Most Popular Books by Joe R. Lansdale

Edgar award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale beams a light on an East Texas town held in the grip of conspiracy. Charlie Garner has a bad feeling. His ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week and one quick peek into her home shows all her possessions packed up in boxes. Neighbors claim she''s running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as ''The Saucer People''; a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming. Along with his brother, Felix, and beautiful, randy journalist Amelia "Scrappy" Moon, Charlie uncovers strange and frightening details about the compound (read: a massive, doomsday storehouse of weapons, a leashed chimpanzee!) When the body of their key informer is found dead with his arms ripped out of their sockets, Charlie knows he''s in danger but remains dogged in his quest to rescue Meg. Brimming with colorful characters and Lansdale''s characteristic bounce, this rollicking crime novel examines the insidious rise of fringe groups and those under their sway with black comedy and glints of pathos.

"Wild Bill Hickok, some years after he was dead, came to Mud Creek for a shoot-out of sorts."--Back cover

Sixteen compelling tales of post-apocalyptic societies and dystopian worlds include stories by Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, W. E. B. Du Bois, Harlan Ellison, and others.

Meet Hap and Leonard, the unlikely detective duo now on screen in the highly praised series starring James Purefoy, Michael K. Williams and Christina Hendricks. 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 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. 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. Chock-full 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.

"Lansdale is an immense talent."—Booklist. Small-town juvenile delinquents, Pentecostal snake-handlers, zombies, psychopaths, and assorted freaks populate these witty and gritty tales of horror by a master of the genre. The suspenseful, action-packed tales range from visions of a post-apocalyptic world ("Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man''s Back," "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks") to alternative histories ("Trains Not Taken," "Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches"). A dozen other stories of gruesome violence and utter depravity include "The Pit," in which car trouble develops into a life-or-death struggle; "Night They Missed the Horror Show," involving an encounter with ornery rednecks; and "Hell Through a Windshield," in which a drive-in movie provides a one-way ticket to another dimension. By Bizarre Hands, Joe R. Lansdale''s debut collection of short stories, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction, and two of its tales have received Stoker awards. Lansdale''s novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted into a 2002 film, and his Hap and Leonard detective stories inspired the Sundance Channel television series. This edition features an Introduction by science-fiction novelist Lewis Shiner and an Afterword by horror fiction author Ramsey Campbell. Suggested for mature readers. www.doverpublications.com

Award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale and daughter Kasey Lansdale join forces to bring you a short story collection showcasing the new dynamic duo of supernatural sleuthing, Dana Roberts and her sidekick Jana. With two tough, resourceful women on the case, the ghosts and specters from "the other side" won''t know what hit them!

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.

I wrote ''Christmas with the Dead'' simply because I wanted to write a holiday horror story," Lansdale admits. "This was the result.

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. Plus… A hatful and a half of Joe’s notorious Texas Observer pieces that helped catapult him from obscurity into controversy; and “Miracles Ain’t What They Used to Be,” Lansdale’s passionately personal take on the eternal tussles between God and Man, Texas and America, racism and reason—and religion and common sense. And Featuring: Our Outspoken Interview, in which piney woods dialect, Bible thumpery, martial arts, crime classics and Hollywood protocols are finally awarded the attention they deserve. Or don’t.

"Legends of the Old West, plus characters both real and fictional, enliven the shenanigans, commencing with Buffalo Bill Cody, a head in a jar atop a mechanical body, escorting his Wild West Show by zeppelin to Japan."--Amazon.com.

From Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale comes a laugh out loud road novel full of outrageous wit and the power of friendship, and driven by storytelling as only Lansdale can offer.

In the field of country noir--the dark side of rural and small-town America--Lansdale staked his claim to East Texas with The Nightrunners. A ''66 Chevy bears down on the countryside, with a carful of vicious teenagers and evil of Biblical proportions, in this terrifying morality tale of sex and violence. Here''s what Publishers Weekly just said in its starred review: "Lansdale''s The Nightrunners (1987)...set new standards for the depiction of graphic violence and is probably the best novel of its type between Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs ... This upsetting look at the human capacity for evil breaks with crime novel conventions when a supernatural element enters the story in the form of the grotesque deity known as the God of All Things Sharp...The Nightrunners retains its ability to awe and to horrify."

Leonard and Hap, the oddest crime fighting couple in fiction, take a road trip and all hell is let loose...

Bill''s not overly bright, has no visible means of support, and lives with his dead mom whose social security checks will stop coming if anyone else finds out. What''s a good son to do in a situation like this? Stick up the firecracker stand across the street with two buddies, naturally. But only Bill makes it out of the holdup alive, beaten down by exhaustion, exposure, and thousands of mosquito bites from the neck up. Rescued from certain doom by a traveling freak show, Bill exploits his hideous new looks to evade police. And he won''t stand out too much among the dogmen, hermaphrodites, and the mysterious frozen man whose mute, sinister aura seems to tie them all together.

Richard Dane shoots and kills a burglar in his living room, setting off a bizarre chain of events. It starts when the thief''s father, Russell, threatens to take an eye for an eye by slaying Dane''s son. Then Dane and Russell are thrown into a violent race without rules, heading toward a grisly, dark and inevitable truth. From the author of Mucho Mojo.