A comet, red and smiling with jagged teeth, flashes across the sky. People try to leave but find they are trapped by some acidic goo surrounding the entire drive-in. They grow hungry, homicidal, and suicidal. Then along comes the Popcorn King, a jiving, rhyming creature formed by blue-white lightning, with four arms and a popcorn bucket on its head.

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.

Peculiar weather settles over a bustling Texas sea port, a city made prosperous off the cotton trade and thick with racial inequality. The sky above Galveston, Texas, darkens to the sickly green of a healing bruise, the sea turns black, and the inhabitants of the city have no idea the force of the hammer about to drop on them. On September 8, 1900, a hurricane ripped apart Galveston, Texas, killing nearly 8,000 people and nearly obliterating the town. Lansdale's story brings dimension to many who lost their lives that day, and a few who survived.

The Tall Grass and Other Stories is a collection of my shorter fiction, many of them flash fiction. It borrows from The King and Other Stories, Unchained and Unhinged, and some never before collected.

Thirteen-year-old Stanley Mitchel Jr. spends most of his time helping his family run the town's drive-in movie theater, reading ten-cent comics, and playing with his dog Nub. Life in East Texas circa 1958 is not very exciting until Stanley discovers a stash of crumbling old love letters in a pile of burnt rubble behind the drive-in. As Stanley reads through the letters, he finds himself in the middle of a town mystery and discovering the secrets of his sleepy town.

One death is only the beginning for Tom and his wife Kelly who witness a fast-driving car killing their innocent neighbor in the street. Tom describes the driver to the police, but there is something he didn't anticipate: The driver belongs to a powerful criminal gang in East Texas.

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night-shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all. That is, until his best friend reveals the body of a local politician hidden in the trunk of a car, setting off a chain of events with apocalyptic potential. Soon, Jack finds himself entangled in a supernatural conspiracy involving monster hunters, sociopaths, doomsday cultists, and...garden gnomes?

It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow-moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man.

Part of a secret government organization designed to protect civilians, Elvis Presley and a handful of hardcore warriors set out to save the world from an invasion of hive-minded, shape-shifting vampire-like creatures from a dark dimension who have taken up residence in a New Orleans junkyard.

Sunset Jones has just killed her husband. Never mind that he was raping her. Pete Jones was constable of a small sawmill settlement called Camp Rapture where no woman refuses her husband. So everyone is angrily surprised when Sunset becomes the new constable and investigates murders in which her late husband might be implicated. Yet, no one is more surprised than Sunset when the murders lead her, not only to the conclusion of the case, but to a well of inner strength she never knew she had.

Harry Wilkes is plagued by visions - images of murdered bodies and violent assaults - that are triggered by everyday noises. The smallest noise can trigger a vision of violence from the past; it doesn't matter how long ago it took place. Since childhood he's fought to suppress these visions, and he has changed his habits in order to avoid the nightmares. But when he rescues a drunk from a bar fight, he makes a life-long friend who will help him learn how to use his strange ability to his advantage

Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous turn-of-the-century East Texas can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a criminal who may believe wearing a dead man's clothes protects them both from death. With bounty hunter Shorty, a charismatic and cunning dwarf, and Eustace, a gravedigging son of an ex-slave, the heartbroken young Jack sets off on an epic quest to rescue his sister from the corrupt men who control much of the new territory.

Richard Dane has killed a man. He cannot unhear the firing of the gun or unsee the blood on his living room wall. But everybody in the small town of LaBorde, Texas, knows Dane acted in self-defense. Everybody except Ben Russel, the ex-con father of the small-time criminal who invaded Dane's home. When Russel comes looking for revenge against Dane's family, the two are unexpectedly drawn into a conspiracy that conceals the vilest of crimes.

