The Best of Joe R. Lansdale »

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of 30 novels, including Bad Chili, The Bottoms, Lost Echoes, and Mucho Mojo, and more than 200 short stories, nonfiction articles, and comic books. His novel, Bubba Hotep, was made into a major motion picture and he is the winner of seven Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Award. He is a writer in residence and teacher at Stephen F. Austin University. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas.

By turns absurd, hilarious, and terrifying, this outrageous collection features the best writings of the high priest of Texan weirdness. Horny steam-shovels, odd-ball detectives, malicious rocks, spectral prehistoric fish, and vampire hunters permeate these vividly detailed stories. Featuring cult-classic award-winning tales such as “The Night They Missed the Horror Show,” “Mad Dog Summer,” and “Dog,” along with non-fiction forays into drive-in theaters and low budget films, this dynamic retrospective represents the broad spectrum of Lansdale’s career. “Bubba Hotep”—the tale of Elvis, John F. Kennedy, and a soul-sucking mummy, which was made into an award-winning film—is included along with the acclaimed novella, “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks,” and never before collected works. Original, compelling, and downright odd, this unforgettable compilation is essential reading for fans of horror, mystery, and southern gothic.

Publishers Weekly

Always entertaining, champion storyteller Lansdale (Vanilla Ride) shares his best weird yarns in this terrific collection. “Crucified Dreams,” an emotional introduction (“I speak uncensored, unfiltered, and full of madness”), prefaces 16 stories pushing the limits of westerns, mystery, horror, southern gothic, and satire. Five Stoker-winning tales and several stories later translated onto the screen (including campy Elvis tale “Bubba Ho-Tep”) share space with such jewels as the intense “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” about a tough woman with a wild secret; succinct “Cowboy,” in which a man meets an African-American boy yearning for more stories about black cowboys; and the hilarious “White Mule, Spotted Pig,” about a frustrated man’s bid for freedom via a wacky mule race. This is a great introduction to the raunchy, cheerfully unclassifiable East Texan bon vivant. (Mar.)