Category: Matthew Corbett

From Subterranean Press:

The Trade Edition of Robert McCammon’s latest Matthew Corbett Thriller, The River of Souls, is in stock, with copies leaving the warehouse at a good clip. More than 75% of the first printing is sold out, with orders for more copies arriving every day. The Signed Limited and Lettered editions will take a bit longer, as they’re with our specialty binder for some additional work.

If you’re on the fence about River, consider these two strong reviews a nudge:

From Booklist Online:

The Corbett novels are rich, atmospheric stories, the kind of historical mystery that makes the reader feel as though he really has stepped back in time. Matthew is a very well designed character, very much a man of his time but also ahead of his time, as though he has stepped out of a modern-day crime lab into the early eighteenth century. For the author’s fans, a definite must-read.

From Publishers Weekly:

Macabre surprises abound in McCammon’s entertaining fifth Matthew Corbett historical (after 2012’s Providence Rider). In the summer of 1703, while on a visit to Charles Town in the Carolina colony, “problem-solver” Matthew and Magnus Muldoon, his “big as a mountain” new friend, join a manhunt for three escaped slaves, one of whom has been accused of murdering a plantation owner’s daughter (though Matthew has uncovered evidence that implicates one of the hunters). McCammon resorts to a few credibility-stretching gambits in the closing chapters, but, as usual, he nicely evokes America’s colonial past and deftly straddles the boundary between the explicable and the supernatural.

Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition: $24.95

Limited: 474 signed numbered copies, bound in leather, housed in a custom traycase, with exclusive illustration and an 11,000 word story that appears nowhere else: $125

Don’t forget: We’re also publishing a Signed Limited Edition of the second Corbett novel, The Queen of Bedlam, which has just been sent to the printer. With only 374 numbered copies available, this is a small printing for a McCammon limited.

Note: the ebook and audiobook editions will be released on May 31, 2014.

Subterranean Press has posted this announcement on their website:

Announcing the Signed, Limited Edition of Robert McCammon’s The Queen of Bedlam

Important Note: There is no exclusive order period for The Queen of Bedlam, which has a smaller print run than The Providence Rider and The River of Souls, but a larger one than Mister Slaughter. Catch all that? If you’re looking to match a number with Queen, please request it in the comments when you place your order. We expect this title to sell out quickly, so please don’t delay in ordering. There is no trade edition, and the limited will not be made available to our wholesale and large online retail accounts.

Matthew Corbett first appeared in 2002’s Speaks the Nightbird, the novel which signaled Robert McCammon’s return to fiction after a decade long absence. Five years later, in another significant event, Matthew reappeared in The Queen of Bedlam, a book that firmly established him as the central figure in the best historical adventure series going.

The Queen of Bedlam opens in 1702, some three years after the harrowing experiences of Speaks the Nightbird. Matthew is now living in the nascent metropolis of New York City and has found unsatisfying employment as a poorly paid clerk to a local magistrate. At this juncture, two related events take place that will radically alter Matthew’s future. One is the advent of a murderous predator—popularly known as the Masker—who terrorizes the city. The other is Matthew’s recruitment by the Herrald Agency, an early prototype of the classic private detective agency. Under the auspices of his new employer, Matthew, together with his mentor, Hudson Greathouse, travels to a mental hospital in rural New Jersey, where he meets an unidentified woman known simply as the Queen of Bedlam, a woman who may hold the key to the Masker’s identity.

The Queen of Bedlam is a crime story, of course, and a genuinely enthralling one. More than that, it is a portrait of colonial New York so vibrant and richly detailed that it is almost palpable. The sights, smells, and sounds—the sheer physical reality of that time and place—are drawn with the sure hand of a master storyteller. Supplementing all this is a varied cast of supporting characters who are by turns comic, bizarre, intriguing, endearing, and, in some instances, terrifying. At the center of it all is Matthew Corbett, a gifted young man beginning to discover who—and what—he is meant to become. He is a hero suited to his times, and a fictional creation destined to endure for a very long time to come.

