A couple of weeks ago I wrote about The Mystery of the Missing Legs, which related to a missing image from the spine of one of the UK editions of my Saga Of Larten Crepsley books. Today, in a kind-of follow-up, I present for your bafflement and bemusement...

The Mystery of the Missing COVER!!!

A fan recently shared this lovely cover for Birth Of A Killer (the first book in the Mr Crepsley series) with me. It was the paperback cover, and it's a real eye-catcher... except...

It was never actually published!!

The Mr Crepsley books were first released in hardback editions in the USA. When they started to come out in paperback, my publishers used the same cover as the hardback for the first book. Then they had a change of mind and decided to give the paperbacks a completely different look, something of which I wholeheartedly approved. They came up with four really cool covers, and you can check out those for books 2 to 4 on my website: https://darrenshan.com/covers/country/usa-the-saga-of-larten-crepsley

BUT!!!

Although they designed a new book 1 cover for the paperback reprint, and even fed it out to some online booksellers, which is how they image resurfaced recently, they never actually got round to using it, and the only edition of book 1 that they printed was the one that you can find on my website page. A shame, as this would have been a lovely addition to any Shanster's collection (I'm certainly gutted that I wasn't able to add it to MINE!), but at least its unexpected reappearance online has allowed us all to appreciate it all these years later, even if only virtually...

If you missed The Mystery Of The Missing Legs last month, you can catch up with it, along with all the other latest Darren Shan news and updates, in the March issue of my Shanville Monthly newsletter: https://darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly