Category: Matthew Corbett

Lividian Publications is thrilled to announce we will be publishing multiple volumes of Robert McCammon’s highly acclaimed Matthew Corbett series this year, including a brand new novel in hardcover and five previous titles in trade paperback for the first time anywhere in the world! You can reserve ALL of these books today with NO prepayment required, and we’ll contact you via email for payment closer to the publication date. Read on for details!

** Brand New Matthew Corbett Novel Published as a Signed, Numbered, and Slipcased Limited Edition! 736 Pages! **

First up will be a deluxe signed, numbered, and slipcased Limited Edition hardcover of The King of Shadows by Robert McCammon, the eighth volume in his acclaimed Matthew Corbett series.

This absolutely massive special edition tips the scales at a whopping 736 pages and has been lavishly crafted with collectors and readers alike in mind. Vincent Chong provided stunning color artwork for the dust jacket and ten black and white illustrations for the interior.

This special edition started rolling at the printer last fall and will be published in June 2022, approximately six months before the trade hardcover.

PREORDERS ARE BEING ACCEPTED NOW, and no prepayment is required to reserve your copy. (If you own the Cardinal Black Limited Edition or Lettered Edition, please see the notes on the The King of Shadows product page about matching numbers and letters.)

** Five Matthew Corbett Novels Published In Trade Paperback For the First Time Anywhere in the World! ** 

Lividian Publications is also thrilled to announce we’ll be publishing five previous titles in the Matthew Corbett series as trade paperbacks, the first time they’ve appeared in this format anywhere in the world. Starting with Mister Slaughter in July and finishing with Cardinal Black in November, these will be published at the perfect time to get readers fully up to speed before the trade hardcover publication of Robert McCammon’s newest installment, The King of Shadows, in December.

These trade paperback editions feature brand new cover artwork by Vincent Chong, and although some of the novels are epic length, the page design is entirely focused on readability. These books won’t have tiny, unreadable print like some paperback editions.

Do You Want First Printings Including One Signed By Robert McCammon?

Due to the shortage of book paper in the world, there will be a limited run of the offset printed true first printings of these trade paperbacks, and most of the chain bookstore orders and distributor orders will be filled via POD to ensure we can keep up with demand and no reader misses out.

For collectors who want first printings (and fans who want to read them as soon as possible), we’re offering a bundle of all five books, to be shipped together this summer, that are guaranteed to be from the First Printing offset run and will be marked as such on their copyright pages. These five books will ship together, and four of them will be shipping before their official publication dates.

In addition, Robert McCammon has generously agreed to sign signature sheets for one of the books in the bundle!

Please place your order via the bundle product page if you’re interested. Supplies are limited and that page will be changed to “Out of Print” when all available sets are reserved. Copies ordered individually through this site or big online retailers like Amazon, etc, will not be signed and might be print on demand copies.

Here is the complete publication schedule for easy reference:

The King of Shadows (Limited Edition) — June 2022 (depending on slipcase production)
Mister Slaughter (trade paperback) — July 19, 2022
The Providence Rider (trade paperback) — August 23, 2022
The River of Souls (trade paperback) — September 20, 2022
Freedom of the Mask (trade paperback) — October 18, 2022
Cardinal Black (trade paperback) — November 15, 2022
The King of Shadows (deluxe trade hardcover) — December 6, 2022

Stay tuned for more news and updates. Thank you again for your continuing support and enthusiasm!

Lividian Publications

Russian publisher Azbooka has released the cover art for their upcoming translation of The Queen of Bedlam. This will be the second time The Queen of Bedlam has been published in Russia. The book will also include the Matthew Corbett short story “Night Ride,” which was originally published on this website. The translation is by Victoria Yakovleva.

The book will be published in December 2021.

Azbooka released Boy’s Life, Swan Song, The Listener, Speaks the Nightbird, and The Border earlier this year. They currently also hold the translation rights to They Thirst, Stinger, and Mister Slaughter. Azbooka has announced that They Thirst and Stinger will be published in 2022.

The Queen of Bedlam at Azbooka

Open Road Media has re-released these six Matthew Corbett novels in ebook formats with new cover art by Ian Koviak. The books are available worldwide starting today. (The Queen of Bedlam (book #2) is also available in ebook formats from S&S.)

Links to purchase Robert McCammon ebooks


Speaks the Nightbird (2002)
Matthew Corbett #1
Kindle | NOOK | Kobo
iTunes | Google
Amazon UK | Amazon CA
| Amazon AU
Mister Slaughter (2010)
Matthew Corbett #3
Kindle | NOOK | Kobo
iTunes | Google
Kobo CA | Amazon CA
Amazon UK | Amazon AU
The Providence Rider (2012)
Matthew Corbett #4
Kindle | NOOK | Kobo
iTunes | Google
Kobo CA | Amazon CA
Amazon UK | Amazon AU

The River of Souls (2014)
Matthew Corbett #5
Kindle | NOOK | Kobo
iTunes | Google
Amazon CA | Kobo CA
Amazon UK | Amazon AU |
Freedom of the Mask (2016)
Matthew Corbett #6
Kindle | NOOK | Kobo
iTunes | Google
Kobo CA | Amazon CA
Amazon UK | Amazon AU
Cardinal Black (2019)
Matthew Corbett #7
Kindle | NOOK | Kobo
iTunes | Google
Amazon CA | Kobo CA
Kindle UK

Russian publisher Azbooka has released the cover art for their upcoming translation of Speaks the Nightbird. This will be the fourth time Speaks the Nightbird has been published in Russia. This is a new translation by Vasily Dorogokuplya.