Limited: 374 signed numbered copies, housed in a custom slipcase: $125
Lettered: 26 signed, deluxe bound copies, housed in a custom traycase: $500

Note: There is no SubPress trade edition of The Queen of Bedlam.

You can pre-order the book from Subterranean Press here.

Audible now has the unabridged audiobook of The River of Souls available for pre-ordering. The audiobook is scheduled for release on May 31, 2014. The narrator is the great Edoardo Ballerini, who narrated the first four Matthew Corbett audiobooks.

Pre-order The River of Souls audiobook from Audible

Pre-order The River of Souls audiobook from Amazon US

Ordering links for all of the Robert McCammon audiobooks can be found here.

Subterranean Press posted this update on The River of Souls:

We have a number of updates on Robert McCammon’s newest historical thriller, The River of Souls, to share with you.

  • The book has just gone to the printer, which means we’re very much on track to meet our May 31 publication date.
  • Head over to the book’s product page to check out a long excerpt (in epub and mobi formats).

The first review has landed, from Publishers Weekly, and we’re delighted by it:

Macabre surprises abound in McCammon’s entertaining fifth Matthew Corbett historical (after 2012’s Providence Rider). In the summer of 1703, while on a visit to Charles Town in the Carolina colony, “problem-solver” Matthew and Magnus Muldoon, his “big as a mountain” new friend, join a manhunt for three escaped slaves, one of whom has been accused of murdering a plantation owner’s daughter (though Matthew has uncovered evidence that implicates one of the hunters). McCammon resorts to a few credibility-stretching gambits in the closing chapters, but, as usual, he nicely evokes America’s colonial past and deftly straddles the boundary between the explicable and the supernatural.

Important Collector’s Note: There is no longer a limit on who may order the Signed, Limited Edition. This version contains the long bonus story, “The Scorpion’s Eye”, which cannot be reprinted anywhere else for at least two years.

Limited: 474 signed numbered copies, bound in leather, with the bonus story, artwork not in the trade hardcover, and housed in a custom slipcase: $125

Trade: Fully cloth-bound hardcover edition: $24.95

Publishers Weekly has posted their review of Robert McCammon’s The River of Souls, the fifth novel in the Matthew Corbett series (mild spoilers):

The River of Souls

Robert R. McCammon. Subterranean (www.subterraneanpress.com), $24.95 (264p) ISBN 978-1-59606-630-4

Macabre surprises abound in McCammon’s entertaining fifth Matthew Corbett historical (after 2012’s Providence Rider). In the summer of 1703, while on a visit to Charles Town in the Carolina colony, “problem-solver” Matthew and Magnus Muldoon, his “big as a mountain” new friend, join a manhunt for three escaped slaves, one of whom has been accused of murdering a plantation owner’s daughter (though Matthew has uncovered evidence that implicates one of the hunters). Their travel up the River of Solstice—which the locals refer to as “the river of souls”—proves to be a journey into the genuine heart of darkness, replete with ravenous alligators, a tribe of fiercely savage Native Americans, and a seemingly demonic monster known as the Soul Cryer. McCammon resorts to a few credibility-stretching gambits in the closing chapters, but, as usual, he nicely evokes America’s colonial past and deftly straddles the boundary between the explicable and the supernatural. Agent: Cameron McClure, DMLA. (May)

Reviewed on: 03/03/2014
Release date: 05/01/2014

The River of Souls will be released in May 2014. You can pre-order copies from Subterranean Press, Amazon US, B&N, Amazon UK, Amazon CA. The River of Souls will also be available in ebook editions.

From Subterranean Press:

Just a quick note to let you know that the signed trade copies of The River of Souls are now sold out. We still have plenty of unsigned trade copies available for preorder.
Lettered: 26 signed, deluxe bound copies, housed in a custom traycase: $500

Limited: 474 signed numbered copies, bound in leather, with the bonus story, artwork not in the trade hardcover, and housed in a custom slipcase: $125

Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover copies (first 500 copies signed by Robert McCammon): $24.95

Subterranean Press also revealed that they’re working on a limited edition of The Queen of Bedlam, the second Matthew Corbett book. The announcement stated that it “will be the most limited McCammon edition we’ve ever published.”

Subterranean Press has posted the details of the release of Robert McCammon’s The River of Souls, the fifth book in the Matthew Corbett series.

We’re pleased to announce The River of Souls, Robert McCammon’s latest installment in the Matthew Corbett series of historical thrillers. Please note that we’ll have fewer signed copies of the Trade Edition than ever before, so don’t hesitate to get your order in. For those who own the Limited or Lettered Edition of the previous volume, The Providence Rider, the exclusive preorder period for River runs until February 28. After that, copies wll be opened to the general public.

About the Book:

Important Note: Only those who own a Limited or Lettered Edition of The Providence Rider may order the same edition of The River of Souls at this time, unless you order both. Anyone may order the trade edition.

The year is 1703. The place: the Carolina settlement of Charles Town. Matthew Corbett, professional “problem solver,” has accepted a lucrative, if unusual, commission: escorting a beautiful woman to a fancy dress ball.

What should be a pleasant assignment takes a darker turn when Matthew becomes involved in a murder investigation. A sixteen-year-old girl has been stabbed to death on the grounds of a local plantation. The suspected killer is a slave who has escaped, with two family members, into the dubious protection of a nearby swamp. Troubled by certain discrepancies and determined to see some sort of justice done, Matthew joins the hunt for the runaway slaves. He embarks on a treacherous journey up the Solstice River, also known as the River of Souls.  He discovers that something born of the swamp has joined the hunt… and is stalking the hunters with more than murder in mind.

What follows is a shattering ordeal encompassing snakes, alligators, exiled savages, mythical beasts, and ordinary human treachery. The journey up the River of Souls will test the limits of Matthew’s endurance, and lead him through a nightmarish passage to a confrontation with his past, and a moment that will alter his life forever.

Gripping, unsettling, and richly atmospheric, The River of Souls is a masterful historical adventure featuring the continuing exploits of a young hero the USA Character Approved Blog has called “the Early American James Bond.”

The Limited and Lettered Editions will contain the 10,000 word bonus story, “The Scorpion’s Eye”, as well as full-color illustrations not in the Trade Hardcover.

The first 500 folks who order the Trade hardcover will receive a signed (but not inscribed) copy.

Lettered: 26 signed, deluxe bound copies, housed in a custom traycase: $500
Limited: 474 signed numbered copies, bound in leather, with the bonus story, artwork not in the trade hardcover, and housed in a custom slipcase: $125
Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover copies (first 500 copies signed by Robert McCammon): $24.95

The book is also available for pre-ordering from Amazon US, B&N, Amazon UK, and Amazon CA.

  • ISBN: 978-1-59606-629-8
  • Length: 256 pages

The River of Souls will be published in May 2014. Ebook editions and, hopefully, an audiobook edition will also be available.

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Vincent Chong.

You can view a larger version of the cover art here.

ROCKETS AWAY!

Hello, all! I hope life has been good to everyone and your reading has also been rewarding. Ah, the pleasures of a book! I know e-readers are becoming more and more popular, and that’s well and good, but still…you just can’t capture the smell of a book with an e-reader! I realize this sounds funny, but when I was a kid I bought the novelization of “The Brides of Dracula” through the mail and when it arrived it smelled as if someone had doused the book in a strange, potent and very appealing perfume that I can recall to this day.

Likewise, when I was a kid on vacation in Florida one summer the motel we were staying at actually had a vending machine (!!!) from which you could buy paperbacks. I started buying the Nick Carter series there and found they too had an appealing, almost gunmetal-like aroma. My copies of the Hardy Boys series smell like oatmeal and high school letter jackets, wool and leather. My copy of the 10,000 Drinks recipe book smells like the newly-polished sheen of an upscale bar somewhere amid the twinkling lights of Manhattan. My copy of Cowboys Full, The Story of Poker, smells like the green felt of a gaming table.