A rollicking novel about Nat Love, an African-American cowboy with a famous nickname: Deadwood Dick. Young Willie is on the run, having fled his small Texas farm when an infamous local landowner murdered his father. A man named Loving takes him in and trains him in the fine arts of shooting, riding, reading, and gardening. When Loving dies, Willie re-christens himself Nat Love, in tribute to his mentor, and heads west.

Ed Edwards is in the used-car business, a business built on adjusted odometers, extra-fine print, and the belief that "buyers better beware". Burdened by an aging, alcoholic mother constantly on his case to do something worthier of his lighter skin tone and dreaming of a brighter future for himself and his plucky little sister, Ed is ready to get out of the game. When Dave, his lazy, grease-stained boss at the eponymous dealership Smiling Dave's sends him to repossess a Cadillac, Ed finally gets the chance to escape his miserable life.

Hap Collins looks like a good ol’ boy. But even in his misspent youth, his best pal is Leonard Pine, who is Black, gay, and the ultimate outsider. Inseparable friends, Hap and Leonard climb into the boxing ring, visit their families, get in bar fights, and just go fishing - all the while confronting racists, righting wrongs, and eating a whole lot of delicious food.

Longtime contributor to the Hellboy mythos Christopher Golden brings together a crew of luminaries including Joe R. Lansdale and China Miéville, cross-genre sensation Barbara Hambly, celebrated mystery writer Ken Bruen, best-selling science-fiction and fantasy novelist Tad Williams, and a bevy of other skilled storytellers eager to spin a tale or two about the world's greatest paranormal detective. Some of the biggest names in horror, mystery, and fantasy come together to pay homage to Mike Mignola's Hellboy!

Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale writes outrageous fiction that rockets along with violent spikes of action and intense humor. Gulf War vet Cason Statler has moved back to his East Texas hometown after losing his job as a reporter in Houston (sleeping with both the boss' wife and 30-year-old stepdaughter has a way of ruining career prospects). But when his new gig has him investigating a local girl's disappearance, Cason opens a can of worms that might get him killed.

Jaxie Clackton is a brutalized rural youth who flees from the scene of his father's violent death and strikes out for the vast wilds of Western Australia. All he carries with him is a rifle and a waterjug. All he wants is peace and freedom. But surviving in the harsh saltlands alone is a savage business. And once he discovers he's not alone out there, all Jaxie's plans go awry. He meets a fellow exile, the ruined priest Fintan MacGillis, a man he's never certain he can trust, but on whom his life will soon depend.

In the tiny timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, 99-year-old Weldon Applegate recounts his life in all its glory, filled with tall tales writ large with murder, mayhem, avalanches, and bootlegging. It’s the story of dark pine forests brewing with ancient magic, and Weldon’s struggle as a boy to keep his father’s inherited timber claim, the Lost Lot, from the ravenous clutches of Linden Laughlin.

Marshall Karp is an acclaimed playwright known for his witty sense of humor and crackling dialogue. His debut novel The Rabbit Factory stars the irreverent LAPD detective duo of Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. Dean Lamaar is the architect of an entertainment empire and the creator of iconic characters like Rambunctious Rabbit and McGreedy the Moose.

Ever come across a situation that simply wasn't right - where someone was getting the dirty end of the stick and you wished you could make things right but didn't know how? Fourteen-year-old Jack knows how. Or rather he's learning how. He's discovering that he has a knack for fixing things. Not bikes or toys or appliances - situations...It all starts when Jack and his best friends, Weezy and Eddie, discover a rotting corpse - the victim of ritual murder - in the fabled New Jersey Pine Barrens. Beside the body is an ancient artifact carved with strange designs.

24/7 Demon Mart: Publisher's Pack features two books from the 24/7 Demon Mart series: The Graveyard Shift, book one, and Monster Burger, book two. It also includes the bonus Hell for the Holidays, a 24/7 Demon Mart Christmas special. Lloyd Wallace is the most clueless crossing guard the intersection of hell and earth has ever seen. So clueless, that he doesn't even realize the beer cave in the corner store where he works is the gateway to hell.

He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.

Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different....