Search Worlds Without End

Bleeding Shadows is Joe R. Lansdale's largest, most varied collection to date. Weighing in at 480 pages and 150,000 words, these stories, poems, and novellas--supplemented by the author's introduction and by an invaluable set of story notes--move effortlessly from horror, adventure, and suspense to literary pastiche. It is, by any measure, a major addition to an already impressive body of work.

The volume opens with "Torn Away," in which a small town sheriff encounters a man on the run from his own predatory shadow. The stories that follow come from all points of the narrative compass. In "Morning, Noon, and Night," a young boy stumbles across a monstrous, multi-faceted killer from which there is no escape. "The Bleeding Shadow" is a tale of music, monsters, and deals-with-the devil set in post-WWII Texas. In "Star Light, Eyes Bright," an ordinary husband makes a startling discovery, one that leads to an unimaginable act of personal transformation. Elsewhere, the author offers us twisted Christmas stories ("Santa at the Café"), tales of a zombie apocalypse ("A Visit with Friends"), and one story--"Christmas with the Dead"--that encompasses both of these elements. Other highlights include a pair of informed, affectionate acts of literary homage. "Metal Men of Mars" pays tribute to the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, while in "Dread Island," the masterful novella that concludes this collection, the world of Huckleberry Finn merges seamlessly with the worlds of H. P. Lovecraft and Joel Chandler Harris.

Sometimes funny, often horrifying, and always compulsively readable, this generous gathering of stories--few of which have previously appeared in book form--constitutes a significant publishing event. Bleeding Shadows is an indispensable, vastly entertaining volume, one that no admirer of Joe R. Lansdale's distinctive brand of fiction can afford to miss.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Torn Away
• The Bleeding Shadow
• A Visit with Friends
• Christmas Monkeys
• Christmas with the Dead
• Quarry
• Six Finger Jack
• Mr. Bear
• Old Man in the Motorized Chair
• Apache Witch
• Soldierin'
• Death Before Bed
• Apocalypse
• A Strange Poem
• Little Words
• The Man
• Dead Air
• Dog in Winter
• Hide and Horns
• The Stars are Falling
• Metal Men of Mars
• Morning, Noon, and Night
• Santa at the Café
• What Happened to Me
• Oink
• Star Light, Eyes Bright
• Dead Sister
• Shooting Pool
• The Folding Man
• Dread Island
• Story Notes

Joe R. Lansdale compiles and introduces 26 of his own favorite and most violent dark horror tales in this review of his work. "God of the Razor" introduces the dark god behind serial killers. A martial arts fight to the death between a reluctant champion and a sadistic alpha male is featured in "Master of Misery." Human sacrifice to ensure prosperity and as a coming-of-age ritual, are themes of "On a Dark October" and "Duck Hunt." In "The Fat Man," young boys learn the hard way that some mysteries should not be investigated. Many of the tales are truly weird, such as "Chompers," a story of false teeth with an appetite. All of the stories are individually introduced by Lansdale, who explains the humorous, weird, and sometimes sad genesis for each.

Table of Contents

• Foreword: The Remains of My Days... - essay by Joe R. Lansdale
• God of the Razor - (1987)
• The Dump - (1981)
• Fish Night - (1982)
• Chompers - (1982)
• The Fat Man - (1987)
• On a Dark October - (1984)
• The Shaggy House - (1986)
• The Man Who Dreamed - (1984)
• Walks - (1997)
• Last of the Hopeful - (1997)
• Duck Hunt - (1986)
• Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock - (1984)
• I Tell You It's Love - (1983)
• Pilots - (1989)
• In the Cold, Dark Time - (1990)
• Bar Talk - (1990)
• Listen - (1983)
• Personality Problem - (1983)
• A Change of Lifestyle - (1984)
• The Companion - (1995) - by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale and Kasey Lansdale
• Old Charlie - (1984)
• Billie Sue - (1996)
• Bestsellers Guaranteed - (1985)
• Fire Dog - (2003)
• Cowboy - (1997)
• Master of Misery - (1995)

This collection of sixteen tales of horror and the macabre contains the kinds of stories one reads compulsively -- helplessly enthralled by their seductive allure, their perversions and truths, their violence and centered peace. The morbid curiosity you might not knowingly possess is unstoppably aroused, teased, provoked, and ultimately driven to a consummately satisfying, eminently unsurpassed conclusion of literary pleasure. Alternately terrifying and fascinating, this collection is more than a nightmarish excursion into the hellish simplicity of honest emotion and authentic humanity, full of the flashback persistence of unwholesome eroticism and an addiction to sin. It is also a furious wellspring of insight and virtue -- a painfully funny one, in fact, alive with the bittersweet irony that insinuates itself into so much of life and fiction alike.

