Lansdale, Joe R.

Average customer rating:

Sadly, a lesser effort
A Touch of the Supernatural
The perfect dish
Homespun Horror
A Supernatural Thriller

Lost Echoes
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0307275442
Release Date: 2007-02-13

Book Description

Since a mysterious childhood illness, Harry Wilkes has experienced horrific visions. Gruesome scenes emerge to replay themselves before his eyes. Triggered by simple sounds, these visions occur anywhere a tragic event has happened. Now in college, Harry feels haunted and turns to alcohol to dull his visionary senses. One night, he sees a fellow drunk easily best three muggers. In this man, Harry finds not only a friend that will help him kick the booze, but also a sensei who will teach him to master his unusual gift. Soon Harry’s childhood crush, Kayla, comes and asks for help solving her father’s murder. Unsure of how it will affect him, Harry finds the strength to confront the dark secrets of the past, only to unveil the horrors of the present.

Customer Reviews:

Sadly, a lesser effort.......2007-06-07

Now, I love Joe, and any new story from him is a cause to celebrate, but I felt that "Lost Echoes" was definitely a lesser effort. The idea of traumatic events trapped in sound is a great hook, but the story is weak and the characters are nowhere near as colorful as his usual cast. Some of the pivitol action is as cliched as old movie serials, but without the sense of over-the-top fun that is Joe's trademark. I've turned a lot of people into fans of Joe's work, but I wouldn't start anyone out by loaning them this one. I'd rank "Lost Echoes" a little higher than "Freezer Burn" but it is nowhere near the wild ride of "Mucho Mojo" or "Two Bear Mambo," nor as thoughtful as "A Fine Dark Line" or "The Bottoms."

A Touch of the Supernatural.......2007-05-10

Harry Wilkes is a college student who has visions through sounds due to a severe ear infection when he was a child. He developed a drinking problem due to the horror of his visions. After childhood friend Kayla comes back into his life looking for help into solving the suspicious suicide death of her father, Harry takes his life in hand and deals with his gift (or curse) head-on.

I've never read Joe Lansdale before LOST ECHOES so I didn't know what to expect. I have so many authors that I do read that it is hard to break in a new one. I'm glad I gave this book a shot. The plot was unique, tightly-woven and compelling. So many crime novels follow a pretty standard outline which tend to produce cookiecutter books. The characters were young, not even twenty which again is quite different from the more popular world-weary, jaded types that populate this genre. I'm not sure if this is intended as a series, but I hope it is.

The perfect dish.......2007-05-08

First: the ingredients--mystery, horror, suspense, the paranormal, sex, some ugly ultra-violence, corrupt hillbilly law enforcement, and the sounds, tastes and smells of East Texas.

The cook--the master of this sort of dish. There's also dessert--some are not aware that JRL is a martial arts expert as well as a great fiction writer. In LOST ECHOES we get a taste of the martial arts along with the usual dollops of more conventional violence.

This is a Don't Miss book. Nobody does this sort of thing better than JRL.

Homespun Horror.......2007-05-07

Joe Lansdale's new book is a blast to read. Just settle back in and get ready to have a dose of realistic heroes, weird powers, martial arts madness, and some of the most fun dialogue you'll run across this year.

College student Harry Wilkes has the unnerving ability to "hear" ghosts. Not talk to them or whisper to them. But to see how they met their violent deaths in the last few minutes of their lives. With this power, he's often privvy to some hellish sights and suffering, and to secrets that other people would prefer to stay buried--with the dead.

After having the mumps as a kid and getting a bad ear infection, Harry starts hearing ghosts. Violently murdered ghosts most of all. As he grows up, after leaving his home, he isolates himself in a small house that he lines with egg cartons to insulate it from outside noises that might set off one of those close encounters with the dead that he's not overly fond of.

Slowly but surely, Harry turns into an alcoholic and ends up meeting Tad Peters, a martial arts expert with his own guilt to carry. They end up becoming friends and it's this friendship that really makes the book work. Lansdale is at his best describing the lives of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. He never fails to deliver outstanding dialogue and characters that are just like people the reader knows.

The mystery comes a little late in this one, but when it does it's a doozy. It also forever alters poor Harry's life. Although beginning at a casual pace, readers aren't going to be able to put the book down during the last third of the tale.

The book is an enjoyable and fast read from cover to cover. The characters are straight from the heart of Texas and one step over into the Twilight Zone.

A Supernatural Thriller.......2007-05-07

A childhood illness results in Harry Wilkes having visions of violent events triggered by sounds. These visions only occur in the exact location of the violence. Harry's parents try to help him, but as a young adult Harry mainly copes by carving out safe routes avoiding any known spots that induce visions.

Kayla, Joey, and Harry were friends as children. And, both were with Harry when he had his first vision of a murder. Harry grows up with Joey, but avoids his house and later his apartment as too much violence has occurred in both spots. He loses touch with Kayla, but her returning as a cop to their hometown draws him into working with her to determine whether her dad committed suicide or not.

There is some great dialog in this book, especially by Tad. Tad is a drunk that Harry watches do some amazing martial arts. They bond together in trying to stay sober as Harry has found drinking numbs his visions. Here is an example of Tad's insights from page 81 of the paperback edition, "That's what they're supposed to live their life by, but no, they like the God of the Old Testament, the mean, judgmental one, before he was on Zoloft".

I don't particularly like mysteries that are solved through supernatural help. This probably biased me against this book. I felt there were too many coincidences as well. For example, Harry's college girlfriend's house is walking distance from where he grew up with Kayla and Joey, but he's never met or even heard of her. I also didn't really get a sense of place from the book. I know it is set in East Texas somewhere, but it could have been any small town.

I started reading this book with high expectations. I've only read one other book by Joe Lansdale and that was The Bottoms. I remember that book as being very good and extremely scary. I usually reread books that I think are very good at some point, but that book was so scary I put it on my shelf and did not get it down again. The childhood nightmare theme resonated with me. If you've never read any of Lansdale's work, I'd recommend The Bottoms over Lost Echoes.

Average customer rating:

A FANTASTIC READ!
This one surprised me...
This is a good starter novel if you don't know Joe
Exceptional Edgar Award Winning Book
My Introduction to Joe

The Bottoms
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Mysterious Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0446677922

Amazon.com

Joe Lansdale, author of several horror novels, Westerns, and some outrageous thrillers, is something of a cult writer. The Bottoms, which may be the breakout book that moves Lansdale beyond the genre category, is a resonant and moving novel. Though there is a mystery at its core, it is at heart a coming-of-age story, with a more literary bent than Lansdale usually demonstrates.

Harry, an elderly man, tells the story of a series of events that occurred in his 11th year, when the mutilated, murdered bodies of Negro prostitutes began turning up in the county where his father was the local constable. Harry and Tom, his younger sister, find the first one. Only their father, Jacob Crane, seems to care about finding justice for the victims, who are dismissed out of hand as unimportant by the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which warns Jacob off any further investigations. Harry and Tom think they know who's responsible: the Goat Man, a creature who's said to lurk beneath the swinging bridge that crosses the Sabine River, where the first body was found. In fact, the Goat Man has something to do with the murders, and the secret of who he is and what he really did is the key to the unsolved slayings. But that takes second place to the artfully explicated character of Jacob and Harry's changing relationship with him in the course of the loss of his boyish innocence. This is a masterfully told story and a very good read. --Jane Adams

Book Description

When young Harry Collins discovers a black womans body, mutilated and bound to a tree with barbed wire, he unleashes a storm of dread. With his younger sister, they fix their suspicions on the legendary horror called the Goat Man who, the locals say, lurks beneath the swinging bridge that crosses the Sabine River. More real than any child could ever imagine, the creature holds the key to a string of brutal and confounding murders and a chilling truth scarcely glimpsed beyond the thick woods and tornado-ripe skies.

Download Description

The talented voice of East Texas delivers a riveting, poignant, and suspenseful tale of a Depression-era serial murder seen through the eyes of a young boy.

Customer Reviews:

A FANTASTIC READ!.......2007-04-30

I really enjoyed this book. The plot was great. The writing was a bit choppy (4 stars because I think this book, if not the author, could use a good editor), but maybe my version was different. I read it on an eBook.

Still, as another reviewer said, the descriptions made it like I was THERE. It helps that I'm from East Texas, and I'm familiar with the Sabine River and surrounding.

I FELT for the characters in this book, and it was MUCH more than just a story. It was a telling of a life, and I just wanted it to go on. I didn't want the book to end. The updates at the end were a nice touch, though.

All in all, a DELICIOUS story; one DEFINITELY worth owning.

This one surprised me..........2006-10-29

It is sometimes something of a chore to find something worthwhile to read, especially after you have just read an exceptionally good book and don't want anything less worthy in your next one. I just finished World War Z a few days ago, which was as fun and entertaining a book as I have read all year, and I wanted another truly good horror book, or at least something that could make me stop thinking about my last book. I decided I wanted an award-winning book so googled "stoker awards" and "edgar awards" and saw that this book won best novel in 2001. A-ha! This should be good I thought, let's get this and get those zombies out of my head. So I did. And it was good. It wasn't anything like I thought though.

I started reading this after dinner and just kept reading until I finished around midnight. I thought this was a horror novel and that Lansdale was a horror writer. I am pretty sure he has written horror novels, but this isn't really one of them. Nevertheless the book did break the spell of World War Z and I was transported to East Texas in the heart of the depression in the 1930's where I meet Harry, an eleven year old boy growing up in the poverty of the time. This is very much his coming-of-age story, highly reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, that follows Harry as he finds the corspe of a black woman who has been tortured and molested. Harry reports the crime to his father, the local constable and town barber. The crime happens again, and then yet again, and we begin to realize a serial killer is stalking women in the area. As the killer begins to stalk white women, racial violence, always simmering beneath the surface of the area, explodes to the grief of all. Harry, his family, and their lives are caught up and inextricably woven into this tale of sadness, discrimination, love, loyalty and learning one's space for oneself within the world.

The mystery is really never that mysterious to us that are reading the novel. After all we are such much experienced with serial killers today. The characters in the novel though cannot discern the clues around them and that is part of what makes this such an effective novel. We watch as the protagonists struggle against ignorance, fear, prejudice, discrimination and pure lack of experience as their small world is shattered one woman at a time. The denouement is also very satisfying as Harry confronts the serial killer and as he explains his own perception of himself to Harry. This is a very tender book, very well-written, and very moving and effective. I can see why it won a best book award and I think most people would enjoy this novel very much.

This is a good starter novel if you don't know Joe.......2006-08-07

This is one of those books that I lend out to people if they have never heard of an author.(yes I actually have the books returned to me) the overall story is excellent, the characters are well defined and the whole thing moves along at a nice pace. It is nice to read a detective book where all the characters are neither handsome or wealthy but have to deal with crappy day to day things like everyone else. Give it a read. If you like this move onto his Hap & Leonard series which are a hoot. Those I don't lend out.

Exceptional Edgar Award Winning Book .......2006-07-24

I picked up THE BOTTOMS after it won the 2001 Edgar Award for Best Novel. Like someone else here said, this was my introduction to Joe Lansdale. However, it won't be the last book of his I read. It was excellent and very deserving of its Edgar Award.

It's not a typical mystery or suspense. A quote on the cover calls the book another "To Kill A Mockingbird," and in my opinion, the comparison fits. Yes, there is some bad stuff going on in this book. And yes, there are some action scenes that will keep you up really late. But in total, THE BOTTOMS is a rich, sometimes brutal, look at life in the South in the 1930s. It's told from the point of view of a twelve-year old boy, and it meanders like the mind of such a boy. Yet there is nothing slow about the book. You will be tempted to savor it, even while wanting to read faster. As a writer, I found myself fascinated by the wealth of detail and texture. Yet, I was never tempted to skim.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Mr. Lansdale did an exceptional job, and I'm looking froward to reading more of his work.

My Introduction to Joe.......2006-02-07

"The Bottoms" is a well-crafted novel that left this reader wanting more (in a good way), well after the last page was closed. "An X-rated version of The Andy Griffith Show..." is what one reviewer wrote. I would agree and say that it has shades of "Stand By Me". Engrossing and a real page turner. Trust me, I stayed up till 8 in the morning and enjoyed every minute of it!

Conan And The Songs Of The Dead (Conan (Graphic Novels))

Average customer rating:

Not as good as the main Conan series by Dark Horse

Conan And The Songs Of The Dead (Conan (Graphic Novels))
Joe R. Lansdale , and Tim Truman
Manufacturer: Dark Horse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1593077181

Book Description

The Cimmerian travels to the aid of an old ally in the wretched wastes of Stygia - a desert harboring wealth undreamed of, even for the barbarian. Soon his pursuit of the ancient treasure reveals a conniving spirit and undead guards. Dust from the desolate land meets blood, and a dark-hearted sorcerer brings forth strange abominations from this unholy mix. Only the cool head and cold steel of the Cimmerian can save all creation from the horror that awaits, and the blood-spattered conclusion will send shivers down the spines of even the most hardcore Conan fans!

Customer Reviews:

Not as good as the main Conan series by Dark Horse.......2007-05-27

"Songs of the Dead" is a five-issue limited series from Dark Horse Comics, publishers of the monthly on-going "Conan" comic book series. This entire five-issue limited series is collected in this single trade paperback.

The story follows Conan into the Stygian desert, where he encounters an old comrade, the roguish Alvazar. Alvazar has run afoul of some priests of the snake god Set, who wish to kill him for the theft of a holy artifact, the Demon Root. Conan gets involved and soon finds himself accompanying Alvazar on a quest that will lead to a strange temple, a seductive female ghost and a horde of flesh-hungry zombies, so expect to see Conan hacking and slashing otherworldly creatures through many of these pages.

Although this stand-alone story (like "Conan: Book Of Thoth" and "Conan And The Demons Of Khitai") isn't nearly as good Dark Horse's on-going main series by Kurt Busiek, it is still an entertaining read with decent art.

Average customer rating:

Joe, The Reverend and Harlequin Fold-Out

The Shadows Kith and Kin
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Subterranean Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1596060816
Release Date: 2007-04-25

Product Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Joe, The Reverend and Harlequin Fold-Out.......2007-06-25

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.

Average customer rating:

The red hair is no lie
Comedy Western
Poorly written and often in bad taste
the most enjoyable book I've read this year
How is This Not a Bestseller?

Sunset and Sawdust
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375719229
Release Date: 2005-01-04

Book Description

In the middle of a cyclone, beautiful, red-haired Sunset Jones shoots her husband Pete dead when he tries to beat and rape her. To Camp Rapture’s general consternation, Sunset’s mother-in-law arranges for her to take over from Pete as town constable. As if that weren’t hard enough to swallow in depression era east Texas, Sunset actually takes the job seriously, and her investigation into a brutal double murder pulls her into a maelstrom of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. It is a case that will require a well of inner strength she never knew she had. Spirited and electrifying, Sunset and Sawdust is a mystery and a tale like nothing you’ve read before.

Customer Reviews:

The red hair is no lie.......2006-07-20

Joe R. Lansdale is in a genre all-his-own, a genre that for the most part focuses on East Texas and the characters who populate that neck of the woods. He sometimes writes with an eye on horror, and because horror wears many disguises, from zombies to child abusers to abject poverty itself, Mr. Lansdale's subject matter is often diverse and multi-faceted. But what remains unchanged throughout all his tales is the masterful story-telling, rich with human suffering and endurance. I sometimes feel as if I am reading an Erskine Caldwell or a John Steinbeck novel when reading Mr. Lansdale's work, though not because of style, mind you (Mr. Lansdale has a distinct style unique to him only), but because of the time-lines in American history in which these stories unfold, time-lines where poverty often plays a pivotal role in the story's primary conflict and resolution. Writing with an economic turn of word in _Sunset and Sawdust_, Mr. Lansdale captures an era in which practicing frugality was not an option but a necessity forced on a good many people across America, just as it is today in these inflationary times.

_Sunset and Sawdust_ unfolds during the Depression Era thirties in a sawmill town called Camp Rapture, a place peopled with the kinds of quirky characters Joe Lansdale is famous for creating. The first line in the book reads: On the afternoon it rained frogs, sun perch, and minnows, Sunset discovered she could take a beating good as Three-Fingered-Jack. And indeed our main character, Sunset Jones, does take a beating in more ways than one in this flavored tale about overcoming the odds. As the novel opens, red haired Sunset is living up to her crown-of-fire namesake when she takes one beating too many from her abusive husband Pete Jones, and shoots him in the head with his own .38, right when a mean cyclone is hitting the house, tearing it to shreds around her. (This is East Texas near the Sabine, where it can rain frogs and sun perch, and if the sheer heat, humidity, and bugs don't drive you crazy, an abusive husband certainly can, with or without tornadoes.)

