Crucified Dreams

A naïve young woman witnesses a brutal murder and discovers the soul-deadening price of being a New Yorker. The family man quits smoking with the sinister assistance of a family-friendly corporation. A truck driver takes a simple shortcut and lands in a living hell and a battle to the death. An aging Hollywood screenwriter’s career is on the wane until he reinvents himself as a less principled man.Crucified Dreams reaches down through the gutters into the shadowy depths of the imagination. These are the savage tales that unite noir with horror and the ordinary with the unfathomable. Combing the urban, the paranormal, and the downright terrifying, these award-winning stories go where your deepest fears?and inner demons?are already realized.

From Publishers Weekly

Apart from a misleading subtitle, Lansdale's anthology of 19 reprinted stories is solid, comprising a variety of stories from both new and well-known authors. While Harlan Ellison's superb "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" and Octavia Butler's impressive "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" certainly qualify as urban horror, many others clearly do not. David Morrell's "Front Man" is an economically written and suspenseful crime tale but not particularly scary. The desert of Norman Partridge's "The Mojave Two-Step" and the Vietnamese jungle of Joe Haldeman's "The Monster" are not exactly urban. Readers who curtail their genre expectations will be better able to appreciate the diverse themes and approaches of these stories, even the ones that don't represent the authors' best work. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

?Bookgasm

"[Lansdale's story] is filled with well-wrought characters, black humor, knife-sharp dialogue, and enough violence to make even the most jaded Quentin Tarantino aficionado sit up and smile." ―Washington Times ?"Prime pieces by respected genre writers. Readers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror will find something within their respective (or overlapping) tastes to enjoy." ?―Hellnotes ?"Spanning more than 35 years and pulled from a wide variety of horror, fantasy, mystery, and science-fiction publications, [the stories] reflect a uniform standard of excellence by which any writer would want to measure his own work." ?―Locus ?"This is one of those rare anthologies where you’ll want to read each and every contribution.... [P]ut yourself in the capable hands of Lansdale as he guides you through his wonderfully twisted sensibilities and tastes in reading."

About the Author

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than thirty novels, including the Edgar Award?winning Hap and Leonard mystery series (Mucho Mojo, Two Bear Mambo) and the New York Times Notable Book The Bottoms. More than two hundred of his stories have appeared in such outlets as Tales From the Crypt and Pulphouse, and his work has been adapted for The Twilight Zone and Masters of Horror. Lansdale has written several graphic novels, including Batman and Fantastic Four. He is a tenth-degree black belt and the founder of the Shen Chuan martial art.

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