Things Get Ugly: The Best Crime Fiction of Joe R. Lansdale

(Paperback)

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Description

Edgar Award winner and bestselling author Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series), one of America's most essential crime writers, heads back to the dangerous woods of East Texas. In his first crime career-retrospective, including previously uncollected work, Lansdale shows exactly why critics continue to compare him to Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner. "Pulpy, blackly humorous, compulsively readable, and somehow both wildly surreal and down-to-earth. Lansdale is a national fucking treasure." --Christa Faust, author of Money Shot In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang. When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder. A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle. A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie. In this collection of nineteen unforgettable crime tales, Joe R. Lansdale brings his legendary mojo and gritty, dark humor to harrowing heists, revenge, homicide, and mayhem. No matter how they begin, things are bound to get ugly--and fast.

Reviews

"The spiritual heir to both Walt Whitman and Elmore Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale is the bard who sings America: in gem-hard, polished prose that never lets up, no matter how ugly things get. As they do indeed in the seminal retrospective that is Things Get Ugly, where vicious people do vicious things to each other beautifully."
--Lavie Tidhar author of Central Station and Neom

"Things Get Ugly is packed page by page with writing lessons for both beginners and old pros hoping to improve: Get right to it. Keep it moving by surprising. Trust the English language to observe as closely as Joe's line, 'thin and flexible as a feather.' The man can write."
--Justin Scott, author of the Ben Abbott mysteries

Praise for Joe R. Lansdale

"A folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace."
--New York Times Book Review

"An American original."
--Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box

"A terrifically gifted storyteller."
--Washington Post Book Review

"Like gold standard writers Elmore Leonard and the late Donald Westlake, Joe R. Lansdale is one of the more versatile writers in America."
--Los Angeles Times

"Lansdale's been hailed, at varying points in his career, as the new Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner-gone-madder, and the last surviving splatterpunk."
--Austin Chronicle

"There are writers who are prolific and writers who are brilliant: Joe R. Lansdale is one of the few who is both."
--Christopher Farnsworth, author of Blood Oath

Praise for the short fiction of Joe R. Lansdale

"Yet another masterclass in how it's done."
--Ed Brubaker, author of The Fade Out

"An absolute blast and a gift to all of us devoted fans."
--Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Revelators

"Pure muscle, bone and mayhem, served up the just the way you like it."
--Duane Swierczynski, author of Breakneck

"Proves once again that no one writes a short story like Lansdale."
--Crime Reads

"There's that comfort and confidence that the best American popular fiction has."
--Eamonn Griffin, author of East of England

"Funny, dark, readable, and thought provoking. A joy from start to finish."
--Manhattan Book Review

"You could call Born for Trouble a collection of stories. But that's like calling Paradise Lost by Milton a poem. . ."
--S.A. Cosby author of Razorblade Tears

Author Bio

Joe R. Lansdale (Savage Season, The Donut Legion) is the internationally-bestselling author of over fifty novels, including the popular, long-running Hap and Leonard novels. Many of his cult classics have been adapted for television and film, most famously the films Bubba Ho-Tep and Cold in July, and the Hap and Leonard series on Sundance TV and Netflix. Lansdale has written numerous screenplays and teleplays, including the iconic Batman: The Animated Series. He has won an Edgar Award for The Bottoms and ten Stoker Awards, and he has been designated a World Horror Grandmaster. Lansdale, like many of his characters, lives in East Texas, with his wife, Karen.