Bruised and bloody from the severe beating she's taken Sunset staggers from the wreck of her home, nearly naked with a shard of broken glass embedded in her shoulder and Pete's revolver still dangling from her hand, and wanders out into the road. An old farmer named Riley, who is passing by in a wagon just then, sees her, offers her his shirt, and takes her to her mother-in-law's home when she requests the ride, though not without first commenting to her that he doesn't think it's a good idea to go to Marilyn Jones's under the circumstances. And while town matriarch Marilyn Jones is incensed over her son's killing, she eventually calms down and declares an uneasy truce between herself and Sunset by appointing Sunset the new constable of Camp Rapture, replacing the deceased Constable Pete Jones.

Equipped with her dead husband's .38 revolver holstered at her waist, Sunset undertakes her new job in earnest, surprising everyone in the process, most of all her mother-in-law, Marilyn. Moreover, when Sunset encounters the oil drenched bodies of a woman and an infant buried in a farmer's field in Camp Rapture, she dares to investigate the murders -- all this in the face of roiling opposition from the town leaders and mill workers, many who are Klan members intent on making Sunset accountable for Pete's death.

Some of the characters in _Sunset and Sawdust_ are Hillbilly, a charming ne'er-do-well hobo whom Sunset deputizes; Zendo, a farmer growing the best crops in the bottomlands where the oil drenched bodies are discovered; and Two, a nefarious, psychotic killer who almost seems supernatural, he's so creepy. But these are only a few of the many peculiar backwoods characters who people this engaging novel-with-a-social-message. Rich throughout the telling is Joe Lansdale's original and unflinching talent for turning prose into colloquialisms and dialogue into prose you will not soon forget.

Highly recommended reading.

Comedy Western.......2006-06-21

"Sunset and Sawdust" is fun to read, you will finish it quickly, root for the good guys (if you can trust `em), and look forward to seeing the movie version in the theater. The plot has twists, too many for willing suspense of disbelief, but maybe that's Landsdale's intent. The language is rich and transports the reader to the dusty hellhole (?) that was depression-era Texas. While some characters are cartoonish ("Two"), Sunset is well conceived and vividly drawn - a shoe in for a famous actress.

Poorly written and often in bad taste.......2005-09-11

Sunset and Sawdust is a mystery that takes place in East Texas during the Depression. Sunset Jones kills her abusive husband and becomes constable of the logging camp in his stead. When a dead baby is discovered, she begins an investigation that uncovers greed and villainy in the political structure and put her, and all she cares about, in grave danger.

The book jacket calls it a "wildly energetic novel--galvanizing from first to last". What the publishers call "energetic", I call overly fast paced to the point motion sickness; furthermore, I was galvanized to nothing except annoyance. Landsdale's descriptive style is generally crass and rude. Why use just a word when a cuss word or vulgar word can be put in. For example, a dying man thinks, "Goddamn, taken from behind, that's not right, not me, I'm always ready, but goddamn, I feel it, a knife in my back, tight as a bull's dick in a chicken's ass". Such needless vulgarity cheapened the scene, which should have been moving, as well as making it unrealistic. The overusage of "pussy", "bitch" and "dick" and over-focus on sex and attractive women made this appear to the be the work of a hormonal teenager.

Also unrealistic were some of the personal interactions. They seem stilted and fake, and in the case of Sunset and Lee, simply wrong. I found it extremely difficulty to believe that she could accept and trust him that quickly. With other relationships, the dynamics (Two and McBride for instance, or Hillbilly's ability to snow everyone he met) did not have the ring of truth.

In addition, Landsdale's use of run-ons, lack of conjunctures and overall poor writing skills were simply tiresome. This is the writer that has won six Bram Stoker Awards as well as three other awards? Perhaps I've caught him on a bad day. All I can say is that his style is not to my taste and the only thing that kept me reading was curiosity about the murder. I shouldn't have wasted my time, as the outcome followed true to the rest of the book and was a great disappointment.

the most enjoyable book I've read this year.......2005-08-27

The most gritty, enlightening and exciting piece of crime writing I have read since my last James Ellroy. Full of cracking one liners, unforgettable characters and, as all good fiction should have, a darn good dog.

When Sunset shoots her husband during one of his frequent sessions of beating her she takes over his job as town constable and the whole community is electrified with tension. When she discovers the bodies of a mother and baby in a black farmer's field you just know everything is going to kick off.

Set in Southern USA during the Depression the book tackles racism and sexism with a force, and a sense of humour, that most books shy away from. I haven't enjoyed a book as much as this all year.

(And yes, the dog gets it)

How is This Not a Bestseller?.......2005-07-12

I do not understand why a book like this is not a bestseller. It is well-written. The main character is an activist/active female. The story line is terrific with twists and turns. The setting -East Texas Depression Era is interesting. Race relations of the times are explored as well as the place of women. There is terrific dialogue with humor thrown in. A bit of pathos...everything works.

The book starts with a flaming red-headed beauty (thus her name "Sunset") blowing her husband's brains out when he is trying to rape her after severely beating her. Not only is she not convicted, she becomes the redneck town's constable.

Sunset is one of the more compelling main characters I have read in quite a while. Her supporting cast is wonderful. Sometimes -though rarely - they may be a bit too good to be true on the outside, later it is shown they each have enough warts to be believeable. Mr. Lansdale rarely allows a character to remain as he or she appears to be in their introduction. Almost every character changes making the plot move and stay constantly fresh.

Added to these wonderful features is a fairly decent mystery plot, which of course gets twisted and turned by both the characters and the author.

This is a rare book. Not only was it fun and entertaining - great southern humor and expressions - so it is suitable for the beach; but it has depth warranting thought and consideration.

