We’ve partnered with Bundle of Holding for Ellen Datlow’s Tales of Terror, featuring seven Datlow anthologies plus books by Lauren Beukes, Daryl Gregory, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Powers, and Mary Shelley.
Cover by Ann MonnCover by John PicacioCover by Ann MonnCover by John Coulthart
Get into a Halloween mood with this all-new ebook fiction bundle, Ellen Datlow Presents Tales of Terror, featuring horror anthologies curated by masterful editor Ellen Datlow, as well as other fiction from Tachyon Publications. For more than three decades Ellen Datlow, winner of multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, has kept her finger on the racing pulse of the horror genre, introducing readers to writers whose tales can unnerve, frighten, and terrify. This Tales of Terror offer brings you seven fine Datlow anthologies with stories by Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Ligotti, Ramsey Campbell, and dozens more – plus a novel by Tim Powers, a best-of collection by Joe R. Lansdale, and lots more. It’s 4,700 pages of terrific reading for an unbeatable bargain price. And each title is presented in DRM-free .PDF, ePub, and Kindle versions.
Cover by Nihil Design by Elizabeth StoryCover by Hannes Hummel Design by Elizabeth StoryCover art by Clara Bacou
Design by Elizabeth StoryCover by John Coulthart
Ten percent of your payment (after gateway fees) will be donated to the charity designated by Tachyon Publishing, the Horror Writers Association. The HWA is a nonprofit organization of writers and publishing professionals around the world, dedicated to promoting dark literature and the interests of those who write it.
Cover by Reiko Murakami
Cover design by Elizabeth StoryCover by Elizabeth StoryCover by Valentina Brostean
*We’re a bit behind on getting some of these notices out (largely due to blog editor Rick coming down with covid. He’s all better now) but we’re trying to catch up.*
They combine horror, noir, and pulp-fiction. They will push you to the edge of your comfort zone, and leave you feeling a little squeamish. But good writing and good storytelling should provoke a reaction.
They are also BRILLIANT. Lansdale’s writing is vivid and visceral. Even when I was confronted by content I would not typically choose (the first entry in this collection, “The Steel Valentine” would require an entire page of entries at Does the Dog Die, if it were included there), I could not stop reading. The characters leap off the page, capture you in a strangle-hold, and do not let go until you’ve finished their story.
These short stories may not be fully enjoyed by everyone, but if you’re game to give this book a read and you have the thick skin to accept the innards at face value, I can say without any hesitation that you’ll enjoy it!
Well crafted with a stiletto sharp wit, Lansdale carves up his victims with imaginative glee, dispatching them in the most horrific of manners. Hannibal could take lessons from this book.
His stories are a complex mixture of coarse language, sex, and violence that makes any Quentin Tarantino film seem tame.
The stories in THINGS GET UGLY are graphic and fierce, yet surprising. This collection of stories combines dark noir and pulp fiction into snippets that transport readers into a realm of Joe’s mind and writing talent. Some of these stories push you to the edge of your comfort zone.
Lansdale’s prose demonstrated an undeniable talent for crafting vivid and atmospheric settings, immersing readers into the murky underworld of crime. The stories are rife with unexpected twists and turns, successfully keeping the audience engaged throughout.
THINGS GET UGLY is a versatile collection that lives up to its name. Readers, beware, but if this is your cup of tea – definitely pick it up. It’s a great study in how to approach crime stories in an untraditional way. It’s also an interesting study in how to turn innocuous inspiration into disturbing, demented tales. I give this book a Lone Star rating of ✯✯✯✯ stars, because it does exactly what it’s meant to do – and I can’t blame it for being effective at it’s goals!
There’s a reason that Joe Lansdale is considered one of the top writers of mystery, suspense, and horror working today. That’s because he’s one heck of a storyteller.
You don’t have to like the horror genre, or the explicit gore that often pops up in his suspense, to appreciate the scope of his talent. In fact, I’m a reader who doesn’t particularly care for horror or graphic violence, but I can recognize, and appreciate, craft that is used so well, and I’ve enjoyed several of Lansdale’s books before this one.
