Лансдейл Джо Р. (32)

The Horror Writers Association Presents

BLOOD LITE

...a collection of entertaining tales that puts the fun back into dark fiction, with ironic twists and tongue-in-cheek wit to temper the jagged edge.

Charlaine Harris reveals the dark side of going green, when a quartet of die-hard environmentalists hosts a fundraiser with a gory twist in "An Evening with Al Gore"...In an all-new Dresden Files story from Jim Butcher, when it comes to tracking deadly paranormal doings, there's no such thing as a "Day Off" for the Chicago P.D.'s wizard detective, Harry Dresden...Sherrilyn Kenyon turns a cubicle-dwelling MBA with no life into a demon-fighting seraph with one hell of an afterlife in "Where Angels Fear to Tread"...Celebrity necromancer Jaime Vegas is headlining a sold-out séance tour, but behind the scenes, a disgruntled ghost has a bone to pick, in Kelley Armstrong's "The Ungrateful Dead." Plus tales guaranteed to get under your skin — in a good way — from Janet Berliner Don D'Ammassa Nancy Holder Nancy Kilpatrick J. A. Konrath and F. Paul Wilson Joe R. Lansdale Will LudwigsenSharyn McCrumb Mark Onspaugh Mike Resnick Steven SavileD. L. Snell Eric James Stone Jeff Strand Lucien Soulban Matt Venne Christopher Welch

So let the blood flow and laughter reign — because when it comes to facing our deepest, darkest fears, a little humor goes a long way!

DARKER — российский литературный онлайн-журнал (вебзин) посвященный «темному» фэнтези, мистике, литературе ужасов и хоррор-культуре в целом. Создан в 2011 году на основе pdf-журнала «ТЬМА». Выходит с периодичностью раз в месяц. Публикует жанровые рецензии, статьи, обзоры, а также рассказы и повести отечественных и зарубежных авторов.

Сайт онлайн-журнала: http://darkermagazine.ru/

[Электронное издание, 2015]

Это не добрые рождественские сказки, которые так хорошо читать детям на ночь.

Это страшные истории о тьме, которая стоит за порогом и ждет, когда ты сделаешь один неверный шаг, о странных и жутких существах, которые бродят за окном и иногда заглядывают по твою душу.

Нил Гейман и Эл Саррантонио собрали лучшие рассказы в жанре хоррор и саспенс, написанные признанными мастерами американской прозы (Чак Паланик, Майкл Муркок, Уолтер Мосли, Майкл Суэнвик…). Перед вами – коллекция умных, тонких, изысканно интеллектуальных, захватывающих и по-настоящему страшных историй: дверь, через которую Бездна всматривается в человека.

«Все любят негодяев… хотя иногда жалеют об этом всю оставшуюся жизнь.

Подлецы, ловкачи и прохвосты. Лоботрясы, воры, обманщики и плуты. Плохие парни и девчонки. Жулики, соблазнители, трюкачи, самозванцы, лжецы, хамы… имен у них много, они появляются в самых разных книгах, всех стилей, что придуманы в этом мире, в мифах и легендах… о да, и, конечно же, на всем протяжении истории человечества. Дети Локи, братья Койота. Иногда они герои, иногда – злодеи…»

Впервые на русском языке!

Древний вампир оказывается в ловушке на тонущем «Титанике», но рано или поздно он вновь увидит лунный свет… Лучший друг человека превращается в его самый страшный кошмар… Исполняя последнюю волю умершего отца, сын проводит ночь в склепе и попадает в водоворот дьявольского ритуала… С того света не возвращаются, но, если тебя лишили жизни на потеху публике, ты вернешься, чтобы отомстить…

Более 50 авторов — от всемирно известного писателя Рэя Брэдбери до сценаристки Нэнси Холдер, чье имя мы привыкли видеть в титрах культового сериала «Баффи — истребительница вампиров». Более 50 произведений — от научной фантастики до готического романа. Более 50 ваших самых страшных кошмаров о кровожадных вампирах и мстительных призраков.

Это — 1999 год. Год, который должен был стать временем Апокалипсиса — но не стал. Или все-таки стал, только мы пока не заметили этого — и не заметим, пока не станет поздно?

Это — 1999 год. Такой, каким увидели его величайшие из мастеров «литературы ужасов» нашего мира. Писатели, хорошо знающие: Апокалипсис начинается не с трубного гласа, поднимающего мертвых, но со Страха, живущего в душе у каждого из нас.