Now for the sexist stuff: I highly recommend this to both men and women. My daughter loved it. She loved the story, the humor and the heroine. Yet, it is in no way a chick book. I loved it for all the same reasons.

This really should be a bestseller.

Average customer rating:

The Best of Philip Jose Farmer
Philip Jose Farmer
Manufacturer: Subterranean Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Average customer rating:

Strong Collection of Pulp Stories
Rip-roaring

Retro Pulp Tales

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Adventure, Vol. 1
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Lords of the Razor
The Man from the Diogenes Club

ASIN: 1596060085

Customer Reviews:

Strong Collection of Pulp Stories.......2006-11-21

Edited by Joe Lansdale, an authority on the subject, some of the most respected writers in the field weigh in with stories that pay tribute to the "pulps." 12 stories in all, written by: James Reasoner (a tribute to the aviation pulps), Chet Williamson (one of my three favorites, a mystery that unfolds as clips from personal ads in the backs of pulp magazines with a great ending), F. Paul Wilson (a Yellow Peril story), Alex Irvine (a Detroit gangland/police/pool hall story), Melissa Mia Hall (a tribute to the "Gidget" surfer stories), Tim Lebbon (a story about a giant), Bill Crider (an interesting and humorous alien abduction story. Crider writes westerns but used to write horror novels as Jack MacLane.), Al Sarrantonio (another of my three favorites, a summer story in the tradition of Bradbury but with a perfect Sarrantonio twist at the end), Stephen Gallagher (a story of a soldier haunted by ghosts from his past), Kim Newman (a story that ties with her Anno Dracula books and also her Seven Stars collection), Gary Phillips (an excellent war story in the Haunt of Fear or Weird Tales tradition), and Norman Partridge (the other of my three favorites, a very tight and suspenseful story of a group of people at odds with one another in the desert. This one was likely the best story in the collection.)

Each story has an introduction by the author detailing the type of pulps he/she liked and what inspired their story. Each story is new to this edition, no reprints here. Joe Lansdale gives an introduction at the beginning of the book but did not contribute a story. Some of the introductions are better than the stories they support. Overall, this is a very entertaining and very strong collection (a delightful romp through the very missed days of pulp magazines) and well worth the read.

Rip-roaring.......2006-08-25

Rarely do such proclamatory nomenclatures hold good, esp. for anthologies, where the frequency of each author is bound to be different and thus it is more difficult to produce a rich harmonique. This collection features stories which make us understand what used to be the pulpy days, and long for them. Highly recommended.

Average customer rating:

White Trash Splatter Detective w/a Moral
I hate the word "thriller" but....
The start of something beautiful
Lansdale's First Hap & Leonard Book
Warmly recommended

Savage Season
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Two Bear Mambo
Mucho Mojo
Bad Chili
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The Bottoms

ASIN: 0753814382

Amazon.com

Start with two best friends who practice martial arts in their free time: one a straight white guy, the other a black gay guy. Add a conniving ex-wife in a blue-jean miniskirt. Throw in half a million in a muddy creekbed somewhere near the Sabine River in East Texas. Add an ex-radical from the '60s and two naive idealists who want to save the world. Mix them all together in a half-assed plan, season with double-crosses, and then top it off with a hilarious and chilling drug dealer named Soldier. Bloody mayhem a la Lansdale.

Customer Reviews:

White Trash Splatter Detective w/a Moral.......2007-06-18

This is the story of a friendship, Hap Collins's & Leonard Pine's, that goes awry when Hap decides to take up an ill-fated adventure that hearkens back (at least in his mind) to the sixties, a time of "love and peace and social upheaval," a time when love "and God had given us a ray of light, and in its glow, wonderful things happened." It is all a story of maturity: Hap's maturity. After facing betrayal, murder, physical pain and suffering beyond measure, he comes back around again to this ethical and moral belief: "[T]o lose my idealism, to quite believing in the ability of human beings to rise above their baser instincts, was to become old and bitter and of no service to anyone, not even myself." In this first novel of the Hap & Leonard series, Lansdale proves beyond any doubt that all those awards he's been given of late have long been overdue. All the splatter-punk and white-trash themes and all-too, down-home humor that we know him for are here in full force, and they are rendered in such a powerful and loving and carefully planned way, that we are very aware we are in the presence of a powerful and truly literary force. (BTW, the edition picture here is published by London-based Phoenix books paperback. For less money, you can get cheaper editions, ex-libraries and even the Ziesing 1990 hardcover first edition.)

I hate the word "thriller" but...........2007-02-09

This was the second of Lansdale's novels I'd read, and it's a great intro to Hap and Leonard (these guys appear in several novels of his at this point).

The characters are not only very well-rounded and fully realized, but I felt like they were old friends of mine by the time the book was done.

More so, the writing style is just so much fun; the man's got these wonderful turns-of-phrase, and, unlike so many books today, it's not "Written for the screen." It's an actual book. There's more than just dialogue on these here pages.

Good stuff. Only 3 stars b/c "Mucho Mojo" and "Two-Bear Mambo" are even better.

The start of something beautiful.......2005-03-12

There's little to be said of the Hap and Leonard novels other than they are immensely entertaining, witty, and fast paced. Lansdale's voice is at times hilarious, and at times poignant. There are real souls to these characters, and you really care about them.

In this first installment, Hap and Leonard find themselves in the middle of a treasure hunt gone awry. It's a very short novel that can be read in a day if you've got the time. Plot-wise, it's not as good as Rumble Tumble or Mucho Mojo or the others, but it relies heavily on character development, and that is always a good thing.

Like Elmore Leonard, Lansdale's cast of characters are bizzare to the nth degree, yet despite their zaniness, he manages to make them human. This has got to be my favorite Buddy series. Always gets me laughing.

