A midnight train slows to a stop between stations, leading a wakeful passenger to step out and stretch his legs. The conductor really should’ve locked his compartment door better… There are thirty-three stories in this collection of Joe Lansdale short fiction, some meaty, some mini-sized. A few are so short that if you blink, you might miss them, but maybe that’s all part of Lansdale's plan: slipping an innocent-looking seed in your subconscious, there to sprout when you least expect it. Sometimes the shortest stories stick with you the longest, because you wind up filling in most of the details yourself. Tricky, that, but don’t think Lansdale didn’t set it all up like a complicated carom shot. Hello, cue ball. Completists take note: many of these stories appeared in “The King and Other Stories” and “Unchained and Unhinged,” neither of which are available electronically. Added to them are several, "The Tall Grass" included, which have never been featured in any Lansdale collection, digital or otherwise. They run the gamut from weird to horrifying to thought provoking, stories that Lansdale feels have a “sharp and memorable impact, like ice pick pokes that hopefully left no wounds.” Poke poke.
Author
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television. He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.