Lansdale doesn’t pull away from tough stuff. Not human depravity. Not graphic violence. Not graphic sex. But he presents that to the reader in stories that pull you in, along with characters not easily forgotten.
I am not sure how I have never read anything by this author, but now that I have gotten a taste of his writing, there will be no turning back now!
I am generally not a crime story type of reader, but these short stories provide a twisted look at what could potentially happen if you let your imagination run wild. Take, for example, the story about a certain bear that many of us might remember from television commercials way back in the day to help prevent forest fires. Now take that same bear, and insert him into society as you would a human with a twisted sense of morality. The end result just might be this story.
I really enjoyed reading how he came up with the ideas for the stories. It gave me a sense of his thought process, but I by no means totally understand it! Writers are unique, and the stories they create will entertain or haunt us long after they are done.
Mr. Landsdale brings readers along like a fly fisherman teasing the water, hoping for a nibble. Then he masterfully shifts direction, increases tension, and busts open doors to the unexpected. Each story depicts crimes, many heinous, sharing sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of the victim and the perpetrator. Things Get Ugly is the perfect title for this book as it shows the worst side of humankind in three-dimensional sensations far too realistic to be simply dark imagination.
These are the first works of Joe R. Lansdale I have read; each was executed perfectly. The tales are fast-paced, with realistic exchanges between characters. It was a bit darker than my norm and memorable as it prickled my spine with fear. These are works of a gifted imaginative creator who uses concise language to keep the story moving from page one to the unexpected end.
Each story is a gem, telling an unfiltered and dark tale of human interaction. No punches are pulled, and there’s blood and gore and death. Their telling is riveting, and I couldn’t, nor wanted to, put the book down. From the first selection to the last, I was gripped by a desire for more and resented any interruptions to my reading. No, Joe hasn’t lost his touch.
I recommend THINGS GET UGLY to Lansdale fans and new readers who enjoy grittier, tougher tales of crime and the darker side of human relations.
Wildly entertaining, binge-worthy, and a total escape from hum drum reality, THINGS GET UGLYis pure Joe Lansdale on terrific display. In this collection of his greatest crime fiction stories, Lansdale’s scalpel-sharp wit and prose will have you cackling one minute while it chills you to the bone the next. A rollicking, sometimes haunted trip through his piney-woods soaked noir landscape, THINGS GET UGLY confirms that Joe Lansdale is to crime fiction what Willie Nelson is to country music: wholly original, genre-defying, raw, gritty, soulful, and lastly, timeless. I could not put this book down!
The spiritual heir to both Walt Whitman and Elmore Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale is the bard who sings America: in gem-hard, polished prose that never lets up, no matter how ugly things get. As they do indeed in the seminal retrospective that is THINGS GET UGLY, where vicious people do vicious things to each other beautifully. It should stand next to Leonard’s Three-Ten to Yuma as a remarkable testament to the power of short fiction.
—Lavie Tidhar, author of Central Station and Neom
Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series) returns to the piney, dangerous woods of East Texas. In this career retrospective of his best crime stories, Lansdale shows exactly why critics continue to compare him to Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Flannery O’Connor, and William Faulkner.
Foreword by S. A. Cosby, author of the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears
A potent blend of stories from one of the all-time greats, THINGS GET UGLY is the kind of collection you never want to end—as it shows the versatility and command of the craft only a legend like Lansdale can execute. There’s a reason Lansdale is among the greatest, and this book showcases his knack for shady characters, rural noir, and an innate ability to get to the heart of what drives us all. A can’t-miss book.
—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang. When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder. A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle. A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie.
In this collection of nineteen unforgettable crime tales, Joe R. Lansdale brings his legendary mojo and witty grit to harrowing heists, revenge, homicide, and mayhem. No matter how they begin, things are bound to get ugly—and fast.
