In a corner of the warehouse in which no one ever ventures, on a shelf too high to be seen without mechanical aid, I just pulled down twenty trade copies of Paolo Bacigalupi's delightful novella, The Alchemist. If you'd like to snag one of them, be quick, as we don't expect they'll linger on our shelves.

Subterranean Press is proud to announce Book of Iron, the standalone prequel to Elizabeth Bear’s acclaimed novella, Bone and Jewel Creatures, to be published this fall.

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Bijou the Artificer is a Wizard of Messaline, the City of Jackals. She and her partner—and rival—Kaulas the Necromancer, along with the martial Prince Salih, comprise the Bey's elite band of trouble-solving
adventurers.

But Messaline is built on the ruins of a still more ancient City of Jackals. So when two foreign Wizards and a bard from the mysterious western isles cross the desert in pursuit of a sorcerer intent on plundering the deadly artifacts of lost Erem, Bijou and her companions must join their hunt.

The quest will take them through strange passages, beneath the killing light of alien suns, with the price of failure the destruction of every land.

Limited: 250 signed numbered copies, bound in leather
Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition

Centipede Press has turned their considerable attention to one of the classics of science fiction, and we've heard the results are remarkable.

About the Book:

A stunning piece of military science fiction, The Forever War is one of sf’s best known works, an allegory of war and Vietnam that has transcended itself into a legitimate place in American literature. This new edition features full color paintings by Jim Burns and a new foreword by Ridley Scott. Each copy is signed by Joe Haldeman, Jim Burns, and Ridley Scott.

Limited: 150 signed numbered copies: $225

We're getting a very limited number of copies of edition—no surprise, since the print run is only 150 copies—so please don't hold back on ordering if you're interested.

We've just sent our mammoth The Best of Joe Haldeman to the printer. Appropriately enough, we've just received a pair of glowing reviews for this essential volume:

From Publishers Weekly:

Demonstrating that the hard-to-market novella is perfect for science fiction, this collection of 19 stories by SFWA Grand Master Haldeman (Earthbound) features several tales that bring out his ability to wrap hard science speculation with deep human feeling…

From Locus:

Another (relatively) Old Master, from the generation just after Le Guin, is Joe Haldeman, who has a big retrospective collection out in early 2013. The best story here may be the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella “The Hemingway Hoax”, but there’s plenty of other first-class work here, including “Hero”, the seed that grew into his famous novel, The Forever War, “For White Hill”, “None So Blind”, “The Mars Girl”, “Sleeping Dogs”, “Anniversary Project”, “Tricentennial”, and “More Than the Sum of His Parts”, as well as stuff a bit removed from his usual science fiction, such as “Manifest Destiny”, a Western, and “Lindsay and the Red City Blues”, a supernatural horror story.

Limited: 250 signed numbered copies, bound in leather: $60

Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition: $45

Three new books on the tarmac, and three reviews, all from SF Crowsnest, to line up nicely with them:

Six-Gun Snow White (Catherynne M. Valente)

…any reader who loves magical, poetic prose can dive into this sad and beautiful little story and take pleasure in the author’s elegantly rendered wordscapes.

The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince (Robin Hobb)

[The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince is] a story about stories: How they are created, how they are changed not only by retelling over time, but also how they are directly changed to fit the agendas of those telling them, in this case for political and personal reasons.

Salvage and Demolition (Tim Powers)

Salvage And Demolition, the latest novella from Tim Powers, is a classic. I don’t necessarily mean it’s an enduring work of genius (though it’s pretty damn good), rather that it’s written in such a way and about such things as to instantly hurl its reader back in time to the or at least ‘a’ golden age of Science Fiction.

Our "surprise" Kelley Armstrong project is in stock and shipping. Amityville Horrible is an extra novella that Kelley penned last year, and which we agreed to release as an ebook. However, because we know Kelley has such a devoted fan base, we put our heads together and also decided to release it as a  limited edition of only 1500 signed, numbered copies. Those are in stock and shipping now, and selling quite briskly. If the ebook is more your speed, well, have a look over here for that.

SInce we sent Robin Hobb's long (37,000 words) novella, The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince, to the printer, we've been inundated with orders. We thought we'd have it in stock for a while, but that no longer seems to be the case. If you're of a mind to pick up a copy, please do so asap, as we won't be able to completely fill orders from our large online retail and wholesale accounts.

Have a look at the first of the two color plates from Robert McCammon's classic novel, The Night Boat. If WW II zombie Nazis are your thing, this book has that need covered, in spades. It also happens to be a heckuva fun read, presaging McCammon's more mature work in The Wolf's Hour, Swan Song, and others. If you'd prefer not to wait for the hardcover coming this fall, the ebook is already available, though without the great interior illustrations.

Bleeding Shadows is Joe R. Lansdale’s largest, most varied collection to date. Weighing in at 480 pages and 150,000 words, these stories, poems, and novellas—supplemented by the author’s introduction and by an invaluable set of story notes—move effortlessly from horror, adventure, and suspense to literary pastiche. It is, by any measure, a major addition to an already impressive body of work.

The volume opens with “Torn Away,” in which a small town sheriff encounters a man on the run from his own predatory shadow. The stories that follow come from all points of the narrative compass. In “Morning, Noon, and Night,” a young boy stumbles across a monstrous, multi-faceted killer from which there is no escape. “The Bleeding Shadow” is a tale of music, monsters, and deals-with-the devil set in post-WWII Texas. In “Star Light, Eyes Bright,” an ordinary husband makes a startling discovery, one that leads to an unimaginable act of personal transformation. Elsewhere, the author offers us twisted Christmas stories (“Santa at the Café”), tales of a zombie apocalypse (“A Visit with Friends”), and one story—“Christmas with the Dead”—that encompasses both of these elements. Other highlights include a pair of informed, affectionate acts of literary homage. “Metal Men of Mars” pays tribute to the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, while in “Dread Island,” the masterful novella that concludes this collection, the world of Huckleberry Finn merges seamlessly with the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft and Joel Chandler Harris.

Sometimes funny, often horrifying, and always compulsively readable, this generous gathering of stories—few of which have previously appeared in book form—constitutes a significant publishing event. Bleeding Shadows is an indispensable, vastly entertaining volume, one that no admirer of Joe R. Lansdale’s distinctive brand of fiction can afford to miss.

Limited: 250 signed numbered copies, with exclusive wraparound dust jacket, housed in a custom slipcase: $100

Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition: $40

Joe R. Lansdale's latest rough and tumble Hap and Leonard novella, Dead Aim, is in our warehouse, soon to be bubble bagged and shipped. The trade edition exceeded even our expectations, and looks to be sold out on publication. We do have a good quantity of the Signed, Limited Edition left (the cover art is posted above, with a design that differs from the trade), so please avail  yourself of some of crime fiction's most distinctive storytelling.

As Publishers Weekly noted:

Tart, smart, and dangerous, Lansdale's favorite roughneck detectives, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, take on an apparently straightforward assignment—discourage a man from harassing his estranged wife—in this dark and twisty novella, the 10th entry in this highly satisfying series flavored with an East Texas twang (Devil Red, etc.)