Category: Short stories

Coming July 7, 2026, from Open Road!

McCammon’s Shoppe of Olde Curiosities

McCammon’s Shoppe of Olde Curiosities collects all of Robert McCammon’s previously-uncollected short stories written throughout his career.

Open Road will publish the collection in trade paperback and ebook formats on July 7, 2026.

Lividian will publish a limited edition in early 2027, and Audible will be releasing the audio edition later this year or early 2027.

You can pre-order the ebook now from Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and Kobo.

You can see the Table of Contents here.

From Open Road:

A collection of genre-bending horror and dark fantasy stories from the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of the Matthew Corbett novels.

This edition includes an introduction by international bestselling author Joe R. Lansdale.

Featuring two Bram Stoker Award–winning tales, McCammon’s Shoppe of Olde Curiosities is a career-spanning collection gathering nineteen short stories showcasing the author’s imaginative range of frightening terror, fantastical worldbuilding, and characters confronting the unknown around them and within themselves.

Pursuing a life of celebrity fame, Erik Van Helsing’s desire to cash in on his famous family’s name as vampire hunters unveils a legacy he cannot escape in “Blood is Thicker Than Hollywood”—a spinoff tale from the novel They Thirst.

A woman surviving in a post-apocalyptic landscape fights off loneliness when she reads aloud to the “Children of the Bedtime Machine”—a tribute to the wondrous storytelling style of Ray Bradbury.

As “Death Comes for the Rich Man” in 1703 Colonial America, Matthew Corbett is hired to delay the Grim Reaper to give a regretful old sinner time to make amends with his estranged daughter.

Experimenting as a mixologist, McCammon presents five drink recipes in A Little Amber Book of Wicked Shots, accompanying stories about a serial killer in a haunted hotel, an athlete’s destiny in the face of cosmic horror, a vindictive ad man learning the price of revenge, and an ex-slave on a suicidal and soul-sacrificing mission to serve justice.

Chilling and evocative, weird and humorous, these stories—and a dozen more—reveal why “no one can paint word pictures as vividly as Robert McCammon” (Sandra Brown).

Here is the Publishers Marketplace announcement:

Author of the NYT bestsellers SWAN SONG and STINGER and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers of America Robert McCammon’s MCCAMMON’S SHOPPE OF OLDE CURIOSITIES, a compilation of more than twenty previously uncollected short works of horror and fantasy by the author spanning nearly forty years, to Stefan Dziemianowicz at Open Road Media, for publication in July 2026, by Cameron McClure at Donald Maass Literary Agency (world English). Rights also to Brian Freeman at Lividian, for limited edition rights. Audio to Louise Quayle at Audible.

Cemetery Dance has published the 2015 anthology October Dreams II in trade paperback and ebook editions with new cover art by Glenn Chadbourne. The anthology includes a reprint of Robert McCammon’s Halloween tale “Strange Candy.” It was edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish and contains stories and remembrances from dozens of authors.

October Dreams II trade paperback from Cemetery Dance
October Dreams II trade paperback and ebook from Amazon

Brian James Freeman, owner of Lividian Publications, has a Patreon page with different tiers that have different rewards for each level. One of the tiers, the Guest Author Chapbooks tier, is $10/month. Patrons of that tier, and higher tiers, will receive two chapbooks each year by guest authors, as well as two chapbooks per year written by Brian James Freeman (tier 1).

The next Guest Author Chapbook is Robert McCammon’s “Children of the Bedtime Machine,” featuring fantastic art by François Vaillancourt. The chapbook will be signed by Robert McCammon and François Vaillancourt. It will ship in January or February.

“Children of the Bedtime Machine” originally appeared in Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury. It was also included in the Subterranean Press edition of Blue World.

It’s not too late to become a patron of the Brian James Freeman Patreon and receive this chapbook. Becoming a patron is the only way to get the chapbook, though I expect copies will show up on eBay when some patrons decide to sell theirs.