Table fo Contents

• Author's Preface (1989) - essay by Joe R. Lansdale
• Introduction (1989) - essay by Lewis Shiner
• Fish Night - (1982) - short story
• The Pit - (1987) - short story
• Duck Hunt - (1986) - short story
• By Bizarre Hands - (1988) - short story
• The Steel Valentine - (1989) - short story
• I Tell You It's Love - (1983) - short story
• Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches - (1986) - short story
• Boys Will Be Boys - (1985) - novelette
• The Fat Man and the Elephant - (1989) - short story
• Hell Through a Windshield - (1985) - essay
• Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock - (1984) - short story
• Trains Not Taken - (1987) - short story
• Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back - (1986) - short story
• The Windstorm Passes - (1986) - short story
• Night They Missed the Horror Show - (1988) - short story
• On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks - (1989) - novelette

"I was living in a pulp writer fury, a storm of imagination." So Joe R. Lansdale, award-winning author of more than twenty novels and two hundred short works, describes the birth of his desire to be a writer after encountering pulp storytelling as a kid in TV, comics, and books. Now Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire collects eight stories where Lansdale pays tribute to the rip-roaring tales of his youth.

Dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, "Under the Warrior Star" finds hero Braxton Booker on another, battle-wracked planet, while "Tarzan and the Land That Time Forgot" was expressly permitted by the Burroughs estate. In "Dead on the Bones," a Conjure Man facilitates a boxing match between the living and the dead, with a twist. "The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning" crosses Poe with horrors that could have walked straight out of Lovecraft. Meanwhile, in "Naked Angel" a cop discovers a dead woman encased in ice on the noir streets of Los Angeles, not realizing he shares a personal connection with her. Other stories here bring readers face to face with vampires and far stranger creatures, all in Lansdale's signature, Texas Mojo style.

Lansdale is rightly recognized as one of the most distinctive voices in modern fiction, pulp or otherwise. From Venus to vampires, Dead on the Bones is a fine, thoroughly enjoyable demonstration of why.

Table of Contents:

• The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning - (2013)
• The Redheaded Dead - [Reverend Jedidiah Mercer] - (2014)
• King of the Cheap Romance - (2013)
• Naked Angel - (2011)
• Dead on the Bones - (2014)
• Tarzan and the Land That Time Forgot - (2013)
• Under the Warrior Star - (2010)
• The Wizard of the Trees - (2015)

Deadwood meets Cthulhu in this wild and profane Western romp featuring zombies, werewolves, evil spirits, and one pissed-off gun-slinging preacher.

The Wild West has never seen the likes of Reverend Jebediah Mercer, a hard man wielding a burning Bible in the battle between God and the Devil, in an endless struggle he's not sure he cares who wins. Laced with fast-paced action, nonstop humor, and spine-tingling horror, Deadman's Road is your ride to hell, in which a vengeful shaman curses the town by conjuring a seemingly unstoppable army of the undead; an ill-advised shortcut leads to a bees' nest of terror; a man stands condemned, not for murdering his wife but for raising the Lovecraftian horror that killed her; a woman is attacked by werewolves and left for dead in a ghost town; and a mining camp faces off with a horde of cannibalistic fiends.

From the Dusty Great Depression to the far future, to the wild west, to the era of big fin automobiles, soda shops and double features, as well as dark journey on an icy ocean full of ravenous sharks and a fantastic shipwreck that leads its survivors into a nightmarish Lovecraftian world of monsters and mystery, Joe R. Lansdale returns with a pack of stories for your consumption and enjoyment.

There's even killer machines, a big ole grizzly bear, and entertaining story notes.