Lansdale's First Hap & Leonard Book.......2004-03-24

"Savage Season" kicks off the six-book series featuring Hap Collins and Leonard Pine against the backdrop of rural East Texas. The writing is gritty and very noir and reminisicent of Jim Thompson. Of the other three I have read so far, this one was the best.

Warmly recommended.......2003-02-09

The first in an amazing series involving Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, two most unlikely heroes (though heroes they are). The author performs a powerful magic that transforms a tale with a violent twist about characters that are theoretically undesireable into something unique and hard to put down or forget. Furthermore, should you never laugh out loud when reading this and don't feel moved to buy one of the other Hap & Leonard books I'll be surprised. The story, set in East Texas, is about a treasure hunt, Hap's old girl and much more. Caveat: this is perhaps the weakest of the series - it still rates 5 stars.

High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale

Average customer rating:

Lansdale's Best-Of Collection
The best short story collection EVER!
Country Fried Horror
The creative cotton is very high indeed
Truly the best of Lansdale

High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Golden Gryphon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Action & Adventure | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Bumper Crop
The Bottoms
Joe R. Lansdale's The Drive-In
Sunset and Sawdust
Dead in the West

ASIN: 1930846177

Amazon.com

Like Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale is a powerful and versatile author. He writes frequently funny, often disturbing suspense, horror, dark fantasy, science fiction, and Western fiction. And like King, he has a strong sense of place: he successfully invokes the spirit of the West and demonstrates a wonderful and distinctly Texan gift for a phrase. But don't be fooled--the resemblances are superficial. Joe R. Lansdale writes like nobody but his own self. And, unjustly, he's not yet a bestselling author.

The genre-jumping collection High Cotton is subtitled Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale, but could more rightly be called The Best of Joe R. Lansdale. If you haven't read Lansdale, this is the place to start. If you like Lansdale, you already know you want this collection, even if you already own By Bizarre Hands, which contains 7 of these 21 stories. If, however, you are of a delicate constitution or a sensitive nature, you might want to steer clear. Lansdale can be blunt, or gross, or grim, sometimes all at once.

Most of the stories in High Cotton are excellent, and some are already classics. "Night They Missed the Horror Show," a tale of bored young hell-raisers who discover dreadful new depths of trouble, is one of the great horror stories of the 20th century. The alternate-history Western "Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches" packs a lot of big (and shocking) changes into four pages. In the crime story "The Steel Valentine," a fading athlete finds himself the captive of his lover's merciless, criminal husband. In "The Phone Woman," a man discovers his horrifying true nature in a violent act. And in the screwball "Mister Weed-Eater," a man's life is turned upside-down and inside-out by his innocent attempt to help a blind groundskeeper.

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over 20 books, including the Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series. He has won the American Mystery Award, the Booklist Editor's Award, five Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, and the International Crime Writers Award. --Cynthia Ward

Book Description

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."

Customer Reviews:

Lansdale's Best-Of Collection.......2006-04-09

So, "High Cotton" reprints several of Lansdale's personally selected best stories. These stories, all of them except for one are also featured in his original collections "By Bizarre Hands", "Bestsellers Guaranteed", and "Writer of the Purple Rage", and are arguably the best of the stories featured in the original (and out of print) books.

Lansdale's follow-up, "Bumper Crop" collects many of the rest, but not very many stories from "Writer of the Purple Rage." If you can get a copy of "Purple Rage" get it. It has the original "Bubba Ho-Tep" novella, which is one of Lansdale's best stories and was made into the wonderful movie starring Bruce Campbell, which may be one of the most faithful adaptations of a writer's work ever put on film.

Anyway, "Booty and the Beast" is the newest (to me) story in this collection, which centers around a specific item associated with the Virgin Mary that brings doom to those who possess it. It is an entertaining story. The best stories here, however, are the ones his true fans have read before: "The Night They Missed the Horror Show" (his signature story), "The Phone Woman", and "Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back", "Not From Detroit", and many others. The stories also have introductions by Lansdale telling how they were conceived. There is also an introduction at the front of the book explaining how he came to write short stories and why he deosn't write as many anymore.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading the stories again and I hope this one stays in print for a long time, so that readers don't have to track down out of print collections to see what a fabulous writer this man is. These are the stories that made him famous, using his unique blend of humor, horror, and gritty realism to form a truly effective story. Highly Recommended!

The best short story collection EVER!.......2005-08-17

High Cotton by Joe R. Lansdale is the best short story collection I have ever read so far! The stories are funny and will make you laugh aloud -- so don't read this book in public places! Funny story: I was reading this book whilst waiting to board the plane in the airport, and I could not stop laughing! Security guards started to crowd around me -- just because I was acting in a 'peculiar manner' due to the loud laughing... so Joe R. Lansdale, it's your fault people are laughing out loud in public places whilst reading your book! Read this book and you will know what all the fuss is about.

Country Fried Horror.......2005-02-22

"High Cotton" is representative of the period when Joe Lansdale was still writing hardcore horror - and no one did it better. The stories in this collection are truly disturbing and graphic, reaching splattery heights without ever straying too far from Joe's East Texas sensibilities. Plenty of sick twists and thinly veiled stabs at racial injustice to keep our more "sophisticated" readers interested. For those of us who like down and dirty country-fried horror, you can't do any better than this collection.

The creative cotton is very high indeed.......2005-01-23

As more than one review has pointed out, a better title for this anthology might be The Best of Joe R. Lansdale - which the term High Cotton symbolizes (its farming parlance for an exceptionally good crop). Gathered between the covers are 21 terrific stories that show off Lansdale's considerable talent for spinning yarns that can be gruesome (Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back), funny (Steppin' Out, Summer 68), frightening (Incident On and Off a Mountain Road), and poignant (Not From Detroit), sometimes all at the same time (Drive-In Date). If you are easily offended by vulgar humor and salty language, not to mention microscopic examinations of the darker aspects of humanity, Lansdale will make for a very tough read. But stick with him, his stories are worth it. Highest recommendation.

