Man, Nightshade makes some pretty books

Nightshade has always published quality fiction, but I’ve got to say lately they have also been incredibly pretty physical objects. Let’s look at a couple of examples that have showed up here over the last few days.

Take, for example, Liz Williams‘ new one, Demon And The City, which arrived today. It’s so pretty that it lifted me out of my funk for a while:

That is one fine looking cover. The binding and inner design is also lovelyWell, technically I can only assert this about the limited edition, but I’m quite sure it’s also true for the trade edition. but doesn’t make for as impressive a photo.

This particular book is a sequel to the previous one, which also had a stunning cover. The two covers are in the same style, and the cover design matches. Here’s what the picture on the previous cover looked like:

There’s just no arguing with that, is there?

Of course the packaging has a lot to do with the nature of the individual stories. While those lovely covers fit nicely with Williams‘ Inspector Chen books, different works call for a different style. This one showed up late last week. It’s another fine physical objectibid, but the jacket design is spectacular:

That’s A Cruel Wind, by Glen Cook. It’s an omnibus edition of three of his early books, the first three “Dread Empire” novels (A Shadow of All Night’s Falling, October’s Baby and All Darkness Met)That’s “first three” as in “three that were published first”, not “earliest three in internal chronology”/. These books were written prior to the better-known Black Company books, and I’ve never had a chance to read them, so I was already looking forward to reading them–the damn fine packaging job just kicks that anticipation up one more notch.

I am really looking forward to seeing what their Clark Ashton Smith series looks like when it finally starts coming out. (Nightshade hasn’t announced anything yet, but you can get a hint of the design over at Amazon.)