Lansdale’s writing hits like a brass-knuckled punch to the face: Hard and nasty and visceral. This collection of nineteen ugly stories shows the master of the crime thriller at the height of his formidable powers.
—Marc Guggenheim, creator of Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by S. A. Cosby Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Steel Valentine” “Driving to Geronimo’s Grave” “Mr. Bear” “The Job” “Six Finger Jack” “The Shadows, Kith and Kin” “The Ears” “Santa at the Café” “I Tell You It’s Love” “Dead Sister” “Booty and the Beast” “Boys Will Be Boys” “Billie Sue” “The Phone Woman” “Dirt Devils” “Drive in Date” “Rainy Weather” “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” “The Projectionist”
As Matt Damon’s character Sonny Vaccaro says in his final climactic pitch to Michael Jordan in Air, ‘the rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness.’ When you read THINGS GET UGLY, you will do just that.
ArmadilloCon is an annual literary convention sponsored by the Fandom Association of Central Texas, Inc. The primary focus of ArmadilloCon is science fiction and fantasy, but we also pay attention to art, animation, science, media, and gaming. Every year, dozens of professional writers, artists and editors attend the convention. We invite you to attend the convention, especially if you are a fan of reading, writing, gaming, and generally having fun.
A potent blend of stories from one of the all-time greats, THINGS GET UGLY is the kind of collection you never want to end—as it shows the versatility and command of the craft only a legend like Lansdale can execute. There’s a reason Lansdale is among the greatest, and this book showcases his knack for shady characters, rural noir, and an innate ability to get to the heart of what drives us all. A can’t-miss book.
—Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
Wildly entertaining, binge-worthy, and a total escape from hum drum reality, THINGS GET UGLYis pure Joe Lansdale on terrific display. In this collection of his greatest crime fiction stories, Lansdale’s scalpel-sharp wit and prose will have you cackling one minute while it chills you to the bone the next. A rollicking, sometimes haunted trip through his piney-woods soaked noir landscape, THINGS GET UGLY confirms that Joe Lansdale is to crime fiction what Willie Nelson is to country music: wholly original, genre-defying, raw, gritty, soulful, and lastly, timeless. I could not put this book down!
—May Cobb, author of The Hunting Wives
Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series) returns to the piney, dangerous woods of East Texas. In this career retrospective of his best crime stories, Lansdale shows exactly why critics continue to compare him to Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Flannery O’Connor, and William Faulkner.
Foreword by S. A. Cosby, author of the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears
Lansdale’s writing hits like a brass-knuckled punch to the face: Hard and nasty and visceral. This collection of nineteen ugly stories shows the master of the crime thriller at the height of his formidable powers.
—Marc Guggenheim, creator of Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow
In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang. When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder. A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle. A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie.
In this collection of nineteen unforgettable crime tales, Joe R. Lansdale brings his legendary mojo and witty grit to harrowing heists, revenge, homicide, and mayhem. No matter how they begin, things are bound to get ugly—and fast.
The spiritual heir to both Walt Whitman and Elmore Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale is the bard who sings America: in gem-hard, polished prose that never lets up, no matter how ugly things get. As they do indeed in the seminal retrospective that is THINGS GET UGLY, where vicious people do vicious things to each other beautifully. It should stand next to Leonard’s Three-Ten to Yuma as a remarkable testament to the power of short fiction.
—Lavie Tidhar, author of Central Station and Neom
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by S. A. Cosby Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Steel Valentine” “Driving to Geronimo’s Grave” “Mr. Bear” “The Job” “Six Finger Jack” “The Shadows, Kith and Kin” “The Ears” “Santa at the Café” “I Tell You It’s Love” “Dead Sister” “Booty and the Beast” “Boys Will Be Boys” “Billie Sue” “The Phone Woman” “Dirt Devils” “Drive in Date” “Rainy Weather” “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” “The Projectionist”
Of all my writing, the short story is my favorite form of expression,” says Lansdale, and his joy shows in the exuberant invention of these noirish tales. A few of them, like ‘The Steel Valentine’ and ‘Six-Finger Jack,’ are unpredictable but routine, and a few others, like the spooky ‘The Shadows, Kith and Kin’ and the supernatural 1958 private eye story ‘Dead Sister,’ play more to Lansdale’s wide-ranging interests than to his storytelling strengths. But even entries that don’t entirely come off, from ‘Mr. Bear’ (a man develops a surprising friendship with the psycho bear who sits next to him on a plane) to ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ (a pair of kids who ‘feed off each other’ descend into a pit of sex, drugs, and depravity), are fueled by some wildly deranged premises, and the best of them, like the supershort ‘The Job’ (an Elvis impersonator is hired as a hit man) and ‘The Ears’ (a third date is spun into a nightmare by a casual discovery), strike a note of giddy brutality other authors would find hard to match. If there’s a general weakness here apart from some sex scenes even kinky readers may find disturbing, it’s Lansdale’s fondness for killing off virtually the entire cast of so many entries. Even so, the hits keep on coming. Though the final twist in ‘Santa at the Café’ is the most predictable of all, the climactic twist in ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,’ probably the single strongest story here, will stay with you for a long time.
—Kirkus
As Matt Damon’s character Sonny Vaccaro says in his final climactic pitch to Michael Jordan in Air, ‘the rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness.’ When you read THINGS GET UGLY, you will do just that.
The collection also includes an erudite and interesting introduction by Brandon Sanderson, which is worth a look.
A worthwhile collection for Yolen fans, readers of fantasy and speculative fiction, and folks who just appreciate well written prose. She’s a master writer with a prodigious oeuvre and these are some of her best.
Meanwhile, in THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES by R.B. Lemberg, talented narrator Paul Boehmer transports listeners to a richly imagined world of magic and transformation, in a story that explores gender identity and the power of storytelling.
Cover by Elizabeth Story based on initial concepts by ;Francesca Myman
We asked ChstGPT: What horror fiction includes AI characters? ChatGPT gave these examples: – THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION by Peter Watts – “Robopocalypse” by Daniwel H. Wilson – “The Matrix Trilogy” by William Gibson
Cover by Elizabeth Story
At File 770 as part of the Pixel Scroll, Cat Eldridge shares the beginning of THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION.
And now for a most interesting Beginning….
BACK WHEN WE FIRST SHIPPED OUT I played this game with myself. Every time I thawed, I’d tally up the length of our journey so far; then check to see when we’d be if Eriophora were a time machine, if we’d been moving back through history instead of out through the cosmos. Oh look: all the way back to the Industrial Revolution in the time it took us to reach our first build. Two builds took us to the Golden Age of Islam, seven to the Shang Dynasty.
A part of the HWA Nuts & Bolts series, Tom Joyce interviews Joe R. Lansdale about writing.
On writing action sequences and fight scenes:
“I’m not proud of it,” Joe R. Lansdale said in a recent phone interview, “but I’ve been in a lot of fights. You start to learn what’s real and what isn’t.”
He draws on his background as a martial artist, bouncer, and bodyguard from a rough part of East Texas when writing his fight scenes. Most real fights are over fast, he said, and it’s possible to reflect that in your writing while still giving them impact.
“I always think less is more,” he said. “To make it seem like you’ve given a lot of description, but you haven’t. You’ve chosen the right words. You have to write like a cinematographer. I’ve always found that the greatest thing outside experience is stopping and thinking about it from an observational standpoint. The more you do it, the more you’re able to envision that action sequence.”
For action sequences, he recommends short sentences and paragraphs. Another way of injecting a sense of immediacy is to give it a stream-of-consciousness structure, as in: “I spin and dodge his fist, then hit him with …”
“Some people will say that’s a run-on sentence,” he said. “It isn’t, if it’s done right.”