Truly the best of Lansdale.......2004-06-04

"Champion Mojo storyteller" Joe Lansdale has slowly, over the span of twenty years, made quite a name for himself without ever really becoming a bestselling author. He has recently reached the current peak of his steadily increasing level of fame due to two events: winning the Edgar Allan Poe award for his novel, The Bottoms, and the recent release of the film Bubba Ho-Tep, based on a short story he wrote about an ancient mummy confronted by a seventy-year-old Elvis and J.F.K. He's certainly an acquired taste, but one that was an easy acquisition for me when I read his omnibus novel The Drive-In, about one summer evening when an alien comet buzzes a Texas drive-in theater and causes all sorts of havoc too disgusting to relate here. It was horror mixed with humor, and I loved it. So, I immediately set out to find more about this genre-mixing writer (my favorite kind). I read the first novel of his Hap and Leonard series, Savage Season, and it was good, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

Short stories are always a good way to experiment with a new writer. Luckily, that's how Lansdale started out making his living. There are several short story collections available of his early work but, the way he puts it in the introduction to High Cotton--and in reference to the southern-fried title--"this is the best cotton I've grown in the short form." When an author thinks the book you're holding contains his best stuff, that's the one you ought to try.

Each story has a short introduction written by Lansdale, explaining its inspiration, history, or lack thereof. I always find it fascinating for an author to write about their works; another favorite of mine, F. Paul Wilson, follows the same tack in his collection, The Barrens and Others.

High Cotton is certainly not bound to be a mainstream success, but for people who like the sort of gruesomely funny tales with a southern mentality that Joe Lansdale comes up with, it will be just your cup of sweet tea. It contains many stories that are as disturbing as they are funny: the basic premise is horrifying, but Lansdale manages to find the humor underneath it which, in turn, often enhances the horror of the situation. The one I think epitomizes this best is "The Drive-In Date" (also published in play format in The Best of Cemetery Dance, Volume Two), which concerns a couple of "good ole boys" and their rather unconventional date at the drive-in. The usual amount of laughter, food, and sex is contained within, with one important difference. This one still gives me the creeps -- while making me laugh. Stories like this require that you reexamine your own comfort threshold.

"The Pit" starts off the collection. This combination of dogfighting, boxing, and crazy backwoods snake handlers is one that he feels deserves more attention, and it certainly packs a punch. You'll think twice about making that wrong turn onto a back road when you finish with this one. Following "The Pit" is a simple little story that shows Lansdale's sentimental side. In "Not from Detroit," a man fights Death so that neither he nor his wife has to be alone. This story is so surprisingly sweet, that it is the first I've read of his that almost made me cry. But things return to normal, Lansdalewise, in "Booty and the Beast," which includes fire ants, a plastic syrup bear, and a "[pubic] hair from the Virgin Mary."

Sometimes, the humor is the main aspect of the story, as in "Godzilla's Twelve-Step Program," which follows our hero, Godzilla, as he goes through the daily grind of fighting his addiction to burning down buildings with his fiery breath. Even his job as an ingot melter doesn't seem to do the trick. What could have been a one-joke premise leading to a punchline is fleshed out by the author's imagination into a character study.

As you can see, Lansdale has many talents, but he is at his absolute best when he follows the exploits of a bunch of useless good-for-nothings who get themselves into a heap of trouble just by being stupid. This occurs first (and funniest) in High Cotton in the form of "Steppin' Out, Summer, '68" as Buddy, Wilson, and Jake go out in pursuit of a little horizontal recreation and--through a seeming innocuous, if increasingly ignorant, series of events--one of them ends up in the mouth of an alligator. It is one of the author's personal favorites, and any story that can make me laugh out loud in public instantly becomes one of mine.

Ending the collection is the story that Lansdale calls his "signature story" and the first one to really get him noticed (winning the Bram Stoker award in the process), "The Night They Missed the Horror Show." After skipping the night's showing of Night of the Living Dead (after discovering that a black man is the hero), Leonard and Farto do a couple of stupid--if generally harmless--things in the name of fighting boredom. But when they run into the wrong people, these events spiral into a night of pure terror. Lansdale is in particularly good form here, making the characters sympathetic by having their "punishment" be far above and beyond anything that would have suited their "crimes" of ignorance. It is really an ideal closer for High Cotton.

But all the stories in here are worth reading and Golden Gryphon Press has done a wonderful job packaging the collection. The cover illustration by J.K. Potter is very effective at getting across the contents--even though it appears that Potter himself didn't get past the first page of the first story. High Cotton is bound to become the definitive collection of Joe R. Lansdale's short fiction by itself, and it makes an excellent companion piece to the more recent Bumper Crop, which includes some of his and his fans' personal favorites, if not his most memorable work. Together, Lansdale ("hisownself") calls these two "the definitive volumes of my short work." As a fellow reviewer once said about Lansdale's work, "Read it and vomit. It's brilliant."

Bad Chili
Average customer rating:

This Chili's an acquired taste

Nature Gone Wild

Good Ole Hap and Leonard

Perfect entertainment!

COOL BEANS

Bad Chili
Joe R. Lansdale
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0446606022

Amazon.com

Hap Collins is in a LaBorde, Texas, hospital recuperating from an attack by a rabid squirrel and wondering why his best friend, Leonard Pine, hasn't been by to visit. Turns out that Leonard was upset enough about his boyfriend Raul leaving him for another guy that he went down to the biker bar this guy hangs out at and beats him with a broom handle. When the biker turns up dead later that night, it doesn't take long to guess who the primary suspect is--especially with Leonard nowhere to be found.