No release date has been announced yet.

Azbooka released Boy’s Life, Swan Song, and The Listener earlier this year. They currently hold the translation rights to The Border, They Thirst, Stinger, The Queen of Bedlam, and Mister Slaughter.

Speaks the Nightbird at Azbooka

Open Road Media is republishing six of the Matthew Corbett ebooks on August 17, 2021. These ebooks will be available worldwide. Open Road has designed new covers for the six books, and you can see the new covers on their website!

The covers were created by Ian Koviak.

The Queen of Bedlam ebook is published by Simon & Schuster in North America. The international ebook edition is temporarily not available, but we expect that Open Road will republish it outside of North America within a month or so.

Earlier this month, the ebook editions of five of the books in the Matthew Corbett series were pulled from the U.S. ebook vendor websites, and I had said they weren’t gone for good. Now I can tell you that Open Road Media will be republishing the ebooks soon. Open Road Media has published almost all of the Robert McCammon ebooks, including Speaks the Nightbird, and they’ll soon be adding these five:

  • Mister Slaughter
  • The Providence Rider
  • The River of Souls
  • Freedom of the Mask
  • Cardinal Black

An Open Road spokesperson told me, “Open Road Media is delighted to add these books to our already extensive catalog of Rick’s books, and we’ll get them out to readers as quickly as possible!” Contracts are still being signed, and once that happens, I’ll be able to announce the new publication date.

If you had previously purchased the ebooks that were published by Subterranean Press and Cemetery Dance, they will remain in your digital library, of course.

Robert McCammon, June 2021

Hello, all!

I finished The King of Shadows toward the end of April. Since then I’ve been resting up because as I think you’ll understand when you read the book, it was quite a lot to put together. For one thing, it took me a while to refine what began simply as a ‘what-if?’ idea that at first seemed so outlandish and ‘out there’ it couldn’t possibly work. Well, I’m happy to say it did, but not without a lot of thrashing and gnashing. Matthew and Company came through for me once again. I’m pleased to say it’s a hefty book too, running about 560 pages.

I wanted The King of Shadows to be completely different from anything that had come before, and I wanted it to have that ‘weird’ and ‘otherworldly’ edge. Also I became very interested in the backstories of both Cardinal Black and Maccabeus DeKay…how did they become what they are? So you’ll find in The King of Shadows the stories of how the young Adam Black became the infamous Cardinal, and how “Mac” DeKay devolved from being a wealthy young man faithful to his father and involved in the sport of horse racing to being the scarred—and soul-scarred—and masked creature of the ‘present’.

Another thing I wanted to play with was the idea that instead of a human antagonist, a physical place could be antagonistic. Thus you’ll find in The King of Shadows a beautiful Mediterranean island called Golgotha that hides a multitude of secrets, and puts both Matthew and Hudson at risk like never before…but maybe not in the way you would expect!

Next up will be a book of seven short stories involving Matthew, Hudson, Minx Cutter, and Katherine Herrald titled Seven Shades of Evil. Some of these stories have previously appeared in other places, but I believe there will be at least three new ones and two of those will be “novelette” length. Seven Shades of Evil will be sort of a compendium of various “problems” Matthew and Company are called upon to solve during Matthew’s career with the Herrald Agency—these being done in the time between the spans of the regular books—and we’ll begin with one of the earliest events and end with one in his later life.

And so we are moving toward Leviathan, the last book in the Matthew Corbett series. It will be set in Italy and will involve—must involve—the worst of the worst that Matthew has yet to face. As someone from the realm of the past tells Matthew in The King of Shadows: “I have a feeling that Professor Fell will seem as a kindly old uncle bouncing baby Corbett on his knee when you meet who’s waiting for you in the future. Because take it from me, my boy…the worst is yet to be.”

You can take that as truth, because the person who tells this to Matthew is none other than Tyranthus Slaughter, returned from the dead.

So…on we go!

Publication of The King of Shadows is probably not going to be until early in 2022, but I hope you’ll feel the wait was worth it when you read the book. Until then, I’ll be working on Seven Shades of Evil and putting Leviathan together.

I hope everyone has a happy summer, and thank you again for your readership and support. I’m certain that in some other realm Matthew and his companions wholeheartedly thank you as well!

Best Wishes,
Robert McCammon

Australian audiobook publisher Bolinda has released The River of Souls on CD and MP3 CD, and they will re-release Freedom of the Mask—with matching artwork—on June 1, 2021. These are the Audible productions narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.

All of the Matthew Corbett books published so far will now available on CD and/or MP3 CD, at various price points. You can find handy ordering links on the Audiobooks page.

Both titles can be ordered from Book Depository now. They offer free worldwide shipping.

 

 

Robert McCammon has finished writing The King of Shadows! He literally just finished it on Tuesday, so it’s way too soon to know anything about any kind of publication information. But the book is finished, and it’s a big one! The number of manuscript pages is almost identical to what Freedom of the Mask had!

The King of Shadows is book #8 in the Matthew Corbett series. Expect more news in the coming months….