• New Young Bond story preview in By Royal Command paperback
  – It’s really unknown what the story will be as well as the title (though we have guessed), but we’re getting a preview of the upcoming Young Bond short story in the UK paperback edition of By Royal Command due on bookshelves on 28 May.
• Kev Walker creating By Royal Command cover – Not Earth shattering news here, but it’s nice to know that Disney Hyperion is again looking to the great Kev Walker to kick out another cool Young Bond cover for us American Fans. It’s likely By Royal Command will be released around April 2010 which is the same timeframe that both Double or Die (April 2008) and Hurricane Gold (April 2009) got. Look for the Young Bond companion to hit US shelves likely in April 2011, but that’s just a guess.

This edition will be available in Australia on 29 June for $9.95. Pre-order from Penguin’s AU website.

Good news for Young Bond fans. A companion to Charlie Higson’s 5 works was announced today by the Young Bond Dossier. Coming in November from Puffin Books Danger Society: The Young Bond Dossier includes a currently unpublished short story by Higson. I can only assume that this is the short story that he devised many moons ago with Bond and his aunt on their way back to England from Mexico on an ocean liner (i.e., between Hurricane Gold and By Royal Command). On the ship Bond supposedly has a run in with Wilder Lawless from SilverFin.

The companion also includes in-depth profiles of .. well everything Young Bond including information on the cars, the locations, the weapons, and the characters etc. I hope it includes some behind the scene stuff – origins for where things came from. For instance, Manny the Girl, a villain in Hurricane Gold was actually a Fleming name.  Fleming used to go around and write down names in a journal that piqued his interest. Shatterhand was in the journal and was used as a cover for Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Manny the Girl was also written down as well as many others (I recall “Peter Bull the villian” – think of the possible titles and variations that could be used here: Bull’s Eye). But I digress. The companion has statistics, maps, photographs, and more illustrations by Kev Walker (still waiting on Blood Fever: The Graphic Novel).

More information can be found here. Note the companion comes in the same hardcover style as Hurricane Gold and By Royal Command and is apparently authored by Charlie Higson (a surprise to me).

I look forward to this.

This cover is in the same style as the other Penguin Classics Fleming reprints. Can’t say that I like the style to begin with, but it’s not bad. I like what they’re going for.

Can’t help thinking that this little maneuver was inspired by The Union Trilogy being published which as far as we know was successful given that a second omnibus of Benson’s 007 novels are on the way. Anyway, The Blofeld Trilogy will be published on 1 October.

CommanderBond.net discovered a recent listing on Amazon.co.uk for The Blofeld Trilogy by Ian Fleming. Presumably (well, obviously) this will include Fleming’s trilogy of novels that deal with James Bond’s nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld: Thunderball (1961), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963) and You Only Live Twice (1964).

Between Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Fleming also released The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) that deals with Bond hot on the trail of Blofeld, but otherwise has nothing to do with Blofeld and barely anything to do with 007 for that matter. It’s usually referred to as an “interlude novel” that takes place within the trilogy.

Not many details are known at this point. Coming in at 720 pages, the book will be published by Penguin Classics on 1 October 2009.

Here’s a synopsis:

Of all the priceless treasures Gabriel Hunt has sought, none means more to him than the one drawing him to the rugged terrain of Corsica and the exotic streets of Marrakesh: his own sister’s life. To save her, Hunt will have to challenge the mind of a tyrant two centuries dead—the calculating, ingenious Napoleon Bonaparte…

You can find the extract online at the series’ official website Hunt For Adventure. (Extract).

Puffin launched a new website for Charlie Higson’s first post-Young Bond novel earlier in the week. On the website it states that The Enemy will be published in September. Here’s a synopsis:

When the sickness came, every parent, police officer every adult fell ill. The lucky ones died. The others are crazed, confused and lying in wait. Only children under fourteen remain, and they’re fighting to survive. Because the adults who are alive are hungry…

Anyway, check out the cover art (perhaps temporary) at the YoungBondDossier. Review copies are out in the wild. It’s paperback and looks similar to the UK first edition Young Bond paperbacks.

Official website.

The fourth novel in Young Bond series, Hurricane Gold by Charlie Higson has been released today in hardcover form in the US. If you didn’t pre-order it, use the link below to order it now.

Amazon.com

Not a whole lot on the slate for upcoming literary releases that we know of unfortunately. Look forward to By Royal Command, the fifth and supposed final Young Bond novel in 2010 for a US release and a release this May in the UK in paperback form.

If you’re interested in this book, which was a companion to the Ian Fleming Centenary exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, check out my review. The exhibition was shut down on March 1st.

Amazon.com

The entire Disney-Hyperion team read The Enemy over one weekend, putting aside plans because we just couldn’t stop reading it; we all knew we had to publish it. Charlie Higson has turned his hand to another subject entirely and made it his own. . . We are confident this will be a tremendous hit. – Lola Bubbosh, executive editor at Disney

This will be Higson’s first non-Bond since the completion of his five part Young Bond series.

More information as it comes.