Это — 999 глазами непревзойденного Стивена Кинга. И мчится по дороге Смерть…

Это — 999 по Уильяму Питеру Блэтти. И те, что ушли, говорят с живыми…

Это — 999 Бентли Литтла. И исчезает грань меж явью и кошмаром…

Это — 999 год Дэвида Моррелла, Джойс Кэрол Оутс, Нэнси Коллинз. И еще многих из тех, кому нет равных в умении повергать читателя в черный, иррациональный Ужас…

Парадоксально! Но что еще мы читаем с таким удовольствие, как книги о событиях загадочных, зловещих, непостижимых, невозможных? Что еще так притягивает наше внимание, как чудовища, оборотни, зомби, вампиры и призраки? Все они — герои этого сборника, включившего в себя лучшие произведения малых форм в жанре хоррор. И каждое из них принесет то, чего мы так жаждем, — сладкое чувство тревоги, неопределенности и мучительное ожидание неотвратимого ужаса.

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT…

For decades, the apocalypse and its aftermath have yielded some of the most exciting short stories of all time. From David Brin’s seminal “The Postman” to Hugh Howey’s “Deep Blood Kettle” and Tananarive Due’s prescient “Patient Zero,” the end of the world continues to thrill.

This companion volume to the critically acclaimed WASTELANDS offers thirty of the finest examples of post-apocalyptic short fiction, with works by:

Ann Aguirre

Megan Arkenberg

Paolo Bacigalupi

Christopher Barzak

Lauren Beukes

David Brin

Orson Scott Card

Junot Díaz

Cory Doctorow

Tananarive Due

Toiya Kristen Finley

Milo James Fowler

Maria Dahvana Headley

Hugh Howey

Keffy R. M. Kehrli

Jake Kerr

Nancy Kress

Joe R. Lansdale

George R. R. Martin

Jack McDevitt

Seanan McGuire

Maureen F. McHugh

D. Thomas Minton

Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling

Ramsey Shehadeh

Robert Silverberg

Rachel Swirsky

Genevieve Valentine

James Van Pelt

Christie Yant

Award-winning editor John Joseph Adams has once again assembled a who’s who of short fiction, and the result is nothing short of mind-blowing.

Includes brand-new stories by: James Crumley, Joe R. Lansdale, Claudia Smith, Ito Romo, Luis Alberto Urrea, David Corbett, George Weir, Sarah Cortez, Jesse Sublett, Dean James, Tim Tingle, Milton Burton, Lisa Sandlin, Jessica Powers, and Bobby Byrd.

Bobby Byrd is the co-publisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, Texas. As a poet, Byrd is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship, the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship awarded by the University of New Mexico, and an International Residency Fellowship.

John Byrd, co-publisher of Cinco Puntos Press, is co-editor (with Bobby Byrd) of the anthology Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots Graffiti from La Frontera. He is also a Spanish-to-English translator and a freelance essayist.

All new strange cases of death and magic in the city by some of the biggest names in urban fantasy.

 In this all-new collection of urban fantasy stories, editors George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois explore the places where mystery waits at the end of every alley and where the things that go bump in the night have something to fear...

 Includes stories by bestselling authors Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Diana Gabaldon, Simon R. Green, S. M. Stirling, and Carrie Vaughn, as well as tales by Glen Cook, Bradley Denton, M.L.N. Hanover, Conn Iggulden, Laurie R. King, Joe R. Lansdale, John Maddox Roberts, Steven Saylor, Melinda Snodgrass, and Lisa Tuttle.

Приготовьтесь окунуться в завораживающий мир мастера современного ужаса – Говарда Лавкрафта! Ктулху, Шоггот, Йог-Сотот и прочие возвращаются во всей своей ужасающей красе. Монстры, созданные воображением великого Лавкрафта более полувека назад, оживают в историях современных писателей – Нила Геймана, Кейтлин Кирнан, Говарда Уолдропа и других. Все рассказы сопровождаются оригинальными иллюстрациями художника Джона Коулхарта.

Легионы поклонников Лавкрафта продолжают посещать причудливые пейзажи его мира и встречать неумолимых монстров. Присоединяйтесь к ним в этом путешествии… если, конечно, осмелитесь.

Впервые на русском языке!

An anthology of stories edited by Todd Robinson

My fingers can't find the bullet holes. They're there, because they brought me down.