Joe R. Lansdale has been writing novels and stories, as well as screenplays and comics, for over forty-five years, and this is his latest concoction, encompassing stories informed by a variety of genres, but not quite comfortably fitting into any of them.

The reason is simple.

Joe R. Lansdale is his own genre.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Driving to Geronimo's Grave
• In the Mad Mountains
• Wrestling Jesus
• Robo Rapid
• The Projectionist
• Everything Sparkles in Hell

We're pleased to announce a weird western novel by the brothers Lansdale, one with a killer cover by Timothy Truman.

If the Western town of Falling Rock isn't dangerous enough due to drunks, fast guns and greedy miners, it gets a real dose of ugly when a soulless, dynamite-loving bounty hunter named Smith rides into town to bring back a bounty, dead or alive -- preferably dead. In the process, Smith sets off an explosive chain of events that send him straight to the waiting room in Hell where he is offered a one-time chance to absolve himself.

Satan, a bartender also known as Snappy, wants Smith to hurry back to earth and put a very bad hombre out of commission. Someone Smith has already met in the town of Falling Rock. A fellow named Quill, who has, since Smith's departure, sold his soul to the Old Ones, and has been possessed by a nasty, scaly, winged demon with a cigar habit and a bad attitude. Quill wants to bring about the destruction of the world, not to mention the known universe, and hand it all over: moon, stars, black spaces, cosmic dust, as well as all of humanity, to the nasty Lovecraftian deities that wait on the other side of the veil. It's a bargain made in worse places than Hell.

Even Satan can't stand for that kind of dark business. The demon that has possessed Quill, a former co-worker of Satan, has gone way too far, and there has to be a serious correction.

And though Smith isn't so sure humanity is that big of a loss, the alternative of him cooking eternally while being skewered on a meat hook isn't particularly appealing. Smith straps on a gift from Snappy, a holstered Colt pistol loaded with endless silver ammunition, and riding a near-magical horse named Shadow, carrying an amazing deck of cards that can summon up some of the greatest gunfighters and killers the west has ever known, he rides up from hell, and back into Falling Rock, a town that can be entered, but can't be left.

It's a opportunity not only for Smith to experience action and adventure and deal with the living dead and all manner of demonic curses and terrible prophecies, it's a shot at love with a beautiful, one-eyed, redheaded-darling with a whip, a woman named Payday. But it's an even bigger shot at redemption.

Saddle up, partner. It's time to ride into an old fashioned pulp and horror adventure full of gnashing teeth, exploding dynamite, pistol fire, and a few late night kisses.

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. The stories are varied in setting and theme, but they are all 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."

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Joe R. Lansdale
• The Pit - (1987) - short story
• Not from Detroit - (1988) - short story
• Booty and the Beast - short story
• Steppin' Out, Summer, '68 - (1991) - short story
• Incident On and Off a Mountain Road - (1991) - novelette
• My Dead Dog, Bobby - (1987) - short story
• Trains Not Taken - (1987) - short story
• Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back - (1986) - short story
• Dog, Cat, and Baby - (1987) - short story
• Mister Weed-Eater - (1993) - novelette
• By Bizarre Hands - (1988) - short story
• The Fat Man and the Elephant - (1989) - short story
• The Phone Woman - (1990) - short story
• Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches - (1986) - short story
• By the Hair of the Head - (1983) - short story
• The Job - (1989) - short story
• Godzilla's Twelve-Step Program - (1994) - short story
• Drive-In Date - (1991) - short story
• Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland - (1989) - short story
• The Steel Valentine - (1989) - short story
• Night They Missed the Horror Show - (1988) - short story

From an Edgar award-winning author comes the gripping and unexpected tale of a lost town and the dark secrets that lie beneath the glittering waters of an East Texas lake.

Daniel Russell was only thirteen years old when his father tried to kill them both by driving their car into Moon Lake. Miraculously surviving the crash--and growing into adulthood--Daniel returns to the site of this traumatic incident in the hopes of recovering his father's car and bones. As he attempts to finally put to rest the memories that have plagued him for years, he discovers something even more shocking among the wreckage that has ties to a twisted web of dark deeds, old grudges, and strange murders.

As Daniel diligently follows where the mysterious trail of vengeance leads, he unveils the heroic revelation at its core.