The spiritual heir to both Walt Whitman and Elmore Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale is the bard who sings America: in gem-hard, polished prose that never lets up, no matter how ugly things get. As they do indeed in the seminal retrospective that is THINGS GET UGLY, where vicious people do vicious things to each other beautifully. It should stand next to Leonard’s Three-Ten to Yuma as a remarkable testament to the power of short fiction.
Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series) returns to the piney, dangerous woods of East Texas. In this career retrospective of his best crime stories, Lansdale shows exactly why critics continue to compare him to Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Flannery O’Connor, and William Faulkner.
In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang.
When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder.
A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle.
A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie.
In this collection of nineteen unforgettable crime tales, Joe R. Lansdale brings his legendary mojo and witty grit to harrowing heists, revenge, homicide, and mayhem. No matter how they begin, things are bound to get ugly—and fast.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by S. A. Cosby Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Steel Valentine” “Driving to Geronimo’s Grave” “Mr. Bear” “The Job” “Six Finger Jack” “The Shadows, Kith and Kin” “The Ears” “Santa at the Café” “I Tell You It’s Love” “Dead Sister” “Booty and the Beast” “Boys Will Be Boys” “Billie Sue” “The Phone Woman” “Dirt Devils” “Drive in Date” “Rainy Weather” “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” “The Projectionist”
I enjoyed THE ESSENTIAL PETER S. BEAGLE VOLUME II a bit more than VOLUME I. Many of the stories are grounded more in the real world with a touch of fantasy which appealed to more. Some the stories in VOLUME I were familiar to be but I hadn’t read anything in VOLUME II. I enjoyed the anticipation of wondering what I would find when I finished a story and turned the page. I loved all of the stories.
On her blog, freshly-minted Nebula Award-nominee (for the short story “Rabbit Test”) Samantha Mills announces her novel debut, THE RISE AND FALL OF WINGED ZEMOLAI. coming in 2024 from Tachyon Publications.
I’m thrilled to be working on this book with Jaymee Goh and Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications. We’ve worked together once before (when my short story “Strange Waters” was collected into THE NEW VOICES OF SCIENCE FICTION) and it was a great experience, so I really feel that the book is in good hands.
It is slated for release in early 2024. We’ll get a firmer date dialed in once I’ve gotten through initial edits — at which point I will of course be shouting it from the rooftops. ;D
As part of their survey of the 2022 Splatterpunk Award nominees, Doris V. Sutherland at Attack of the Six-Foot Tranny, praises 2022 Splatterpunk Award winner BODY SHOCKS, edited by Ellen Datlow.
Reading BODY SHOCKS feels like experiencing the Splatterpunk Awards by way of the Hugo Awards. Compared to most of the books on the ballot, the writing is polished with more care, the narrative styling more pronounced, and the satirical elements given a stronger feminist slant. Yet the macabre weirdness that we have come to expect from the Splatterpunk Awards is present and correct.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable fantasy. David Liss has a way of creating atmosphere and a sense of menace.
Design by Elizabeth Story
In an exclusive, Denise Petski of Deadline reports that Tubi has started principle photography on The Thicket, based on Joe R. Lansdale’s novel of the same name.
EXCLUSIVE: Tubi has begun principal photography on dark western thriller The Thicket, based on Joe R. Lansdale’s novel of the same name, starring and produced by Game of Thrones alum Peter Dinklage. Production is underway in Calgary, Canada.
A longtime passion project for Dinklage, The Thicket also stars Juliette Lewis (Yellowjackets), Esmé Creed-Miles (Hanna), Levon Hawke (The Crowded Room), Leslie Grace (In The Heights), Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Old Man), Macon Blair (I Care A Lot), James Hetfield (Metallica), Ned Dennehy (Peaky Blinders), Andrew Schulz (Infamous), and Arliss Howard (Mank).