Like a guitar riff sharp enough to slit a throat or the devil's amplifiers shrieking through the lonely night, this bonanza of blood and brawn rings with the vibe of the best new noir suspense. Culled from the net's most hardcore, award-winning site, these fresh, raw, and uncut stories pack a stiff punch…

"As long as she keeps calling me, there's hope. Hope is a dangerous thing."

No matter where you turn-a pair of bisexual, ass-kicking Vikings on a slaughter trip; a sexy forty-something thief with angles as lethal as her curves; a porn-comic artist up against one deadly last laugh; a city's most savage gang under the gun and way out of time; or a south-of-the-borderland sleaze pit where everyone's a winner-no one gets out alive…

"Escape is a bitch. A man alone and on foot would have to be crazy to try. Apparently he was."

Rev up for a speed-fueled hell-trip through the dark side, where a backbeat can kill, no scene falls short of badass, and the hooligans bay at the moon…

"This book is dripping so much blood and guts and marrow, it's impossible to read it in more than a single sitting. Be prepared to be shattered, shell-shocked and bruised, as Thuglit's emissaries continue to write wrongs that are very, very right." -Sarah Weinman

Big Daddy Thug/Todd Robinson's writing has appeared in Plots With Guns, Danger City, Demolition, Out Of The Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Crimespree and Writers Digest's The Year's Best Writing 2003. He was nominated for a 2006 Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is the creator and chief editor of Thuglit.com.

The stories he's edited for Thuglit.com have been nominated for several awards, including The Derringer and The Million Writer's Award, and been have been selected for The Best American Mystery Stories and Best Noir 2006.

He lives and works in New York with his wife (Lady Detroit), a ferret named Matilda, and three freakin' cats.

If you’re a fan of fiction that is more than just black and white, this latest story collection from #1 bestselling author George R.R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their cunning twists and dazzling reversals. And George R.R. Martin himself offers a brand-new tale chronicling one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of Ice and Fire.

Follow along with the likes of Gillian Flynn, Joe Abercrombie, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Cherie Priest, Garth Nix, and Connie Willis, as well as other masters of literary sleight-of-hand, in this rogues gallery of stories that will plunder your heart—and yet leave you all the richer for it.

Самую, пожалуй, мрачную картину – «Комнату в Нью-Йорке» – выбрал Стивен Кинг, подаривший сборнику зловещий рассказ о семье Эндерби и о их способе выжить во времена Великой депрессии. Самая изысканная – «Одиннадцать утра» – вдохновила «живого классика» американской литературы Джойс Кэрол Оутс на элегантную и безжалостную историю, где практически стирается тонкая грань между любовью, ненавистью и… преступлением. А самая знаменитая – «Полуночники» – «досталась» Майклу Коннелли. И это справедливо: кому, как не любителю джаза, детективу Гарри Босху, и пытаться разгадать тайну этого полотна? Также в работы Эдварда Хоппера вдохнули «литературную жизнь» Джеффри Дивер, Ли Чайлд и Лоренс Блок. Хотя, возможно, читатель увидит в его картинах «свою» историю, которая будет ждать, чтобы ее рассказали…

В 1968 году мир испытал совершенно новый вид ужаса: на киноэкраны вышел знаменитый фильм «Ночь живых мертвецов». С тех пор зомби уверенно вторглись во все аспекты популярной культуры. И вот теперь отмеенный наградами составитель антологий Джонатан Мэйберри вместе с самим «крестным отцом» жанра Джорджем Э. Ромеро и целой плеядой самых талантливых мастеров современного хоррора представляют вам коллекцию совершенно новых историй, произошедших в течение сорока восьми часов той легендарной вспышки. Приготовьтесь! Эти ночи будут очень долгими… и очень страшными!

This new volume of the world's most acclaimed Year's Best Horror series includes a masterful selection of the finest supernatural short stories and terrifying novellas from many of the biggest names and most exciting newcomers currently working in the genre. This is the very best of new short stories and novellas by today's masters of the macabre. Contributors include such names as Neil Gaiman, Michael Marshall Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman and Glen Hirshberg. This is required reading for any fan of ghoulish fiction.

Winner of the 2009 British Fantasy Award.

