In November of last year I attended the World Fantasy Convention in Washington, D.C. I’d never been to the city, and there was a tremendous amount to do and see — including the National Mall, the Washington Monument, the White House, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial.

All very impressive, even for a Canadian like me. But three months later, the place that’s lingered longest in my mind is the convention Dealer’s Room. It was packed with dozens of tables from the finest publishers in the genre, all showing their latest wares. Since I pay attention to the market every day, I naturally assumed there wouldn’t be a lot of surprises, even in a target-rich environment like that.

I was dead wrong. Walking from table to table, and seeing the dazzling display of novels, anthologies and collections piled in dense stacks before all the smiling vendors, drove home just how marvelously rich and diverse our industry is. Since returning from the convention I’ve tried hard to replicate that experience here, in a series of posts showcasing the catalogs of several of the most impressive publishers. So far I’ve covered Valancourt Books and ChiZine Publications; today we turn our attention to the gorgeous catalog of Prime Books.

[Click on any of the images for bigger versions.]

As you can imagine, I spent a little money in the Dealer’s Room at WFC. I brought home handsome volumes from PS Publishing, Tachyon, Chizine, Valancourt, Small Beer, and many others.

But I needed a box to carry away all the books I bought at the Prime table. I love anthologies and short fiction, and there isn’t a publisher at work in the industry today with a line-up of collections and anthologies as stellar as Prime’s. They have vampire books, alien encounter books, zombie books, time travel books, urban fantasy books, post-apocalypse books, occult detective books, ghost books, witch books, and lots more.

Prime’s editors — Sean Wallace, Paula Guran, Neil Clarke, Rich Horton, Steve Berman, and others — are deeply connected, and pay attention to up-and-coming writers. Their books are a fine mix of new and reprint fiction from the top writers in the field. Even a handful will introduce you to a terrific line up of established writers you may have overlooked, and emerging stars.

If you’re curious about Prime, I highly recommend their Recent books, including Time Travel: Recent Trips, Magic City: Recent Spells, Aliens: Recent Encounters, Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations, and many others. The idea behind these books is simple: collect the finest examples of the theme from the last decade or so, highlighting the authors and trends that are hot today.

These books are chiefly edited by the talented Paula Guran, although recent volumes have also been edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane (Aliens: Recent Encounters) and Rich Horton and Sean Wallace (Robots: The Recent A.I., and War and Space: Recent Combat).

The other volumes I highly recommend from Prime are their Year’s Best volumes:

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Rich Horton (6 volumes so far, 2009 – 2014)
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy &  Horror, edited by Paula Guran (5 volumes so far, 2010 – 2014)

There’s a bevy of Year’s Best anthologies out there, but these are consistently two of the best.

One of the the other volumes I snatched up from the Prime table was Witches: Wild, Wicked & Wonderful, edited by Paula Guran (2012), which has been on my Amazon wish list for a while. I enjoy themed horror anthologies, although sometimes it seems like the shelves are overrun with zombie and vampire books. A collection of witch tales from authors like Ursula K. Le Guin, Ellen Klages, Kelly Link, Andre Norton, and Delia Sherman seemed just what I was in the mood for.

Black Gate blogger Rich Horton has had a fine career at Prime. In addition to his Year’s Best books, he’s produced some highly acclaimed themed anthologies, including the popular Space Opera and Superheroes.

One of my favorite recent Prime books is Season of Wonder, a Christmas/holiday anthology edited by Paula Guran. I bought mime last year; copies are still available.

I don’t want to give the impression that Prime specializes exclusively in anthologies and short story collections, even if those are the titles I tend to zero in on. They’ve also done some terrific novels with a wade range of talented writers, including Robert Reed’s Great Ship novel The Memory of Sky, Ekaterina Sedia’s Moscow But Dreaming, and Black Gate alum Richard Parks’ samurai fantasy Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate.

Paula Guran’s themed anthologies are a lot of fun, and Witches wasn’t the only one I had my eye out for. She’s done two Halloween books with Prime as well: Halloween (2011), and Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (2013). The former includes 33 short stories and novellas from Thomas Ligotti, Stewart O’Nan, William F. Nolan, Peter Straub, Esther M. Friesner, Steve Rasnic Tem, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Charles de Lint, E. Nesbit, Joe R. Lansdale, Ray Bradbury, and many others — all reprints.

In contrast, Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre contains all original stories from Laird Barron, Stephen Graham Jones, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Nancy Kilpatrick, Jonathan Maberry, John Shirley, Maria V. Snyder, Carrie Vaughn, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and many others.

I bought both Halloween books at the booth. I didn’t pick up Ekaterina Sedia’s Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top, however — I’d ordered the the month it came out. It remains one of my favorite Prime volumes.

Any publisher with an output as diverse as this is bound to have a Lovecraft tribute volume or two in their catalog, and Prime does not disappoint. Paula Guran’s collection of acclaimed recent Cthulhu stories, New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, appeared in November 2011, and a sequel is due in April. And Silvia Moreno-Garcia & Paula R. Stiles’ science fiction anthology Future Lovecraft was published in September 2012.

Finally, one of the more intriguing recent anthologies from Prime was The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010, edited by Mary Robinette Kowal. It contained Hugo Award-nominated stories from John Kessel, Kij Johnson, Nancy Kress, Michael Swanwick, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Reed, James Alan Gardner, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Ian McDonald.

We’ve covered several recent Prime books, including:

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2014 edited by Paula Guran
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2013 edited by Paula Guran
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 edited by Rich Horton
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013 edited by Rich Horton
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012 edited by Rich Horton
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 edited by Rich Horton
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009 edited by Rich Horton
Space Opera edited by Rich Horton
New Treasures: Season of Wonder edited by Paula Guran
Weird Detectives edited by Paula Guran
Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Adventures in Stealth Publishing: The Return of the Sorcerer
War and Space: Recent Combat edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace
John Joseph Adams buys Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazines from Prime Books
The Return of the Sorcerer: Falling Under Clark Ashton Smith’s Potent Spell for the First Time

And Bryan Thomas Schmidt interviewed Rich Horton and Paula Guran for us as part of his ambitious article “Finding the Best: An Interview with Year’s Best Editors Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Rich Horton and Gardner Dozois.”

I’ve showcased six publishers who displayed their products at the World Fantasy Convention and Worldcon so far:

Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog
Bringing Neglected Classics Back Into Print: The Horror Catalog of Valancourt Books
The Best Pulp Horror and Weird Tales: The Fantasy Catalog of Hippocampus Press
Embrace the Odd: The Fantasy Catalog of ChiZine Publications
The Recent Best: The Fantasy Catalog of Prime Books
The Wonders of Fairwood Press

Prime is one of the most energetic and prolific fantasy publishers today, and they deserve your support. See their complete catalog and order copies directly at their website.