Brilliance Audio will release the audiobook edition of The King of Shadows on MP3 CD on August 30, 2022. The audiobook, which is read by Edoardo Ballerini, is currently only available through Audible.
Pre-order The King of Shadows MP3 CD from Amazon
Pre-order The King of Shadows MP3 CD from B&N
Pre-order The King of Shadows MP3 CD from Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)
The world-renowned Alabama Booksmith is now taking pre-orders for signed copies of the trade hardcover edition of The King of Shadows, to be published December 6, 2022! All copies purchased from Alabama Booksmith are priced at normal list price and will be hand-signed by Robert McCammon.
An in-person signing by Robert McCammon at the Alabama Booksmith is planned—COVID permitting—for early December, but the exact date has not been determined yet. Stay tuned!
Pre-order a signed copy of The King of Shadows from Alabama Booksmith
Lividian Publications will release the trade hardcover edition of The King of Shadows in on December 6, 2022. The pre-order links for the book have just gone live on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The book can also be pre-ordered directly from Lividian Publications and other sellers.
Pre-order The King of Shadows trade hardcover from:
The ebook and audiobook editions will be released on June 28, 2022.
Audiobook: Audible US | Audible CA | Amazon UK | Audible AU
Ebook: Kindle (Amazon US) | Amazon UK | Amazon CA | Amazon AU | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Kobo CA
Lividian Publications shared this on Facebook:
As we previously announced, Lividian Publications will release the trade hardcover edition of The King of Shadows in December 2022, after trade paperback releases of the five Matthew Corbett books between Mister Slaughter and Cardinal Black from July through November.
However, the limited edition of the book—which has long been sold out—will begin shipping from Lividian around the end of June 2022.
The trade hardcover edition can be pre-ordered from Lividian Publications. Amazon, B&N, and other pre-order links will be available in the coming months.
I can also now announce that Open Road Media and Audible will release the ebook and audiobook editions of The King of Shadows on Tuesday, June 28, 2022! The audiobook will once again be narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.
Here are the pre-order links for the audiobook!
Update 2022-06-15: Here are the ebook pre-order links!
Here is the cover for the Open Road ebook edition of The King of Shadows.
Hello, all.
Well. News to tell.
I remember as a little boy being fascinated by a drawing of a man’s face that showed a smile, but it was cleverly done so that when you turned the drawing upside down the same face became a frown. You may have seen this because I’m sure it’s still floating around somewhere.
Anyway…I determined some time ago that life was very much like that drawing, or rather the “idea” behind the drawing. Smile or frown? The same face, just depending on how you looked at it. And you know some things that seem “bad” or disappointing in the short run turn out to be good things in the long run.
So…let’s get to the news, and you can decide for yourselves whether to smile or frown, or whether what is a frown today becomes a smile tomorrow as it did for me.
Supply chain problems have hit the publishing industry in the form of paper shortages. Simply put, many printers around the country can’t get enough paper to do their work, so this is throwing all schedules off by at least several months. Lividian Publications, scheduled to publish the new Matthew Corbett novel The King of Shadows in April, has not been immune to this nationwide problem. When I first heard from Lividian’s owner and publisher Brian Freeman that the book will be delayed quite some time by this unhappy circumstance you can believe I frowned Bigtime…but then I heard Brian’s alternate idea, and here it is:
The King of Shadows limited edition will be released in June of 2022, depending, I understand, on the slipcase production.
And now, the really cool stuff that made me smile:
Lividian will be publishing trade paperbacks of the Corbett novels beginning with Mister Slaughter, all the books with covers done by the award-winning, acclaimed, and extremely talented artist Vincent Chong. You can see these covers below and judge (or delight, as I did) for yourselves.
The schedule would be:
Mister Slaughter in July of 2022.
The Providence Rider in August of 2022.
The River of Souls in September of 2022.
Freedom of the Mask in October of 2022.
Cardinal Black in November of 2022.
And The King of Shadows regular hardcover edition in December of 2022.
Wow! I’m smiling right now thinking about this!
This schedule will see me finish the book of Corbett short stories I’ve wanted to do for a while, titled Seven Shades of Evil, and then finish also the last book in the series, Leviathan, so there should be no long delay as there’s been in the past. And I have to say the long delay of The King of Shadows has been primarily of my doing, since it took me awhile to saturate the idea with the bourbon of imagination and the scotch of effort. Ahem. And then it did take a long time to write, as it’s pretty involved and everything had to mesh just so.
But…there you have it! I’m really excited about this schedule! You can look at Vincent Chong’s covers and see that the trade paperback editions are getting some absolutely beautiful reasons to collect the series!
Onward and upward. As always, thank you for your readership and your patience with the current situation. Lividian and Brian Freeman have found a way to turn a frown into a smile, and in my case an absolute cross-eyed grin.
Best Wishes,
Robert McCammon
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!
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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….
Mr. McCammon is currently hard at work on The King of Shadows, the next Matthew Corbett book. The expected publication date is currently Spring 2021.