«Тогда я вернулся с работы вечером, и Бретт, моя рыжая, сидела за столом на кухне. На этой неделе у нее не было ночных смен на дежурствах в больнице, так что я удивился, увидев ее на ногах. В два часа ночи. Я закончил работать ночным сторожем на заводе по производству собачьей еды, в надежде на то, что мой приятель Леонард скоро вернется из Мичигана, куда поехал кого-то ловить по поручению нашего друга Марвина, который нанял его на разовую работу в своем детективном агентстве. Время от времени мы на него работали…»

Irreverent merriment. Diabolical debauchery. Gory good times. Editor Shane McKenzie has gutted the holiday spirit and left it to bleed out on the pages of this gruesome, extreme horror tribute to special occasions. Includes stories by the following masters of the macabre: Jack Ketchum, Joe R. Lansdale, Bentley Little, Nate Southard, Lee Thomas, Wrath James White and More!

Table of Contents:

"Consensual" by Jack Ketchum

"securedate.com" by Boyd E. Harris

"Face" by Patrick Shand

"Ghunt" by Lee Thomas

"Joyeux Paques" by Emma Ennis

"The Greatest Sin" by Kevin Wallis

"The Greenhouse Garden of Suicides" by Kirk Jones

"IRecycling" by Lesley Conner

"Taco Meat" by Jon McNee

"Remember What I Said About Living Out in the Country?" by A.J. Brown

"Every Day a Holiday" by Steve Lowe

"Seeing Red" by Chris Lewis Carter

"Southern Fried Cruelty" by Matt Kurtz

"By Bizarre Hands" by Joe R. Lansdale

"Family Man" by John Bruni

"We Run Races With Goblin Troopers" by Lee Thompson

"Pascal's Wager" by Wrath James White

"A Special Surprise at Thanksgiving Dinner" by Elle Richfield

"Waiting for Santa" by Bentley Little

"Hung With Care" by Ty Schwamberger

"Sunshine Beamed" by Marie Green

"Dia de los Inocentes" by Elias Siqueiros

"Three, Two, One" by Nate Southard

This new anthology presenting a selection of some of the very best, and most chilling, short stories and novellas of horror and the supernatural by both contemporary masters of horror and exciting newcomers. As ever, the latest volume of this record-breaking and multiple award-winning anthology series also offers an in-depth overview of the year in horror, a fascinating necrology of notable names, and a useful directory contact information for dedicated horror fans and writers.

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror remains the world's leading annual anthology dedicated solely to showcasing the best in contemporary horror fiction on both sides of the Atlantic.

Jack Catcher's parents are dead—his mom died of sickness and his dad of a broken heart—and he has to get out of Oklahoma, where dust storms have killed everything green, hopeful, or alive. When former classmate Jane and her little brother Tony show up in his yard with plans to steal a dead neighbor's car and make a break for Texas, Jack doesn't need much convincing. But a run-in with one of the era's most notorious gangsters puts a crimp in Jane's plan, and soon the three kids are hitching the rails among hoboes, gangsters, and con men, racing to warn a carnival wrestler turned bank robber of the danger he faces and, in the process, find a new home for themselves. This road trip adventure from the legendary Joe R. Lansdale is a thrilling and colorful ride through Depression-era America.

About the Author

JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of more than a dozen novels for adults, including eight Hap and Leonard novels, as well asandHe has received a British Fantasy Award, an American Mystery Award, an Edgar Award, a Grinzane Cavour Prize, and seven Bram Stoker Awards. is his first novel for young adults. 

A zombie western by Joe R. Lansdale. Dead In The West is the story of Mud Creek, Texas, a town overshadowed by a terrible evil. An Indian medicine man, unjustly lynched by the people of Mud Creek, has put a curse on the town. As the sun sets, he will have his revenge. For when darkness falls, the dead will walk in Mud Creek and they will be hungry for human flesh. The only one that can save the town is Reverend Jebediah Mercer, a gun toting preacher man who came to Mud Creek to escape his past. He has lost his faith in the Lord and his only solace is the whisky bottle. Will he renew his faith in himself and God to defeat this evil or will the town be destroyed?  

"Dad told me once, that if people don't care about where they live, the way they act, people they associate with, they get lost in the dark, can't find their way back cause there's no light left. I had taken a pretty good step into the shadows tonight."

It's payback time, in this short story by Joe R. Lansdale.

Joe Landsdale once again combines his love of the wild west with zombies in , another tale of his two-gun toting Reverend Jebidiah. The Reverend decides to help a deputy sheriff escort a prisoner along Deadman's Road, the supposed haunt of an undead fiend.

This novella was first published as a serial in three parts by Subterranean Press in March 2007 — taken from Joe R Lansdale's collection which was published April 25 2007.

