The Shadows, Kith and Kin

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. Captain Lars Haggart was a soul waiting to be reborn...but before that blessed event he had been inducted into the Arm of God Regiment, fighting for the beleaguered Churchers on a newly colonized planet. Their foedemons who could pop into existence, slay and pop out of existence the next instant. The demons were winning that war, sending their Unborn, opponents back to limbo, driving the living colonists toward extermination. But this was no fantasy, no business of the religious imagination. The fight was real, blood was blood, and swords cut sharp, for the Unborn were very much alive. Haggart was aware that this was frighteningly contradictory, but first he had to fight the demons on their own terms, learn how to appear behind their lines and do to them what they were doing to the humans. An unusual science fiction novel of a space colony in deepest trouble and of aliens who knew planetary secrets that were never in anyone's Holy Book.