Upcoming books of interest

Tom Stewart's highly anticipated but often delayed book, Robert E. Howard: The Battle for the Legacy of Conan, was due this month. It appears to be delayed yet again as Diamond Comics Distributors cancelled orders for the book. This is the first book-length work on Howard's literary rights after his death and the course that his work followed through various editors and rights-holders.

The novel adaptation of the Solomon Kane movie was released at the end of June by Titan Books. I still haven't seen the movie yet--I'm holding out hope for a US theatrical release. My interest in the novel is because the author is Ramsey Campbell, who finished some of the Kane fragments for publication in the Bantam paperbacks in the 1970s.

Still no official word on the contents of Conan the Barbarian: The Stories That Inspired the Movie, the paperback collection of original Howard stories. Comments from associate editor David Pomerico indicate that there will be five stories, printed in publication order. A marketing blurb from the Borders website was re-posted on the Conan.com message board and suggests that "Shadows in the Moonlight" and "A Witch Shall Be Born" are two of the five stories. Update: a review of the UK edition was posted on 7/21 at the Conan Movie Blog, although the page count and story list seem to be different.

It appears that at least the first volume of the H.P. Lovecraft omnibus editions is getting a new cover in September. This one seems to be listed as a "Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition", as compared to the previous 1999 black-band Penguin Classics edition, although the page count is exactly the same.