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Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale
Author: Joe R. Lansdale
Forward by Bill Crider
Southwestern Writers Collection Series, The Wittliff Collections
Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2009
212 pp.
Price: Hardcover: $29.95

Master of mojo storytelling, spinner of over-the-top yarns of horror, suspense, humor, mystery, science fiction, and even the Old West, Joe R. Lansdale has attracted a wide and enthusiastic following. His genre-defying work has brought him numerous awards, including the Grand Master of Horror from the World Horror Convention, the Edgar Award, the American Horror Award, seven Bram Stoker awards, the British Fantasy Award, Italy's Grinzane Prize for Literature, as well as Notable Book of the Year recognition twice from the New York Times.

Sanctified and Chicken-Fried is the first "true best of Lansdale" anthology. It brings together a unique mix of well-known short stories and excerpts from his acclaimed novels, along with new and previously unpublished material. In this collection of gothic tales that explore the dark and sometimes darkly humorous side of life and death, you'll meet traveling preachers with sinister agendas, towns lost to time, teenagers out for a good time who get more than they bargain for, and gangsters and strange goings-on at the end of the world. Out of the blender of Lansdale's imagination spew tall tales about men and mules, hogs and races, that are, in his words, "the equivalent of Aesop meets Flannery O'Connor on a date with William Faulkner, the events recorded by James M. Cain."

Whether you're a long-time fan of Joe R. Lansdale or just discovering his work, this anthology brings you the best of a writer whom the New York Times Book Review has praised for having "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace."

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of thirty novels, including The Bottoms, Mucho Mojo, A Fine Dark Line, Two-Bear Mambo, and Bad Chili, as well as two hundred shorter works in fiction, nonfiction, essays, and columns. His screenplays, novels, and stories have frequently been optioned by producers and directors such as David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and Adam Friedman. He has written teleplays for Batman: The Animated Series, as well as a multitude of comic book scripts. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was filmed and starred Ossie Davis and Bruce Campbell, and his short story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was filmed for Showtime.