The creation of Seventh Street Books, the new mystery/thriller imprint from Prometheus Books (booth 2934), was announced last fall, but things are just now getting rolling, with the lead titles chosen and the first catalogue scheduled to appear soon after BEA. The imprint’s logo, a raven, is a reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling poem.
Heading the list in October are two books the publisher says set the tone for the new imprint. Mark Pryor’s The Bookseller: The First Hugo Marston Novel is a series mystery that begins with the abduction of an elderly Parisian bookstall owner, the first of several booksellers who disappear. The author, an assistant DA in Austin, Tex., makes his debut with the book. Erec Stebbins’s The Ragnarök Conspiracy is a globe-spanning thriller in which FBI agent John Savas confronts an American bin Laden as the world is brought to the brink of war. Both books are paperback originals.
Four other new titles and three reprints round out the first list.
Seventh Street, so named after an address in Philadelphia once lived in by aesthetic forebear Poe, is headed up by editorial director Dan Mayer, a 25-year veteran buyer for Waldenbooks, Borders, and Barnes & Noble. “As an author friend of mine put it, I’ve likely been training for this job my entire career,” Mayer says.
Seventh Street is the second fiction imprint for parent company Prometheus Books. After 43 years as an independent nonfiction press, Prometheus launched Pyr in 2005 for science fiction and fantasy.
