A Stark and Wormy Knight, a new collection of Tad’s short stories — including new material original to this book — is now available in e-book format for the Kindle for just $4.99, or its equivalent world-wide, until the end of January 2012. Get A Stark and Wormy Knight for the Kindle here.

For an exclusive sneak-peek, the story “And Ministers of Grace”, is available at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, and is perhaps the most powerful science fiction short story (in Deb’s not very humble opinion) that Tad has written. It is in fact the sketch for a larger science fiction series of thriller-length novels, and if you read the tale you will see how well it combines suspense and the distant future. It was originally published in Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• And Ministers of Grace
• A Stark And Wormy Knight
• The Storm Door
• The Stranger’s Hands
• Bad Guy Factory
• The Thursday Men
• The Tenth Muse
• The Lamentably Comical Tragedy (or the Laughably Tragic Comedy) of Lixal Laqavee
• The Terrible Conflagration at The Quiller’s Mint
• Black Sunshine
• Ants

For those who would also like to have a hardcover edition, Subterranean Press will be publishing A Stark and Wormy Knight in June 2012, in both a Limited Edition of 250 signed and numbered copies bound in leather and a fully cloth-bound trade edition (440 pages each). Pre-order your copy here.

From Subterranean Press:

Tad Williams is an acknowledged master of the multi-volume epic. Through such popular series as Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and Otherland, he has acquired a huge and devoted body of readers who eagerly await each new publication. A Stark and Wormy Knight offers those readers something both special and surprising: a virtuoso demonstration of Williams’s mastery of a variety of shorter forms.

The range of tone, theme, style, and content reflected in this generous volume is nothing short of amazing. The title story is a tale within a tale of dragons and knights and is notable for its wit and verbal inventiveness. “The Storm Door” uses The Tibetan Book of the Dead to forge a singular new approach to the traditional zombie story. “The Terrible Conflagration at the Quiller’s Mint” offers a brief, independent glimpse into the background of Williams’s Shadowmarch series. “Ants” provides an ironic account of what can happen when a marriage goes irrevocably wrong.

Two of the longer entries show Williams working, with great facility, within the fictional creations of other writers. “The Thursday Men” is a hugely entertaining foray into the world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comics. The wonderfully titled “The Lamentably Comical Tragedy (or the Laughably Tragic Comedy) of Lixal Laqavee” is both a first-rate fantasy and a deeply felt homage to Jack Vance’s immortal Dying Earth. Two other pieces offer rare and hard-to-find glimpses into other facets of Williams’s talent. “Bad Guy Factory” is the script for a proposed series of DC Comics that never came to fruition. “Black Sunshine” is the immensely readable screenplay for a movie that remains, at least for the moment, unproduced. One can only hope.

These and other stories and novellas comprise a stellar collection that really does contain something for everyone. For longtime Williams readers, and for anyone with a taste for literate imaginative fiction, A Stark and Wormy Knight is a welcome—and indispensable—volume.