Three-Quarter Leather. First Hardcover Edition. Signed Letter of Provenance. Kinnell, London. 1990. Unique “founder’s copy” of the first hardcover edition. Bound-up from the first sheets supplied to the publisher from the printer. This copy was specially bound for the founder of Kinnell Publications Limited, in three-quarter red Morocco (goatskin) with gold lettering, gold ruling to the raised bands, and with top and fore-edge gilt. This copy, and this copy only, has a colophon. This copy is the first copy of the first hardcover edition, in a unique and handsome binding. With a signed letter of provenance from Kinnell’s founder, A.E. Cunningham.
In 1993 McCammon took a self-imposed hiatus from writing. At the time he claimed it to be a retirement, but his talents resurfaced in 2003 with a new vitality. In the early years of his career (1978-1993) McCammon’s work was steeped in horror with elements of fantasy. During the second phase of his career, his work expanded beyond the confines of the genre of horror, adding historical and social elements that were not present before. McCammon’s roots were deeply set in his home of Birmingham, Alabama, which he drew upon to enrich his later works. That is not to say that his hometown didn’t make appearances in his early work, in They Thirst, the vampire leader Count Vulkan was named after a statue in the Red Mountains of Birmingham.
They Thirst is centered around a necropolis overrun with vampires that was once the city of Los Angeles. They Thirst is a twist on the vampire novel which interweaves other, more common monsters of modernity including an albino sociopath and chicano gangsters.
Heartwood Books and Art 