Stoker Award winning and World Fantasy Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Silver Scream (1988), edited by David J. Schow. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection (1989), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1951-2000 (2012), edited by John Pelan, and The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners (2012), edited by Joe R. Lansdale. It is included in the collections By Bizarre Hands (1989), High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale (2000), and The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010).

BFA and Stoker Award winning and WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Book of the Dead (1989), edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector. A chapbook edition appeared in 1991 and the story was reprinted in Weird Tales, February-March 2007. The story has also been adepted to a four part graphic novel miniseries.

On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks can be found in the anthologies The Mammoth Book of Zombies (1993), edited by Stephen Jones, The Urban Fantasy Anthology (2011), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale, and Extreme Zombies (2012), edited by Paula Guran. It is included in the collections By Bizarre Hands (1989), The Long Ones (2001) and The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Cowpunk Anthology - (1989) - essay by Joe R. Lansdale and Pat LoBrutto
• Black Boots - (1989) - short story by Robert R. McCammon
• Thirteen Days of Glory - (1989) - short story by Scott A. Cupp
• Gold - (1989) - novelette by Lewis Shiner
• The Tenth Toe - (1989) - short story by F. Paul Wilson
• Sedalia - (1989) - novelette by David J. Schow
• Trapline - (1989) - short story by Ardath Mayhar
• Trail of the Chromium Bandits - (1989) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
• Dinker's Pond - (1989) - short story by Richard Laymon
• Stampede - (1989) - short story by Melissa Mia Hall
• Razored Saddles - (1989) - short story by Robert Petitt
• Empty Places - (1989) - short story by Gary L. Raisor
• Tony Red Dog - (1989) - novelette by Neal Barrett, Jr.
• The Passing of the Western - (1989) - short story by Howard Waldrop
• Eldon's Penitente - (1989) - short story by Lenore Carroll
• The Job - (1989) - short story by Joe R. Lansdale
• I'm Always Here - (1989) - short story by Richard Christian Matheson
• "Yore Skin's Jes's Soft 'N Purty..." He Said. (Page 243) - (1989) - short story by Chet Williamson

Retro Pulp Tales is a limited edition anthology published by Subterranean Press in 2006, edited by Joe R. Lansdale. It tied in winning the 2006 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology (the other winning title was "Mondo Zombie" edited by John Skipp).

It contains new stories written in the style of the pulp magazines of the early 20th century. Lansdale's guidelines for Retro Pulp Tales were basic: "Write a story in the vein of the old pulps... that takes place before 1960, and with the restrictions of those times."

It includes contributions by Bill Crider, Stephen Gallagher, Melissa Mia Hall, Alex Irvine, Tim Lebbon, Kim Newman, Norman Partridge, Gary Phillips, James Reasoner, Al Sarrantonio, Chet Williamson, and F. Paul Wilson. This collection was issued as a trade hardcover, a numbered limited edition, and a lettered special edition. All issues have long since sold out

This landmark anthology collects for the first-time ever the Bram Stoker Award-winning short stories and novellas from legendary authors such as Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Peter Straub, David Morrell, Jack Ketchum, Joe R. Lansdale, George R. R. Martin, and many, many others! The Stoker Award is presented annually by the Horror Writers Association, and this volume represents the very best fiction the horror field has to offer from the last decade!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Joe R. Lansdale
• The Scent of Vinegar - (1994) - novelette by Robert Bloch
• The Calling - (1990) - shortstory by David B. Silva
• Chatting With Anubis - (1995) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• The Pear-Shaped Man - (1987) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• The Night They Missed the Horror Show - (1988) - shortstory by Joe R. Lansdale
• Lady Madonna - (1991) - shortstory by Nancy Holder
• The Box - (1994) - shortstory by Jack Ketchum
• Stephen - (1990) - novelette by Elizabeth Massie
• The Red Tower - (1996) - shortstory by Thomas Ligotti
• The Boy Who Came Back from the Dead - (1987) - novelette by Alan Rodgers
• The Night We Buried Road Dog - (1993) - novella by Jack Cady
• Metalica - (1995) - novelette by P. D. Cacek
• Orange Is for Anguish, Blue Is for Insanity - (1999) - shortfiction by David Morrell

This story originally appeared in the Jonn Joseph Adams anthology Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom (2012). It can also be found in the collection Bleeding Shadows (2013)

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

"Even before Morley told him, Dennis knew things were about to get ugly. A man did not club you unconscious, bring you to his estate and tie you to a chair in an empty storage shed out back of the place if he merely intended to give you a valentine. Morley had found out about him and Julie."

