On the seventh day of Christmas, Overlook Press gave to me …

TGIF! Sure we’re happy that today is Friday, but more importantly, today’s “F” stands for “FREE” (as in thank god for free books). We’ve been busier than elves these past few days, selecting books, t-shirts, and posters for our ongoing Twelve Days of Overlook Christmas giveaway. Since we kicked off the festivities last week we’ve already bequeathed Portis paperbacks, designer art tomes, true crime thrillers, journalism anthologies, kid lit classics, and coffee table gift sets to six lucky fans. Congratulations to our most recent winners, My Friend Amy and Jarrett Rush. We’ll be carrying on the yuletide cheer all next week, so remember to keep those comments and tweets coming, otherwise Santa might skip your block this year!

For better or worse, the holidays mean spending increased time with family. Between the gluttonous meals, the last minute trips to the mall, and the amateur pageants and recitals, if your family celebrates in December, chances are you’ll be packing in overtime hours with mom, dad, and the rest of the crew in the coming weeks. Extra time with the extended family can be a blessing, but sometimes even we need a break from Grandma’s photo albums and vigorous cheek pinching. If you find yourself suffering from relative-overdose this Christmas, you can find relief in today’s giveaway, featuring classic and contemporary illustrated stories from Mervyn Peake, Maeve Gilmore, and Michael Moorock. The perfection distraction from your next of kin, escape into The Illustrated Gormenghast, Titus Awakes, and The Sunday Books this holiday season.

Author, illustrator, playwright, painter, poet and designer Mervyn Peake is best known for his tour de force gothic epic Gormenghast series, comprised of the novels Titus Groans, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone. Together they trace the life of Titus, lord of Castle Gormenghast and heir to Lord Seupulchrave as he is thrust into a stormy land of dark imagination and complex rituals. Set in a gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, the Gormenghast series is a dreamlike journey through a vividly detailed and richly macabre storyworld. Published one hundred years after their author’s birth (July 9, 1911) The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy features one hundred never-befor- seen illustrations by Peake himself.

When Peake died in 1968, he left behind a few tantalizing pages of a fourth book in the Gormenghast series. From this fragment Peake’s widow Maeve Gilmore crafted Titus Awakes, a continuation of the world Peake created, drawing deeply from the unforgettable universe imagined in his original novels. A perfect companion to Peake’s original vision, the story unfolds through a series of picaresque vignettes featuring a motley collection of characters drawn from Peake’s first three books. This lost book of Gormenghast is a moving coda to Peake’s masterwork.

In 1946, Mervyn Peake moved with his family to the Isle of Sark, where every Sunday he would tell his children stories about pirates, shipwrecks, and the Wild West. Drawing on his own boyhood memories, Peake would spontaneously illustrate the stories he told, but he never set down words to go with them. In The Sunday Books fantasy writer and Peake family friend Michael Moorcock has written playful and haunting verse to accompany Peake’s vivid illustrations in a uniquely collaborative project.

Well what are you waiting for? You can enter to win in three different ways.

1. Comment on this post

2. Tweet at us using the hashtag #OverlookChristmas

3. Leave a comment on our Facebook page

You can enter once in each area until 8 AM tomorrow morning, and we will be announcing a winner in Monday’s post. After all entries are received, we choose a winner using random.org. Please leave an email address when entering so we can contact you if you’ve won.