Imagination? Possibly so, but this is what I get from books as well as the reading experience. E-books are grand and great, but…I just like the aroma that comes out of that paper, and that’s just me.

My own books smell to me like blood, sweat and tears. Ha. Not really. Well…kinda not.

This is a roundabout way of talking about the book I’m working on now, and…no…it is not going to be done in Smell-O-Type. (Though when I was about twelve I did go see a movie that was in Smell-O-Vision. The first scene showed a man peeling an orange, and you could smell the orange. Honest. Following scenes included, as I recall, a Chinese market in which you could smell the smoke of cooking fires. Really. How that was done I have no idea, but it was a pretty cool thing that had absolutely no future.)

Anyway…I’ve been smelling a lot of books lately. Particularly vital to my olfactory system are the old science-fiction magazines I’m reading right now. They have the titles of Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, Worlds of If, Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I have quite a collection of these, dating back to the 50s, and also some pulp magazines dating back to the 30s. Science fiction was my first love—the rocketships, the strange aliens and the stranger worlds, the stories of mankind dealing with life in the future and all that those visionary writers could imagine. What appealed to me about the first science fiction story I ever read, called “Descent Into The Maelstrom”, was that I simply could not understand it. It was a tale of telepaths communicating with each other, and their communicated sentences had asterisks instead of quotation marks. That caused me to start thinking “outside the box”, I guess.

Well, mine is an old story…when I went to college my grandmother threw out all my science fiction magazines along with my Batman comic collection. When I found out what she’d done, I hit her over the head with an axe and buried her body in the basement, but please don’t tell anyone about that.

So…jump forward quite a few years to when I discover Ebay and find that ALL my old science fiction buds are waiting for me to reclaim them. Not so the Batman comics…the ones from the 1950s are now more than worth their weight in gold, so out of spite I dug up my grandmother’s bones and fed them to the furnace.

Ahem. (Or should that be Amen?)

But I have all those science fiction magazines—and more—back again. Which brings me to the fact that I am working on a science fiction/horror novel that I began last year but had to put aside because I was not ready to do it yet.

This does happen. You think you’re ready, but you’re not. You need to put some more pieces together, you need a character to introduce himself or herself and take charge of the show, you need some kind of revelation to make the light bulb burn. I didn’t have it then, but I think—I hope—I have it now. I can’t say the title—you might know it already, I think I’ve probably talked about it before—because the title gives away part of the story, but I’m ready to go where my first literary heroes went—into the realm of mind-stretching fiction that strides among the stars, between worlds of if and fantastic amazing galaxies and puts our own beloved Earth in jeopardy of being torn to pieces.

What will that book smell like, you might ask?

I hope it will smell like the fire of imagination, the same fire of imagination that began my own burning and yearning many years ago. I have a ways to go on this one, but if it’s what I want it to be I think it’ll be pretty good.

So…rockets away! And wish me a good trip and a happy landing! In the meantime, you’ll have the next Matthew Corbett book, The River of Souls, in which Matthew joins a mob pursuing a murder suspect up a haunted river into a dangerous swamp, where something more dangerous begins to pursue the mob. Ya got alligators, snakes, quicksand…and the reappearance of three characters from Matthew’s past. I hope you enjoy this one.

From the past to the present and into the future…

Once again, as always, thank you for reading my work and thank you for your Facebook comments. Happy reading to you…and please, if you have a chance, take a moment to relax and smell the pages.

Best Wishes,

Robert McCammon

 

From Subterranean Press:

We’re out of the trade hardcover edition of Robert McCammon’s historical thriller, The Providence Rider. To celebrate, and possibly make it a great holiday gift, we’ve very temporarily cut the price of the Deluxe Signed Trade Hardcover and Signed Limited Edition in half, to $17 and $62.50, respectively. This offer will not last long, and our supply of both editions is not infinite, so please take advantage if you’re interested.

To read more about The Providence Rider and to place your order, click here.