A short story in the tradition of Fleming or Dahl, "The Steel Valentine" is a gem, exemplifying the suspense writing of Joe Lansdale.

This story originally appeared in the collection By Bizarre Hands (1989). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Third Annual Collection (1990), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. The story is included in the collection High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale (2000). Chapbook editions of this story appeared in 1991 and 2011.

Edgar Allan Poe's great private investigator, Auguste Dupin, gets a make-over in this unusual adventure involving a bloody mystery dipped deep in the strange.

A young woman comes to Dupin and his assistant for help concerning her increasingly obsessed brother; obsessed with the dark world that sets alongside our own, where strange creatures dwell and even stranger events occur. A world where our laws of physics are no longer applicable. A world with its own geometry of evil. It's the place from which all our nightmares spring. And now that dimensional world, due to spells and sacrifices, is wide open into our own, releasing the deadliest denizen of the dark - The God of the Razor.

It's a case that will require all of Dupin's knowledge and the highest courage from his faithful assistant, as they traverse the Parisian streets, as well as the famous Catacombs of skulls and bones, in search of answers.

Whether featuring tattooed demon hunters, angst-y vampires, supernatural gumshoes, or pixelated pixies, Urban Fantasy mashes up old-school tales with pop culture, creating iconic characters, diverging moralities, and complex settings. Urban fantasy is finally showcased in this star-studded collection, representing all three of its distinct styles, including the playful new mythologies of Charles de Lint, the sexy paranormal romances of Patricia Briggs, and the gritty urban noir of Neil Gaiman.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2011) - essay by Peter S. Beagle
• A Personal Journey into Mythic Fiction - essay by Charles de Lint
• A Bird That Whistles - (1989) - shortstory by Emma Bull
• Make a Joyful Noise - (2005) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories - (1996) - novelette by Neil Gaiman
• On the Road to New Egypt - (1995) - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
• Julie's Unicorn - (1995) - novelette by Peter S. Beagle
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Urban Fantasy - essay by Paula Guran
• Companions to the Moon - (2007) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• A Haunted House of Her Own - (2009) - shortfiction by Kelley Armstrong
• She's My Witch - (1995) - shortstory by Norman Partridge
• Kitty's Zombie New Year - (2007) - shortstory by Carrie Vaughn
• Seeing Eye - (2009) - novelette by Patricia Briggs
• Hit - (2008) - shortstory by Bruce McAllister
• Boobs - (1989) - shortstory by Suzy McKee Charnas
• Farewell, My Zombie - (2009) - shortfiction by Francesca Lia Block
• We Are Not a Club, but We Sometimes Share a Room - essay by Joe R. Lansdale
• The White Man - (2004) - novelette by Thomas M. Disch
• Gestella - (2001) - novelette by Susan Palwick
• The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - (2009) - novelette by Holly Black
• Talking Back to the Moon - shortfiction by Steven R. Boyett
• On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks - (1989) - novelette by Joe R. Lansdale
• The Bible Repairman - (2006) - shortstory by Tim Powers
• Father Dear - (1983) - shortstory by Al Sarrantonio

They did it -- they launched the damned nukes and the world went pretty much straight to hell. Not many survived, but some of those who did emerged twenty years later, to a world where mutant whales heaved themselves across the blackened, dry seabed of the Pacific, and the roses... oh God, the roses.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Nukes (1986) edited by John Maclay and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2010. The story can also be found in anthologies The Year's Best Horror Stories: XV (1987), edited by Karl Edward Wagner, Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams, and Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (2015), also edited by Adams. It is included in the collection By Bizarre Hands (1989) and High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale (2000). Standalone editions of the story also exist.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In this Texas-sized thriller, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine-best friends, freelance troublemakers, and tough guys with good intentions-find themselves in the crosshairs of the Dixie Mafia.