Subsequently included in — an anthology of 34 zombie stories by various authors — published by Night Shade Books in September 2008.

It is the summer of 1958 in Dewmont, Texas, a town the great American postwar boom passed by. The kids listen idly to rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like molasses... For thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchell, the end of innocence comes with his discovery of the mysterious long-ago demise of two very different young women. In his quest to unravel the truth about their tragic fates, Stanley finds a protector in Buster Lighthorse Smith, a black, retired Indian-reservation cop and a sage on the finer points of Sherlock Holmes, the blues, and life's faded dreams. But not every buried thing stays dead. And on one terrifying night of rushing creek water and thundering rain, an arcane, murderous force will rise from the past to threaten the boy in a harrowing rite of passage... Vintage Lansdale, A Fine Dark Line brims with exquisite suspense, powerful characterizations, and the vibrant evocation of a lost time.

From Publishers Weekly

The atmosphere is as thick as an East Texas summer day in Edgar-winner Lansdale's (The Bottoms) engaging, multilayered regional mystery, which harks back to 1958. Thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchel, Jr., has enough on his hands just growing up in Dewmont, Tex., when he literally stumbles on a buried cache of love letters. Stanley pursues the identity of the two lovers with help from the projectionist at his family's drive-in, an aged black man who quotes Sherlock Holmes and doesn't mince words about the world's injustices. As the truth of a gruesome 20-year-old double murder comes to light in the sleepy town, so do the facts of life, death, men, women and race for young Stanley. Unfortunately, this wealth of experience sometimes strains credulity. For instance, Stanley, his sister, Callie, and friend Richard witness a secret burial, see a local phantom, are chased by a murderer and barely miss being hit by a train-all in one night. As the older and wiser Stanley says of the past, "More had happened to my family in one summer than had happened in my entire life." The "down-home" dialect is occasionally overdone, too, with more ripe sayings than Ross Perot on caffeine. But Lansdale clearly knows and loves his subject and enlivens his haunting coming-of-age tale with touches of folklore and humor.

From Booklist

Lansdale makes a rich stew of memory and mystery in the voice of Stanley Mitchel Jr., who is 13 in 1958 and is writing down, in midlife, what he recalls. His parents own the drive-in in Dewmont, Texas; his dad calls his mom "Gal"; his sister, Callie, is turn-your-head pretty and feisty besides. Stanley finds in the burnt ruins behind the drive-in a cache of love letters. Stanley--innocent enough at the beginning of the story to still believe in Santa Claus--is fascinated by the letters and soon learns that the fire marked the deaths of two young women, long ago. Those deaths ripple through the pages, as Stanley struggles with knowledge of good and evil: his friend Richard's abusive dad; the black cook's stalker boyfriend; the drive-in projectionist who faces twin demons of age and alcohol. Stanley's mother, father, and sister are vivid, glowing personages. Stanley doesn't unravel everything, but race and power, and what people do to each other in the name of desire and religion, coalesce to a mighty climax. 

Hyenas marks the always-welcome return of Joe R. Lansdale’s most indelible fictional creations: Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. Once again, the embattled but resilient duo find themselves enmeshed in a web of danger, duplicity, and escalating mayhem. The result is a tightly compressed novella that is at once harrowing, hilarious, and utterly impossible to put down.

The story begins with a barroom brawl that is both brutal and oddly comic. The ensuing drama encompasses abduction, betrayal, robbery, and murder, ending with a lethal confrontation in an East Texas pasture. Along the way, readers are treated to moments of raucous, casually profane humor and to scenes of vivid, crisply described violence, all related in that unmistakable Lansdale voice. An essential addition to an already imposing body of work, Hyenas shows us both the author and his signature characters at their inimitable best. It doesn’t get better than this.

Hyenas also includes the bonus Hap Collins short story, “The Boy Who Became Invisible”.

From Publishers Weekly

In Lansdale's wry, casually violent novella about roughneck buddies Hap Collins (white and straight) and Leonard Pine (African-American and gay), the two knights-errant befriend a hapless fellow whose younger, weaker brother has fallen in with extremely bad company—he's just joined a gang of bank robbers whose leader is used to increasing his own share of the loot by killing the other gang members. As usual, the dialogue is deadpan tart and the action extreme but convincing. Readers will find themselves simultaneously grinning and flinching. The book also includes "The Boy Who Became Invisible," a story Hap tells about something he witnessed years before, perhaps explaining why he's inclined to stand up for people who aren't as good at defending themselves as he and Leonard grew up to be. Lansdale (Vanilla Ride) once again proves he's the East Texas master of redneck noir.  

