Category: Matthew Corbett

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.

Elitist book reviews has posted a brand-new interview with Robert McCammon.

Author Charles L. Mashburn has posted Doors, a poem he wrote that was inspired by Robert McCammon’s The Wolf’s Hour.

And here are a few links to reviews and other recent posts:

Great news, audiobook fans! Audible has released unabridged audiobook versions of all four Matthew Corbett books. The audiobooks are narrated by Edoardo Ballerini and are available for purchase now. Three-minute audio samples from each book can be found on the Audible page for each book; just click on the images below to reach Audible.com, or click here for all of the Matthew Corbett books on one page, or click here to search for all Robert McCammon audiobooks.

 


 

From Subterranean Press:

We have a number of happenings regarding Robert McCammon’s new historical thriller, The Providence Rider, to highlight for you.

  • The trade hardcover edition is done, and shipping to our large online and retail accounts.
  • Rick will be in our warehouse from June 19-21 to sign/inscribe copies for customers. Those copies will ship immediately thereafter.
  • The ebook edition (Amazon|BN.com|Kobo) is out in the wild, and available to order.

Rick’s new one is well on its way to being another success. Thanks to each and every one of you for making that possible.

Also now available, the ebook edition of Robert McCammon’s 1980 novel, Bethany’s Sin.

The Signed, Limited Edition of Bethany’s Sin, one of Robert McCammon’s early novels, is on schedule to be released this fall. In the meantime, the ebook is already out there in the wild (Amazon|BN.com|Kobo).

Subterranean Press has announced the trade hardcover edition of The Hunter from the Woods, which will be available in Fall 2012. You can pre-order the trade hardcover edition from Subterranean here.

Subterranean Press has also published the final part of their 3-part interview with Robert McCammon by Gwenda Bond. She and Robert talk about Matthew, his favorite research finds, the challenges of writing historical fiction, and the exclusive new Matthew Corbett novella that will be included with the limited edition. Robert also shares a tip about something to look for the books that fans of the series won’t want to miss.  You can read part all three parts of the interview on the Subterranean site: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Finally, a few reviews have popped up around the ‘net in recent days:

Finally, Lou Pendergrast has created a Robert McCammon group on GoodReads. The goal is to read one Robert McCammon novel each month and discuss it.