The endlessly inventive mind of Joe R. Lansdale whips up yet another batch of stories to amaze, surprise, and entertain you. His new offering covers a lot of territory, producing what may be his best short story collection yet. One tale concerns an East Texas mule race in the early 1900s that proves to be an unexpected turning point and learning experience for the main character, a lifelong loser. It also chronicles the unusual circumstances of the race, which include a friendship between a rare white mule that can run like the wind, and his friend, a loyal, spotted pig. Another tale drops us into the disturbed mind of a mass murderer and his friendship with the shadows. Two others stories reintroduce us to the supernatural adventures of Reverend Rains, the flawed hero from Lansdale's cult favorite novel, Dead in the West. Here ghouls prowl and werewolves howl. There's a poetic collaboration with Melissa Mia Hall about the nature of loneliness and loss that echoes back to science fiction stories of an earlier time, as well as a famous, award winning novella reprinted here for the first time in several years about a clutch of unusual crime solvers. Read about a world where the dead almost rule, and venture into an alternate universe that is the background for perhaps the strangest tale of all, an adventure concerning an earnest and horny steam shovel named Bill, and his challenge to do the right thing at all costs. It's the usual wild and crowd pleasing display of what has become a subgenre of modern literature as only Joe R. Lansdale can present it: Tales Lansdalien. Welcome to his world.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Lansdale's restlessness with the conventions of any one genre is proved once again by this marvelously mixed collection whose nine stories provoke responses ranging from cold chills to gut-busting belly laughs. The unsettling title tale puts the reader inside the cobwebbed mind of a mass murderer, who cloaks the truth of the business he's about in eerily self-deceiving metaphors. "White Mule, Spotted Pig," about a redneck's antic efforts to capture and race a legendary wild white mule, reads like a contemporary tall tale out of Mark Twain's Calaveras County. Two period pieces feature Jebidiah Rains, the author's gunslinging preacher from his novel Dead in the West: "Deadman's Road" pits Rains against a nightmarish walking corpse animated by a live hornet's nest in its chest, while "The Gentleman's Hotel" has Rains battling a horror from the prehistoric past that has turned its small corner of the southwest into an arid ghost town. Laconic, ghoulish and often outrageously bawdy, these stories are never less than solid entertainment. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Never one to remain hemmed in by a specific genre, Lansdale runs the gamut of fanciful motifs from pure horror to whimsical fantasy in his new story collection. Lansdale's world is by turns darkly apocalyptic or comically surreal, and its inhabitants are loners, losers, and mass murderers. In the title story, Lansdale steps inside the mind of Charles Whitman, the 1966 University of Texas tower sniper, to expose his inner demons. In "The Long Dead Day," the survivor of a spreading plague faces the grim duty of dispatching his infected wife and daughter. Lansdale is equally at home with wisecracking humor as with spine-chilling terror. In the sardonic "The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-out Found in a Harlequin Romance," a down-on-his-luck would-be writer finds absurdity and inspiration in a disquieting discovery folded inside a used romance novel. Meanwhile, "Bill, the Steam Shovel" recounts the adventures of a sentient earthmover. Whatever creative tricks Lansdale pulls out of his sleeve, his writing never fails to deliver an emotional kick while it stirs the imagination. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Joe, The Reverend and Harlequin Fold-Out,
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This review is from: The Shadows Kith and Kin (Hardcover)
Another five stars collection of (partly) unreleased tales by Hisownself.
Do not miss the return of Reverend Jebidiah Rains from "Dead in the West" his smoking guns fight again against Evil! Another interesting issue is the reprinting of the novellette "The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance": pure Lansdale, yummm... But all the contents are outstanding so be sure you'll have a good read.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Call Him Joe; Call him MoJoe now; this book is that good!!!,
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This review is from: The Shadows Kith and Kin (Hardcover)
In The Shadows, Kith and Kin, Joe R. Lansdale attempts to show you that you've got something in common with either the strange, bizarre, sick, or horrific. Each story seems to take on characters that do unholy things or characters who are so far outside of the realm of normalcy that it doesn't seem possible that there is any point of writing about them: they're too d**n waked out for anyone to believe in them. But then MoJoe Hisownself not only makes you believe in them, he makes you pull for them, cheer for them, pray for them, and even cry for them. You'll get pulled into their world in spite of the distance between you and them and you both come out better for it. The only story reprinted in this collection is the 1992 Bram Stoker winner, "The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance," which considering it's so good isn't a bad thing for someone coming to Lansdale for the first time. Even if you've read it before, it's so good it begs for rereading. My favorite story is Joe's take on both The Little Engine That Could and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel which he calls "Bill, the Little Steam Shovel." Bill here has to learn to believe in himself, see? He's got to believe that he can work, that he has a Dave who will care for him, that he's got a place in society, and, above all, that he can get some bumper from Miss Maudie. Along the way he's befriended by the wise and tuckered-but-tough steam shovel, Gabe, an unforgettable and kind and wonderful character. This book was heavily advertised as the return of Reverend Jebidiah Rains, whom we haven't seen sense the genre-generating novel, Dead in the West. Here we get him in two tales: "Deadman's Road" (a morality tale about hateful and recalcitrant sinners who have no human compassion and the sacrifice that some times has to be made for God's moral order) and "The Gentleman's Hotel" (a Lansdale type of action-packed, true love story mixed with werewolves that would make Lon Chaney, Jr. jealous -- they're probably just as foolishly arrogant as Chaney was, too). You also get two post-Apocalypse tales, "The Long Dead Day" and "Alone." Both are sadly and woefully nihilistic and rival Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, even coming in under word-weight. It's like watching a bantam-weight battling a heavyweight and taking him the full count. Then, of course, you've got a white-trash, down-home, Southern-fried tale that regales its reader with brilliantly cooked up mishaps: "White Mule, Spotted Pig." The opening tale, from which the collection takes its name, is a truly scary story about a young man that decides to become a sniper in a college's bell tower; realistically scary and woefully timely. Joe Lansdale has never been better in creating well-crafted prose than he is in this collection. The book itself, stitched together by the Subterranean Press, is simply pretty: the boards are covered in nice, dark green cloth and the end papers are textured, (nice)rust orange, and there is even a signature page with Joe's sig. The full-color cover by Mark A. Nelson is a classic, depicting scenes from four of the stories. This is a great addition to Joe's oeuvre, and it proves that he is still hitting homeruns every time he steps up to bat.
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