Italian publisher Cut-Up Publishing will release Il Grande Spettacolo delle Ombre, an Italian translation of Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, edited by Mort Castle and Sam Weller and originally published in 2012. The collection includes 26 stories by various authors, including Robert McCammon’s “Children of the Bedtime Machine.”

The book will be available on January 12, 2024, in hardcover and ebook formats. For more details, visit the Cut-Up Publishing page for the book.

Here is video of Robert McCammon’s presentation at the book launch for Seven Shades of Evil, which took place at Alabama Booksmith on Saturday, October 28, 2023.

During the presentation, Robert McCammon read a new Matthew Corbett short story called “Robber’s Roost.” The short story will not be published anywhere, and at the end of the presentation, the story was given away in a random drawing.

I hadn’t planned to record the presentation, so I simply held my phone, and it shows. Sorry about that. After the short story reading, I stopped recording video and switched to audio. At around the half-hour mark, the image switches to a static image, but you can listen to the other half hour of questions and answers.

–Hunter

RIP, William Friedkin. In addition to The Exorcist and many more films, Friedkin directed the 1985 The Twilight Zone adaptation of Robert McCammon’s “Nightcrawlers.”

I was reminded that this Trailers from Hell podcast features Joe Dante and William Friedkin discussing “Nightcrawlers” right after the intro music.

Trailers from Hell: William Friedkin

Here’s a behind-the-scenes photo of William Friedkin directing Scott Paulin on the set of “Nightcrawlers.”

When Subterranean Press published the limited edition of The Providence Rider in 2012, they included a bonus Matthew Corbett short story called “Death Comes for the Rich Man.” Several years later, the story was reprinted in the anthology Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 3.

Until now, the only way to read the story was by having a copy of one of those books. The story is not included in the upcoming collection Seven Shades of Evil, so Robert McCammon decided to release the story digitally here as a free gift for his readers. You can read the story as a web page here, or you can download the story in various ebook formats.

The cover art for the ebook is by Vincent Chong. The illustration accompanied the story in the limited edition of The Providence Rider. Thank you to Vincent for letting us re-use the image for the ebook files!

“Death Comes for the Rich Man” — A Matthew Corbett Story

Download EPUB, AZW3, MOBI, PDF

The next Matthew Corbett book, Seven Shades of Evil, will be published in October 2023 by Lividian Publications! And if you missed the news, a launch event for the book will take place October 28, 2023, at the Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham, AL. Robert McCammon will speak about the book, as well as sign copies of the book and other books you can bring with you. For full details, click here.

“The Wicked Gambler” is a character who represents the era in which the Matthew Corbett stories are set. Robert McCammon’s next release is a collection of stories from Matthew Corbett’s world, Seven Shades of Evil. In his author photo for the book, Robert McCammon had makeup artist and photographer Amanda Chapman create “The Wicked Gambler.”

Robert McCammon has written a new short story entitled “The Wicked Gambler and His Walking Cane” to tell the origin of the walking cane that can be seen in the author photo.

“The Wicked Gambler and His Walking Cane”

The walking cane is the prize in an Alabama Booksmith giveaway that will take place at the Seven Shades of Evil launch party on Saturday, October 28, 2023! For details about the party and how to enter the giveaway contest, please read the June 26 post Alabama Booksmith: October Launch Event and a Giveaway!

Seven Shades of Evil: Stories from Matthew Corbett’s World will be published by Lividian Publications in October 2023. The book contains stories set in the world of Matthew Corbett and featuring various characters from the previous novels. Lividian has revealed the Table of Contents:

  • *The Four Lamplighters (features Matthew and Hudson)
  • Night Ride (features Matthew)
  • The House at the Edge of the World (features Hudson)
  • The Scorpion’s Eye (features Minx)
  • *Skeleton Crew (features Katherine)
  • The Pale Pipesmoker (features Katherine and Minx)
  • *Wandering Mary (features Matthew)
  • *Incident on The Lady Barbara (features Berry)

“*” indicates stories that are new to this collection. Two of the others were previously published in limited editions, and the other two were published here on RobertMcCammon.com.