “The life cycle of the software objects in question is viewed through the prism of the human protagonists’ own life cycle, and this skeleton is the armature on which hangs that very rare thing: a science fictional novel of ideas that delivers a real human impact.”

Make no mistake — Lifecycle, the longest work yet in Ted’s distinguished career, is a major work of fiction. We’ve been overwhelmed by orders, especially of the limited edition, which won’t have a dust jacket, but will feature two-color foil stamping We have bumped up the limitation to 400 copies. As with Ted’s last book for us, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, we don’t expect this one to last long past publication.

Lifecycle has just been sent to the printer, and should be shipping in roughly the next six weeks.

Cherie Priest’s offshoot/sequel to her breakout novel, Boneshaker, continues to ring up praise. Over at Tor.com, John Klima writes of Clementine: “This book is a straight-up spy thriller, and it’s a blast to read… The characters, the actions, the settings, feel so real and tangible that at times I wanted to do some research about Civil War era airships.”

Our print run for Clementine is a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of copies of Boneshaker out in the world. If you liked the latter, the aerial battles and heavy armament of Cherie’s new novel are sure to garner your attention.

Given that, according to Booklist, Norman Partridge’s new collection, Lesser Demons, contains “10 finely calibrated, genrebending tales display his broad range, from dark detective fiction to equally dark western yarns…his gift for twisting genre conventions in surprising new ways is unsurpassed…” it’s no surprise that the trade hardcover is already out of print, and we’re down to fewer than 50 copies of the limited edition, which comes with the bonus chapbook story, “Red Rover, Red Rover”.

Speaking of Partridge. Check out the man’s sartorial elegance, along with that of his compadre, Joe R. Lansdale, freshly posted over at Norm’s blog, American Frankenstein. It pains us to say it, but their sense of style just might be more frightening than anything in Norm’s book, which is pretty damned scary in and of itself.

For those of you of the electronic persuasion, we’re happy to announce that we’re in the early stages of releasing a lot of past Subterranean titles in electronic formats. Among the first you can download are John Scalzi’s The God Engines (Kindle) and Robert McCammon’s Mister Slaughter (Kindle / Webscriptions).

If print editions are more to your liking, both the Scalzi and McCammon are still available as hardcovers.

Look for more ebooks in the very near future.

We’re in the final stages of proofing the Summer issue of Subterranean Online, which should start posting in just a couple of weeks. For those who can’t wait, here’s a look at the contents of the upcoming issue:

Novellas
Lucius Shepard — “The Taborin Scale”
Mike Resnick — “Six Blind Men and an Alien”
Rachel Swirsky — “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window”

Novelettes
Jay Lake — “Dream of the Arrow”
K. J. Parker — “Amor, Vincent, Omnia”

Short Stories
Lawrence Block — “A Burglar’s Eye View of Greed”
Cory Doctorow — “Ghosts in My Head”

Non-Fiction
An Interview with K. J. Parker by Tom Holt

Column
Kelley Armstrong — “Notes from the Otherworld #1″

As you can probably tell from the table of contents, this is the largest issue of Subterranean Online yet, at just shy of 100,000 words. Longer if we decide to add anything while the issue is posted, as is not uncommon. The cover is by SubPress favorite Dave McKean, inspired by Cory Doctorow’s tale.

You can add Publishers Weekly to those giving Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Ammonite Violin & Others a strong review. As they noted, Cait’s stories “…are marked by obsessive, often self-destructive behavior; haunting, generally prophetic dreams; and beautiful prose.”

Cait’s collection is at the printer, and due to ship in just a few short weeks.

Over at Subterranean Online, we’ve posted the last of the Jonathan Strahan-edited issue of the magazine: Peter S. Beagle’s impressive return to his Inkeeper’s World, Return. We’ll be releasing the novella as a signed limited edition later this year, with a great cover and interior illustrations by Maurizio Manzieri, but now’s your chance for an early look at the story proper.

We’re currently working to line up one of our favorite sf authors to be featured next year, while our next guest-edited issue will be helmed by Gwenda Bond, who’s planning to focus on YA fiction.

Later this year, PS Publishing will be releasing the signed limited edition of Ian Cameron Esslemont’s new Malaz novel, Stonewielders, and we’ve managed to lock in 50 copies of the two volume set. The sharp eyed among you will notice that we’re offering them below published price, with free shipping in the US. Head over to the book’s page, have a look, and order early if you’re so moved. We don’t expect these copies to last long.

As subscribers to our newsletter know, last week we were offered a chance to pick up a double handful of copies of the signed limited edition of Stories, the new anthology edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. Our supply sold out within an hour of being mentioned in the newsletter.

Mysterious Bookshop has been gracious enough to offer us copies of another forthcoming anthology of theirs. The Dark End of the Street features stories by SubPress favorites such as Lawrence Block and Jonathan Lethem, plus a whole host of other writers we admire, including Michael Connelly and Lee Child. Once again, we won’t be getting many copies of this anthology — there are only 250 copies in the limited edition print run — so if you’re interested, please get your order in quickly. We’re told that copies should be shipping to us within the next month.