Joe R. Lansdale’s THE BIG BOOK OF HAP AND LEONARD, the latest offering from Tachyon’s Particle Books e-book imprint, is now available through the Tachyon site or any major digital retailer.

The boys are back, and just in time for Season 3 of the Hap and Leonard TV series, starring Michael K. Williams (The Wire) and James Purefoy (Altered Carbon).

Hap Collins looks like a good ’ol boy, but his lefty politics don’t match. His buddy, Vietnam veteran Leonard Pine, is even more complicated: black, conservative, gay … and an occasional arsonist. With Hap and Leonard on the job, small-time crooks all on the way on up to the Dixie Mafia are extremely nervous.

Everyone’s favorite ass-kicking Texan duo are further immortalized in this expanded collection of tall tales, slick nonfiction, and four full-length novellas.

Photo by Karen Lansdale

Editor Richard Klaw explains the genesis of THE BIG BOOK OF HAP AND LEONARD.

Joe R. Lansdale can be a pain in the ass. That’s why this book exists.

HAP AND LEONARD collected all of the not-so-dynamic duo’s previously published shorter adventures (circa 2016) plus the original story “Not Our Kind,” basically everything that’s not a novel, in one handsome volume. This being the 21st century and all, an ebook edition was required. And therein lies the problem.

Seems Joe had promised the digital rights to the novellas “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and the short story “The Boy Who Became Invisible” to another publisher than Tachyon. So we could wait until 2018 for the ebook, when the rights reverted, or figure out something else. We opted for the latter.

The ebook HAP AND LEONARD RIDES AGAIN contained all of the material present in HAP AND LEONARD except for the trio of stories mentioned above. Since the remaining material scarcely made for a book, we added the original short story “The Oak and the Pond,” the Marvin Hanson novella “A Bone Dead Sadness,” Joe’s comic script adaptation of “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” my interview with Joe, and an original remembrance about the creation of Hap and Leonard by Bill Crider, who sadly died while we were putting together THE BIG BOOK OF HAP AND LEONARD.

When Joe offered us the rights to “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” we decided it was best to combine the two editions into this one super—dare I say big—book you hold in your virtual hands.

Sometimes a pain in the ass leads to gold. Not sure if this qualifies as such but if not, it’s damn close.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Foreword to THE BIG BOOK OF HAP AND LEONARD by editor Richard Klaw

• An Appreciation of Joe R. Lansdale by Michael Koryta
• Joe R. Lansdale, Hap and Leonard, and Me by Bill Crider

• Hyenas
• Veil’s Visit
• Death by Chili
• Dead Aim
• A Bone Dead Sadness
• The Boy Who Became Invisible (story)
• The Boy Who Became Invisible (comic book script)
• Not Our Kind
• The Oak and the Pond
• Bent Twig

• Joe R. Lansdale Interviews Hap Collins and Leonard Pine
• Interview with Joe R. Lansdale
• The Care and Feeding and Raising Up of Hap and Leonard

Tachyon’s new Particle Books e-book imprint highlights excellent imaginative fiction. The titles, or Particles, include both young adult and adult fiction; subgenres will include science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, and thrillers.

Lovingly-curated, the Particles are a dynamic mix of original, newly-collected, hard to find, and out-of-print material.  

Particle Books was named as an homage to the faster-than-light (and as of now hypothetical) tachyon particle, perhaps best known from Star Trek.

Over the next couple of months, the first wave of extraordinary titles from Mary Shelley, Jane Yolen, James Morrow, James Patrick Kelly, and Michael Cadnum will hit the virtual shelves.

For more info on THE BIG BOOK OF HAP AND LEONARD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story