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Coronet Books was
established in 1966 as the paperback imprint of Hodder & Stoughton and
became the third publisher of the James Bond novels in paperback in the
UK. A new series of James Bond continuation novels were first published by
Jonathan Cape starting in 1981 with John Gardner's LICENCE RENEWED, and a
paperback edition in the following year from Coronet Books. John Gardner
(1926-2007) went on to write another 15 James Bond novels including
novelizations of the screenplays for Licence To Kill (1989) and
GoldenEye (1995). Hodder & Stoughton took over the hardback
publication rights starting with SCORPIUS in 1988, and Coronet continued
to publish the paperback editions. |
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Originally published in
1982 the Coronet paperback of LICENCE RENEWED had a cover featuring the
familiar trademarked 007 gun logo. EON Productions took exception to this
and the book was recalled and reissued with an amended cover. Similarly,
the first edition paperback of ICEBREAKER published in 1984 featured
artwork of a skull, part of which had not been filled in correctly, giving
the impression that it had fangs. Later editions corrected this error and
the white area to the left and right of the teeth was filled in black.
The final two John Gardner original novels
SEAFIRE and COLD were issued with covers illustrated by David Scutt. These
titles now formed part of the
series published by Coronet in the
mid-1990s, which collected together all of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels
and several continuation stories (including COLONEL SUN) by John Gardner
and Raymond Benson.
Covers illustrated below are the first UK
editions unless otherwise noted. |
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In 1996, Raymond Benson
was selected by Ian Fleming Publications to become the fourth author to
write an official James Bond novel. Raymond Benson's first offering was
BLAST FROM THE PAST, which was initially published in the
January 1997 issue of PLAYBOY magazine
in an edited version. This short story is a direct sequel to Ian Fleming's
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and featured Bond's son, James Suzuki (created by John
Pearson in James Bond: The Authorized Biography - a fictional
account of the life of James Bond published in 1973), who is murdered by
Irma Bunt as revenge for Bond's killing of Blofeld. In 2008 the
full-length version of BLAST FROM THE PAST was published in the United
States by Pegasus Books in The Union Trilogy, which included three
of Benson's later novels: HIGH TIME TO KILL (1999), DOUBLESHOT (2000) and
NEVER DREAM OF DYING (2001). Benson's first full-length novel, ZERO MINUS
TEN, was first published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton in April 1997,
and later in paperback by Coronet. Both editions, and the next four novels
in the series featured covers illustrated by David Scutt, whose artwork
was used on both the hardback and paperback editions. Raymond Benson also
adapted Bruce Feirstein's screenplay for Tomorrow Never Dies and
his novelisation was published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton and
paperback by Coronet. Benson's first four James Bond novels also had the
same cover logo with ‘007’ positioned on its side and linking the ‘N’ and
‘D’ of BOND. This logo featured on all the paperbacks in that series,
which unified the works of Ian Fleming, Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis),
John Gardner and Raymond Benson. David Scutt has therefore provided
artwork for the covers of
all four James Bond
authors in this series. |