Hap is an East Texas smart mouth with a weakness for southern women. Leonard is a gay, black veteran pining for a lost love. They're not the makings of your typical dynamic duo, but never underestimate the power of a shared affinity for stirring up trouble and causing mayhem.

When an old friend asks Leonard to rescue his daughter from an abusive, no-good drug dealer, he gladly agrees and, of course, invites Hap along for the fun. Even though the dealer may be lowly, he is on the bottom rung of the Dixie Mafia, and when Hap and Leonard come calling, the Mafia feels a little payback is in order.

Cars crash, shotguns blast, and people die, but Hap and Leonard come out on top. Unfortunately for them, now they're facing not only jail time but also the legendary-and lethal-Vanilla Ride, who is still out to claim the price on their heads. Full of twists and turns, gunfire and gaffes, this hilarious, rip-roaring novel will have readers turning the pages faster than a Texas tornado.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Stories by Mama Lansdale's Youngest Boy) - essay
• 5 - The White Rabbit - (1981) - short story
• 17 - The Dump - (1981) - short story
• 23 - God of the Razor - [The God of the Razor] - (1987) - short story
• 35 - Chompers - (1982) - short story
• 39 - The Fat Man - (1987) - short story
• 49 - Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland - (1989) - short story
• 53 - On a Dark October - (1984) - short story
• 59 - My Dead Dog, Bobby - (1987) - short story
• 61 - Bestsellers Guaranteed - (1985) - short story
• 77 - Dog, Cat, and Baby - (1987) - short story
• 79 - The Shaggy House - (1986) - short story
• 89 - By the Hair of the Head - (1983) - short story
• 103 - Not from Detroit - (1988) - short story
• 115 - Pentecostal Punk Rock - (1989) - short story
• 127 - The Job - non-genre - (1989) - short story

Friday night at the Orbit Drive-in: a circus of noise, sex, teenage hormones, B-movie blood, and popcorn. On a cool, crisp summer night, with the Texas stars shining down like rattlesnake eyes, movie-goers for the All-Night Horror Show are trapped in the drive-in by a demonic-looking comet. Then the fun begins. If the movie-goers try to leave, their bodies dissolve into goo. Cowboys are reduced to tears. Lovers quarrel. Bikini-clad women let their stomachs' sag, having lost the ambition to hold them in. The world outside the six monstrous screens fades to black while the movie-goers spiral into base humanity, resorting to fighting, murdering, crucifying, and cannibalizing to survive.

Part dark comedy part horror show, Lansdale's cult Drive-In books are as shocking and entertaining today as they were 20 years ago.

When a group of friends decided to spend a day at the world's largest Drive-In theater horror fest, they expected to see tons of bloody murders, rampaging madmen, and mayhem - but only on the screen. As a mysterious force traps all the patrons inside the Drive-In, the worst in humanity comes out.

Filled with Lansdale's razor whit and black humor, The Drive-In is a darkly humorous masterpiece! Collected here is the complete four issue series with bonus material including a new interview with Lansdale himself about the writing of The Drive-In.

Just when they thought it was safe to leave the drive-in, the survivors of the Orbit's weekly All Night Horror Show discover that their old world has been reduced to a single cracked highway surrounded on all sides by a prehistoric jungle filled with man-eating dinosaurs. For a while, Jack and his friends are content to make the best of life in the Stone Age--until they meet a sexy martial arts expert from Nacogdoches, Texas, named Grace who wants to find out what's at the end of the road.

Now things really get weird as they encounter a town where public suicide is encouraged, a forest of old movie posters, movie mags, and carnivorous film, and Popalong Cassidy--a man-monster cowboy with a television head and a taste for human munchies--whose church of film and pain is presided over by the alien drive-in gods: the Producer and the Great Director.

Even more outrageous than the horrifying original, The Drive-In 2 is a delightfully down-and-dirty romp through the dark backcountry of our own imagination, the kind of stuff that nightmares--and B movies--are made of it truly is not just another one of them sequels.

The wild and weird wonders of the Drive-In world continue in this third volume, The Drive-In: The Bus Tour. If you thought the first two books in the series were wacky, this one moves into a whole new realm of whacked and confused. Floods of Biblical proportions. A catfish that would swallow Jonah's whale. Horrid creatures almost as evil as man, and a look at the very machinery of the Drive-In Cosmos, and beyond.