Abrash amalgam of terrifying suspense, raw humor, and intriguing mystery that unfolds in the vividly rendered shadowy lowlands of East Texas.

After a harrowing stint in the Iraq war, Cason Statler returns home to the small East Texas town of Camp Rapture, where he drinks too much, stalks his ex-wife, and takes a job at the local paper, only to uncover notes on a cold case murder. With nothing left to live for and his own brother connected to the victim, he makes it his mission to solve the crime. Soon he is drawn into a murderous web of blackmail and deceit. To make matters worse, his deranged buddy Booger comes to town to lend a helping hand.

Since a mysterious childhood illness, Harry Wilkes has experienced horrific visions. Gruesome scenes emerge to replay themselves before his eyes. Triggered by simple sounds, these visions occur anywhere a tragic event has happened. Now in college, Harry feels haunted and turns to alcohol to dull his visionary senses. One night, he sees a fellow drunk easily best three muggers. In this man, Harry finds not only a friend that will help him kick the booze, but also a sensei who will teach him to master his unusual gift. Soon Harry’s childhood crush, Kayla, comes and asks for help solving her father’s murder. Unsure of how it will affect him, Harry finds the strength to confront the dark secrets of the past, only to unveil the horrors of the present.

From Publishers Weekly

In this superior East Texas crime thriller from Stoker-winner Lansdale (), Harry Wilkes discovers after a severe childhood ear infection that he has a peculiar "hindsight." Harry can not only see dead people but see and hear violent events as they occurred in the recent or distant past. "It's like I hear and see ghosts in sounds," he tells his father. By the time he's a college student, Harry's psychic abilities have driven him to booze. After meeting alcoholic Tad Peters, a retired martial arts expert, Harry becomes Tad's surrogate son and student. The two forge a pact to sober up together. Their resolve is tested when Harry agrees to help Kayla Jones, an old childhood crush now a cop, solve her father's murder, which her boss, the local police chief, has dismissed as a suicide. Lansdale's down-home prose erupts with explosive twists and razor sharp insights into how "echoes from the original sounds" can never be silenced until action is taken to defeat the fear that created them.

From Booklist

The prolific Lansdale returns, after sojourns in pulp, sf, and horror, to work his peculiar mojo on the supernatural crime thriller. Harry Wilkes has inherited his family's curse of experiencing "dark sounds," full-sensory recordings of traumatic events that can be unleashed by, for example, the banging of a toilet lid upon which a guy once blew his brains out. Booze helps hold the "ghosts in the noise" at bay, but his life as a drunken recluse isn't going well. He gets things under control with the help of an eccentric sensei named Tad, but when a boyhood girlfriend named Kayla comes home to find her father's killer, Harold grits his teeth and journeys into the dark once more. Lansdale's prose finds the perfect pitch between the laid-back cadences of front-porch storytelling and the thriller's demand for growing urgency. He is a bit unreconstructed when it comes to gender relations--or at least the vocabulary to describe them--but he's got both the charisma and the balls to pull it off. Funny and scary, with a barn-burner ending. 

Twenty-one stories for mature audiences only!

This collection of Joe R. Lansdale stories represents the best of the “Lansdale” genre—a strange mixture of dark crime, even darker humor, and adventure tales. Though varied in setting and theme, all the stories are pure Lansdale—eerie, amusing, and occasionally horrific. In “The Pit,” modern gladiators square off against one another using Roman methods. An alternate-history tale called “Trains Not Taken” shows Buffalo Bill as an ambassador and Wild Bill Hickok as a clerk. Lansdale’s love of large lizards and humor are evident in the stories “Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program” and “Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland.”

The career of Joe R. Lansdale has spanned more than twenty-seven years, in which period he has written over two hundred short stories. This collection is the best of these. As Lansdale states in his Introduction, ". these stories are the ones I think best reflect my work." Some of these are obviously horrific : others, the realization will slowly, surely creep upon one. Others will visit alternate history, humor, or dark crime. Mixing the impossible, the improbable, and the never-before-thought-of, Lansdale uses his innate East Texas storytelling abilities to perfection. As an added bonus, each story starts with an introduction by Lansdale, describing the story-behind-the-story.