Rumble Tumble

Leonard stood, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and snapped his fingers at Bob. Bob got up and trotted after him into the house. I’d never seen anything like that. I didn’t think armadillos could be domesticated.

“You keep that big armored rat out of the living room,” I said. “I don’t want him trying to get on the couch with me.”

“He thinks it’s his couch,” Leonard said, and went inside the house.

I sat for a while, nursing chocolate that had gone cold in my cup. The moonlight moved over the field of frozen hay and made it look metallic and sharp. I pulled a deep breath of cold air into my chest and let it out. It felt and tasted like the air that night in the desert some three months, some ten centuries ago.

I thought about the gunfire and the smell of blood and smoke, the strange and horrible passion that had come over me during that time. I think I feared guns and violence because they were so much a part of me. Perhaps no one is more aware of and is enticed by and frightened of violence than the man whose brain is a bomb.

I remembered what Herman had said about the blackness of space, the nothingness between the stars, about the stars being nothing more than dying light.

Bad line of thought, I decided.

I drank the rest of the chocolate, shook out my cup, and went inside.

BOOKS BY JOE R. LANSDALE

LEATHER MAIDEN

After a harrowing stint in the Iraq war, Cason Statler returns home to the small East Texas town of Camp Rapture, where he drinks too much, stalks his ex-wife, and takes a job at the local paper. There he uncovers notes on a cold-case murder. With nothing left to live for and his own brother connected to the victim, he makes it his mission to solve the crime. Soon he is drawn into a murderous web of blackmail and deceit. To make matters worse his deranged buddy Booger comes to town to lend a helping hand.

Crime Fiction/978-0-375-71923-3

LOST ECHOES

Since suffering from 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.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-27544-8

SUNSET AND SAWDUST

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.

Crime Fiction/978-0-375-71922-6

The Hap and Leonard Novels

SAVAGE SEASON

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 Texas women. Leonard is a gay black Vietnam vet. Together, they stir up more commotion than a firestorm. But that’s just the way they like it. So 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. Chockful 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.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-45538-3

MUCHO MOJO

Leonard is still nursing the injuries he sustained in the duo’s last wild undertaking when he learns that his Uncle Chester has passed. Hap is of course going to be there for his best friend, and when the two are cleaning up Uncle Chester’s dilapidated house, they uncover a dark little secret beneath the house’s rotting floorboards—a small skeleton buried in a trunk. Hap wants to call the police. Leonard, being a black man in East Texas, persuades him this is not a good idea, and together they set out to clear Chester’s name on their own. The only things standing in their way are a houseful of felons, a vicious killer, and possibly themselves.

Crime Fiction/978-0-307-45539-0

THE TWO-BEAR MAMBO