After Hap checks himself out of the hospital and finds Leonard hiding in his bed, the fourth novel in this series kicks into high gear--or what passes for high gear in Lansdale's deceptively laid-back storytelling style. Pretty soon, they've stumbled onto a conspiracy involving gaybasher pornography, and Leonard's ready to exact some vigilante justice over Hap's protestations: "There's few people think a roach exterminator is a murderer. I'm not talkin' about beatin' up and rapin' innocent people who are lookin' for love in all the wrong places. I'm talkin' about stampin' out a plague, man.... I've heard you rave about the horrors of the child sex trade in Thailand, the poor, the plight of blacks and women and gays, and all the stuff you gripe about, but me, I'm gonna do somethin'."

Add in a budding romance between Hap and Brett Sawyer, the nurse who tells him on their first date about how she set her abusive husband on fire--which impresses him much more than it scares him--and you've got the makings of another classic Lansdale thriller. --Ron Hogan

Download Description

A leather-jacketed, hog-riding biker is dead. Leonard Pine is the suspect. To help his partner in the case of one murdered lowlife, Hap Collins won't be bending the law, he'll be stomping the hell out of it. Spicing the mix will be LaBorde's own Chili King, a woman in white with a dark past, an actual tornado, several dead bodies in unwelcome places, and an unpleasant experience involving blocks of ice and car batteries. Not to mention the matter of one rabid squirrel.

Customer Reviews:

This Chili's an acquired taste.......2006-10-15

Reading the "first sentence" and "statistically improbable phrases" above may just tell you all you need to know about whether or not this book is for you. This is, if I've got it right, the fourth in the Hap/Leonard series, and while the characters still manage some surprises, they haven't advanced much; Lansdale has to rachet up the action a bit to keep our interest.

But plot is secondary to characterization here, and these characters are stock Lansdale: leather-tough, casually obscene and unabashedly hard-boiled, but with generous dollops of self-doubt and existential angst beneath their battle-scarred exteriors.

Not quite as much fun as Mucho Mojo, the prior entry in the series, this tale requires a bit more suspension of disbelief and tolerance for brutality. But experienced Lansdale readers will find this a worthy effort.

Nature Gone Wild.......2005-12-09

I only recently re-read this book after a few years and was struck by how FUNNY it is! Arguably the funniest in the Hap/Leonard series, its also pretty dark in many ways, and quite gory as well. Rabies plays a key role in both the beginning and conclusion to this story, in a weird - and oddly satisfying - circular construct. The plot involves Hap's quest to clear Leonard of possible murder charges. There's also what seems to be an underlying theme - with vivid descriptions of torture, gay-bashing for entertainment, mad animals and a violent storm - of nature, in all of its forms, gone wild. Joe Lansdale is somehow able to convey humor even while proving once again that HUMAN nature is still the baddest mf on the block (okay, that storm is pretty bad. But human nature runs a very close second here, trust me!). A must-read.

Good Ole Hap and Leonard.......2005-11-08

Man, I just love the Hap and Leonard series. Lansdale's dialogue is hysterical, and somehow the situations these characters keep finding themselves in doesn't feel forced at all. They're the greatest losers that ever lived (on page anyway).

Once again, our heores must solve a mystery surrounding the death of Leonard's boyfriend, and eek out the source of some gay bashing videos that have been circulating at local video stores. Along the way we deal with a self proclaimed Chili King, an ex wrestler who likes to hook people testicles up to car batteries, a nurse with a penchant for lighting people on fire, a particularly rabid squirrel, and then some.

Perhpas my favorite part of this novel is the introduction of Joe Bob, a gun totin', gun slingin' private Detective who accompanies Hap and Leonard on their quest. I hope he returns in the next novel becuase he's just a great character.

My only gripe about this particular book in the series is that the end falls a little flat. Lansdale goes for reality more than cliche'd entertainment..but you know what, I would have preferred the cliche at the end.

Still, it's a terrif book , and fast paced enough to read in a single day. Lansdale is truly the king of Mojo.

Perfect entertainment!.......2005-08-01

I love Joe R. Lansdale; I think he is the best writer ever to put words on paper. He should be knighted or something. The Hap and Leonard series is pure joy from start to finish. I love both of them, their beautiful friendship, their humor and the outrageous situations they manage to get themselves into. As always, this novel has incredibly well-written prose, hilarious lines and situations and wonderful suspense and action. You really care about the good guys--I always want to hug them!--and yell yee-haw when the bad guys get their asses kicked. The best thing about these books, is that there is also a serious, sometimes wistful tone underneath it all. Sometimes you cry a little. Sometimes you want to hide from the evil of the bad guys. But mostly you just laugh! Perfect!

COOL BEANS.......2004-05-03

Joe Lansdale is one of the most humorous writers out there today. From improbably probable situations (like Hap getting bit by a rabid squirrel) to tense, action packed scenes (including the tornado ending), BAD CHILI is the most fun you'll get in a suspense novel! Hap and Leonard are true friends, and their bantering is priceless. Lansdale knows how to use the most innovative dialogue and fleshed out, likeable characters, and he uses both Hap and Leonard, along with Jim Bob and Brett Sawyer, Clinton and Leon, Charlie, etc. The villains are nasty, and the plot deep and twisty. The romantic involvement between Brett and Hap is one of the most true to life and sexy encounters you'll find in fiction.
Lansdale is a great writer, one who knows how to write for his audience, entertain and intrigue them. It might be bad chili, but it's superb reading! Bon appetite!!!

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