Set at the turn-of-the-century, The Thicket follows an innocent young man, Jack (Hawke), who goes on an epic quest to rescue his sister Lula (Creed-Miles) after she has been kidnapped by the violent killer Cut Throat Bill (Lewis) and her gang. To save her, Jack enlists the help of a crafty bounty hunter named Reginald Jones (Dinklage), a grave-digging alcoholic son of an ex-slave (Akinnagbe), and a street-smart prostitute (Grace). The gang tracks Cut Throat Bill into the deadly no-man’s land known as The Big Thicket — a place where blood and chaos reign.
This is a smart, open-hearted, short SF novel deeply steeped in the history of the robot and mechanical man in SF, and that has plenty of its own changes to ring on those ideas, set, as I said, in a deep, complex, interesting universe of its own.
It was really, I think, our second lockdown over here, in the middle of winter, and I was supposed to be writing this big historical epic, Maror, which is out now in the UK…But I just couldn’t concentrate. And I had this image that came into my mind, of a robot holding a flower. I didn’t know anything else about it, so I wrote what I thought was a small story about the robot, and then realised I had no idea what it was doing, so wrote more to find out, and eventually realised I was writing a novel! The city I explored earlier in a short story, “Neom,” that is more or less the first chapter here, and the whole idea of the Ghost Coast and the Green Caravanserai came from a visit to the Sinai quite a long time ago, when the whole coastal area seemed half-built and abandoned. And I woke up for the sunrise as it emerged from behind the Saudi mountains on the other side of the Red Sea, and I thought, you know, I’d love to go there. So I did, even if it’s in the far future of my own imagination.
I would read many more volumes of stuff set in this world, whether the hero be Thomas, Esther, Ruby (a wolf-girl who helps them quite a bit) or even some brand new characters. Like the aforementioned Tim Powers, Liss has created a truly original and intriguing magical system and thus a world with room for many more cool adventures. Crossing my fingers for more of this!
The stories may be described as crime but quite a few of them are dark enough to be included in horror collections. Things do, indeed, get ugly. The intersection between crime and horror fiction isn’t exactly new, the two genres have been entangled since The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and the boundaries remain permeable to this day. The most well-known piece in the new collection is Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, a story that was filmed for TV by Don Coscarelli for the Masters of Horror series, and which also opened the first season in 2005. Coscarelli’s adaptation is even nastier than its source but not everything in the collection is unrelentingly grim. Lansdale has a flair for black comedy which is to the fore in another story, Driving to Geromino’s Grave, in which two Depression-era children have to bring home the rotting body of their deceased uncle. This may not be everybody’s idea of an amusing read but the witty dialogue made me laugh.
Cover by Tom Canty
David Sandner and Jacob Weisman talk about Hellhounds for My Favorite Bit.
Jacob:
Hellhounds is part of a larger collaborative project between David Sandner and myself. The larger story cycle follows the adventures of two brothers, Kenny – also known as The Prophet — and his older brother Lamond.
There’s two of us involved with this story, and while David may have a favorite bit all his own, I suspect we share the same favorite, and that is the character of Lamond that we discovered while writing this story.
Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series) returns to the piney, dangerous woods of East Texas. In this career retrospective of his best crime stories, Lansdale shows exactly why critics continue to compare him to Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Flannery O’Connor, and William Faulkner.
In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang.
When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder.
A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle.
A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie.
In this collection of nineteen unforgettable crime tales, Joe R. Lansdale brings his legendary mojo and witty grit to harrowing heists, revenge, homicide, and mayhem. No matter how they begin, things are bound to get ugly—and fast.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by S. A. Cosby Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Steel Valentine” “Driving to Geronimo’s Grave” “Mr. Bear” “The Job” “Six Finger Jack” “The Shadows, Kith and Kin” “The Ears” “Santa at the Café” “I Tell You It’s Love” “Dead Sister” “Booty and the Beast” “Boys Will Be Boys” “Billie Sue” “The Phone Woman” “Dirt Devils” “Drive in Date” “Rainy Weather” “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” “The Projectionist”