This is Joe R. Lansdale at his ironic best, dissecting humanity with a scalpel and a chainsaw. And then it all gets the hammer. The Drive-in, a B Movie with Blood and Popcorn, first published in the eighties, was a milestone for horror fiction as satire, and influenced writers in many genres, from horror to science fiction to fantasy to humor to the literary novel of the strange. Here's your chance to leap back into Lansdale's classic universe and take a whirl on the amusement rides of one of this generation's most unusual novelistic minds.

A rip-roaring, high-octane, Texas-sized thriller, featuring two friends, one vixen, a crew of washed-up radicals, loads of money, and bloody mayhem.

Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are best friends, yet they couldn't be more different. Hap is an east Texas white-boy with a weakness for Texas women. Leonard is a gay, black Vietnam vet. Together, they steer up more commotion than a fire storm. But that's just the way they like it. So when an ex-flame of Hap's returns promising a huge score. Hap lets Leonard in on the scam, and that's when things get interesting.

Chockfull of action and laughs, Savage Season is the masterpiece of dark suspense that introduced Hap and Leonard to the thriller scene. It hasn't been the same since.

A tribute to such works as Richard Brautigan's Hawkline Monster, and Philip Jose Farmer's wackier novels, like The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Zeppelin's West is a wild parody of Westerns, Alternate Universe novels, classic science fiction and horror, comic books, pulps, and dime novels.

A Lansdalean holiday into weirdness and camp, this is a special confection from one of today's most original, multi-award winning writers.

The Wild West Show travels by Zeppelin to perform before a Shogun, soon to be emperor of Japan, only to discover the Frankenstein monster is being whittled down slowly and ground into aphrodisiacs by the would-be ruler. Buffalo Bill, who, due to a recent accident, exists only as a battery powered head in a jar of liquid manufactured from the best that modern science and pig urine has to offer, along with Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, and a cast of historical as well as literary characters, rescue the monster, only to be shot down over the Pacific, where they are saved from sharks by Captain Nemo and his intellectual seal, Ned.

And then things get weird.

Ned Lives!

That's right. Ned the Seal of Zeppelins West survived the shark attack from his last adventure, and he's back in a new escapade starring Jules Verne, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells and his Martian invaders, as well as a number of surprise guests you may or may not recognize.

Yes, my friends, it's a story of Ned the Seal, adventurer, future dime novelist and fish lover, in a world not of his making. Not of his choice. In fact, no one knows for sure who made it or chose it. And boy is it a mess.

Besides our plucky seal, here too is Rikwalk, the forty foot tall ape. Beadle and John Feather, the Masters of the giant metal steam man of the prairie, stoked up and ready to fight Martian war machines.

Not since you stubbed your big toe on your way to the toilet in the middle of the night have there been so many surprises. Flaming London is a pure fun romp you can ride without benefit of bridle or saddle and it won't hurt your toe.

So kick back, turn on the fan, pull the covers up to your chin, prop up your back, and read this tale of seals unchained, Steam unharnessed, ruthless Martian invaders, and heroes.

And don't forget the fish.

Arguably (and who doesn't like to argue?) the world's bestselling cult author, Joe R. Lansdale is celebrated across several continents for his dark humor, his grimly gleeful horror, and his outlaw politics. Welcome to Texas. With hits like Bubba Ho-Tep and The Drive-In the Lansdale secret was always endangered, and the spectacular new Hap and Leonard Sundance TV series is busily blowing whatever cover Joe had left.

Backwoods noir some call it; others call it redneck surrealism. Joe's signature style is on display here in all its grit, grime, and glory, beginning with two (maybe three) previously unpublished Hap and Leonard tales revealing the roots of their unlikely partnership.

Table of Contents:

• The Parable of the Stick - short story
• Apollo Red - short story
• Short Night - short story
• Miracles Ain't What They Used to Be - essay
• "That's How You Clean a Squirrel" - interview of Joe R. Lansdale by Terry Bisson
• Dark Inspiration - essay
• The Drowned Man - essay
• Darkness in the East - essay
• Doggone Justice - essay
• The Day Before the Day After - essay