Here is the press release for Joyland from Hard Case Crime.
NEW STEPHEN KING NOVEL COMING
FROM HARD CASE CRIME
JOYLAND to be published in June 2013
New York, NY; London, UK (May 30, 2012)—Hard Case Crime, the award-winning
line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it
will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013. Set in a
small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the
summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and
confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the
ways both will change his life forever.
JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has
never previously been published. One of the most beloved storytellers of all
time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300
million books in print.
Called "the best new American publisher to appear in the last decade" by Neal
Pollack in
The Stranger, Hard Case Crime revives the storytelling and
visual style of the pulp paperbacks of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. The line
features an exciting mix of lost pulp masterpieces from some of the most
acclaimed crime writers of all time and gripping new novels from the next
generation of great hardboiled authors, all with new painted covers in the grand
pulp style. Authors range from modern-day bestsellers such as Pete Hamill,
Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block and Ed McBain to Golden Age stars like Mickey
Spillane (creator of "Mike Hammer"), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of "Perry
Mason"), Wade Miller (author of
Touch of Evil), and Cornell Woolrich
(author of
Rear Window).
Stephen King commented, "I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts.
That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of
my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that
reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being.
Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it
will have to buy the actual book."
King’s previous Hard Case Crime novel,
The Colorado Kid, became a
national bestseller and inspired the television series "Haven," now going into
its third season on SyFy.
"Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book," said Charles
Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime. "It’s a
whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and
about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their
time. Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I
finished it, I sent a note saying, ‘Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.’ "
Nick Landau, Titan Publisher, added: "Stephen King is one of the fiction
greats, and I am tremendously proud and excited to be publishing a brand-new
book of his under the Hard Case Crime imprint."
JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis,
the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies
and "Breakfast At Tiffany’s," and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a
dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for
The
Colorado Kid.
Since its debut in 2004, Hard Case Crime has been the subject of enthusiastic
coverage by a wide range of publications including
The New York Times,
USA Today,
Time,
Playboy,
U.S. News & World
Report,
BusinessWeek,
The Los Angeles Times,
The Chicago
Sun-Times,
The Houston Chronicle,
New York magazine, the
New York Post and
Daily News,
Salon,
Reader’s
Digest,
Parade and
USA Weekend, as well as numerous other
magazines, newspapers, and online media outlets. The
Chicago Sun-Times
wrote, "Hard Case Crime is doing a wonderful job publishing both classic and
contemporary ‘pulp’ novels in a crisp new format with beautiful, period-style
covers. These modern ‘penny dreadfuls’ are worth every dime."
Playboy
praised Hard Case Crime’s "lost masterpieces," writing "They put to shame the
work of modern mystery writers whose plots rely on cell phones and terrorists."
And the
Philadelphia City Paper wrote, "Tired of overblown,
doorstop-sized thrillers...? You’ve come to the right place. Hard Case novels
are as spare and as honest as a sock in the jaw."
