I’ve actually been out of town for the past week so I wasn’t able to get around to posting about the cover art for the 2009 Thrilling Cities and The Diamond Smugglers reprints.

The really good news is that these covers are pretty great in my opinion. The sorta-good news is that both reprints are available today, and the bad news (which is actually why the prior one was only “sorta-good”) is that they’re only available through Ian Fleming Publication’s shop which since the 25th has been down. Whoops.

Eventually: Ian Fleming Publications

Penguin Books in Australia has published Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale as part of their “Popular Penguin” line.

It joins other great classics such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey), The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Truman Capote), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck), The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), and many many others.

The book is available for $9.95 according to Penguin’s website.

Not Sebastian Faulks. I don’t think many of us thought he’d come back, but theBookseller got a year-later comment from the author of James Bond’s latest adult adventure Devil May Care:

“My contract did offer me a second go, but definitely not,” he told The Bookseller. “‘Once funny, twice silly, three times a slap’, as the nanny saying goes. But I think it would be a good gig for someone to do.”

Devil May Care wasn’t that bad in my opinion, but it wasn’t anywhere near as good as I thought it should have been. Read some of Faulks’ most celebrated books like Birdsong and so on and you’d see that Faulks in his own style would have been great for the job. But that’s not what happened.

So who is up next? Charlie Higson? Someone new? Nobody knows, but Simon Trewin (Ian Fleming Publication’s literary agent) is quoted in the same article saying “options are open.”

This coming September Hutchinson (aka Random House) will publish Sebastian Faulks’ next novel, A Week in December in the UK. It’ll be published later in October in the US. Here’s the synopsis:

“A Week in December” is Sebastian Faulks’ first wholly contemporary novel. Set in London, it’s a brilliant social satire, structured like a thriller, that takes place over the course of a single week at the end of 2007. It brings together an intriguing cast of characters, each apparently in his or her own world but – as gradually becomes clear – ultimately intricately related. The anti-hero, John Veals, is a shadily successful and boundlessly ambitious Dickensian figure who is trading billions and other characters include a teenage Muslim fanatic, a Polish footballer, a female tube driver, a literary critic, a care worker and a chutney tycoon. As the story builds to its climax, Faulks pulls together powerful ideas about family, money, religion, and the way we live now.

The title is actually quite close to the rejected Young Bond title “Six Days in December”. Instead we got the fan selected title Double or Die.

US edition: Amazon.com – October 27, 2009
UK edition: Amazon.co.uk – September 3, 2009

Mentioned in March of 2008, but according to CommanderBond.net, the reprints for The Diamond Smugglers and Thrilling Cities – two of Ian Fleming’s non-Bond books (though Thrilling Cities did include the James Bond short story “007 in New York”) will be reprinted in 2009.

Just a quick bit of news there. Also, note that Ian Fleming Publications has redesigned their site. Looks like they took my advice here because they moved from www.ianflemingcentre.com to just www.ianfleming.com which actually makes sense.

I wasn’t so sure this would ever happen, but I guess Young Bond is more popular over here in the states than I thought or maybe Disney just thinks the different type of media will do good. Regardless, the YoungBondDossier reports today that SilverFin: The Graphic Novel which was released in the UK last October will land stateside in July 2010. If that news isn’t good enough, Disney has decided to not only release it as a paperback, but as a hardcover as well. SilverFin: The Graphic Novel, the first book in the Young Bond series, was illustrated by Kev Walker. Further graphic novels have yet to be announced, but several images by Walker have been released – not to mention that Walker has designed the cover for every Young Bond novel in the US (all the recent paperback re-releases and all the hardcovers with the exception of SilverFin).

Here’s a review by Matt Weston of CBn for the UK edition: Young Bond Comes to Life.

Today marks the 101st birthday of Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908-1964) , author of the James Bond books and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Every year I’ve written up a little bio, but this year I’ll just point you to those older posts:

• 99 Years Old
• 100 Years Old

If you really want some good books to read about Fleming check out:

• The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson
• Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett
• For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Macintyre (my review here)

And there are many many more.

Over in the UK Young Bond’s fifth adventure was published in paperback. Included is an excerpt from Charlie Higson’s upcoming Young Bond short story “A Hard Man to Kill” which will be included in the non-fiction book Danger Society: The Young Bond Dossier later this year. You can get an excerpt of the excerpt over at the Young Bond Dossier.

Buy By Royal Command at Amazon.co.uk or if you’re in the US and want to wait for the US edition, it’ll likely be released in April 2010 with the Young Bond Dossier following perhaps a year later.

K1Bond007.com is officially 2 years old today. I’m sort of surprised I’ve made it this far. Shall we go for 3? I don’t know. Stay tuned.

[singlepic id=144 w=320 h=240 mode=watermark float=right]I guess I had it in my head that they were going to release this on May 28, 2009, which would be the 101st birthday of Ian Fleming. Turns out the US went ahead and published Devil May Care in paperback form on May 19th. You can get it in two different flavors: mass market paperback or a trade edition. Odd they did this because, well, they never do. Not with Bond anyway.

UK folks can probably get Devil May Care on bookshelves now in paperback too. The official release for it is May 28th, but Amazon.co.uk is shipping now and according to the official Penguin007 site, which has gone through another makeover by the way, says it’s out now.