Book picks similar to
Hap and Leonard by Joe R. Lansdale
mystery
fiction
short-stories
humor
Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero
Dan Abnett - 2009
Adventurer. Fighter. Drinker.Saviour?Pratchett goes swashbuckling in the hotly anticipated original fiction debut of the multi-million selling Warhammer star.Triumff is a ribald historical fantasy set in a warped clockwork-powered version of our present day … a new Elizabethan age, not of Elizabeth II but in the style of the original Virgin Queen. Throughout its rollicking pages, Sir Rupert Triumff drinks, dines and duels his way into a new Brass Age of Exploration and Adventure.
Keeper
Greg Rucka - 1996
For Atticus Kodiak, professional bodyguard, the object is to keep people alive, and there is no margin for error. Now Kodiak faces his toughest challenge: to protect a woman and her daughter from a killer with a fanatic agenda of his own....Tense, taut, and as brutally real as this morning's headlines, Keeper marks the debut of a talented young writer of tough, unflinching prose--and the beginning of an electrifying new series.
The Fix, Vol. 3: Deal of Fortune
Nick Spencer - 2018
Collects THE FIX #9-12.
The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Ben AckerLar Desouza - 2013
Tompkins, Paget Brewster, Busy Philipps, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Patton Oswalt, Neil Patrick Harris, and many, many more. And now those serialized characters will come to life on the pages of this hardcover anthology featuring all-new stories from the worlds of the TAH universe by top artists from the comics community! Each stand-alone tale celebrates and reinvigorates a new genre from the radio comedies of yesteryear, including science fiction, fantasy, westerns, superheroes, horror, war dramas, and many more. A unique, timey-wimey blend of silver age pulp and post-modern pop, this one-of-a-kind anthology promises something for everyone as this cult phenomenon jumps off the proscenium stage and onto the page for the first time in over eight years and 100+ consecutive shows around the globe!
Big Red Tequila
Rick Riordan - 1997
Ten years ago Navarre lefttown and the memory of his father's murder behind him. Now he's back, looking for answers. Yet the more Tres digs, trying to put his suspicions to rest, the fresher the decade-old crime looks: Mafia connections, construction site payoffs, and slick politicians' games all conspire to ruin his homecoming. It's obvious Tres has stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble. He gets attacked, shot at, run over by a big blue Thunderbird--and his old girlfriend, the one he wants back, turns up missing. Tres has to rescue the woman, nail his father's murderer, and get the hell out of Dodge before mob-style Texas justice catches up to him. The chances of staying alive looked better for the defenders of the Alamo...."A standout...A crooked construction company, corrupt cops, oldenemies--you can almost feel the summer storms rolling over South Texas." "---Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
Tales of the Black Widowers
Isaac Asimov - 1974
Professional men and their waiter. They gather at the Milano Restaurant once a month for good food and good conversation. But lately the Black Widowers have added a new entertainment to their meetings. They have begun to solve mysteries, murders, and conspiracies of seemingly impossible dimensions.With all the skills of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot combined, these six men and their ever-faithful waiter, Henry, take on challenging cases that will tease your deductive skills to the limit and keep you guessing to the very end.Contents:* The Acquisitive Chuckle* Ph as in Phony* Truth to Tell* Go, Little Book!* Early Sunday Morning* The Obvious Factor* The Pointing Finger* Miss What?* The Lullaby of Broadway* Yankee Doodle Went to Town* The Curious Omission* Out of Sight
A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
Christopher Brookmyre - 2001
In both their cases, it was to be rock stars. Fifteen years later, their mid-thirties are bearing down fast, and just like everybody else, they're having to accept the less glamorous hands reality has dealt them. Nervous new father Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody has to find their own way of coping. For some it's affairs, for others it's the bottle, and for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.
Batman Detective Comics #1
Tony S. Daniel - 2012
Daniel! A killer called The Gotham Ripper is on the loose on Batman’s home turf—leading The Dark Knight on a deadly game of cat and mouse.
The Christmas Scorpion
Lee Child - 2018
The last thing he expects is a blizzard—or a visit from the world’s deadliest assassin. Don’t miss a thrilling preview of Lee Child’s highly anticipated new Jack Reacher novel, Past Tense! On Christmas Eve, Jack Reacher stumbles into a no-name bar in the California desert, desperate to take refuge from an unexpected snowstorm. Reacher came to Barstow for a little R&R. Instead, he’s sequestered in a dark little roadhouse with a bartender, a bewildered elderly couple—and two members of Britain’s Royal Military Police. They tell Reacher they were escorting a VIP to a top-secret meeting at a U.S. military base when they became separated from their charge. That’s when the threat came in from a notorious assassin: the Christmas Scorpion. Now they need a miracle to save the day. Or maybe all they need is Jack Reacher.
The Book of Lamps and Banners
Elizabeth Hand - 2020
Cass Neary needs cash to get home to New York, and she's already sold her camera-like losing a limb, for a photographer of her experience. Her best chance is to get in on the deal that Griffin, an old flame, is about cut with a notoriously particular bookseller for a gorgeous, ancient illuminated manuscript: The Book of Lamps and Banners. This Book is more than just a beautiful object-its text and images are said to have a powerful magic capable of life-changing effects on anyone who reads it. But before the sale can be completed, an intruder brazenly steals the Book out from under the dealer's nose. Cass and Griff are the only suspects. To clear their names, and keep the missing text out of dangerous hands, Cass plunges into a curious underworld at the intersection of antiquarian books, cutting-edge software, and modern nationalist politics. This breathless psychological thriller, featuring one of the greatest amateur sleuths of the past decade, could only come from the mind of Elizabeth Hand.
The Very Best of Tad Williams
Tad Williams - 2014
Readers only familiar with such masterpieces as The Dragonbone Chair and Talchaser’s Song will be delighted to discover that in his short fiction, Williams has been able to explore myriad new possibilities and adventures.Previously collected in multiauthor anthologies and limited hardcover editions, these superlative talks of dragons, super-soldiers, wizards, cyberpunks, heroes, and fools are now available together for the first time in an affordable trade paperback edition. These stories showcase the exhilarating breadth of Williams’ imagination, in stories hearkening to the tales of such classic fantasists as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Ray Bradbury, and Peter S. Beagle. Included is an original tale written specifically for this volume.The Very Best of Tad Williams is a true delight to those who have imagined themselves in fantastic worlds beyond the everyday and mundane.TABLE OF CONTENTSThe Old Scale GameThe Storm DoorThe Stranger’s HandsChild of an AncientCityThe Boy Detective of Oz: An Otherland StoryThree Duets for Virgin and NosehornDiary of a DragonNot with a Whimper, EitherSome Thoughts Re: Dark DestroyerZ is for...Monsieur Vergalant’s CanardThe Stuff that Dreams are Made OfFish Between FriendsEvery Fuzzy Beast of the Earth, Every Pink Fowl of the AirA Stark and Wormy KnightBlack SunshineAnd Ministers of Grace
The Vampire Files, Volume 2
P.N. Elrod - 2006
In the wake of my resurrection as a member of the bloodsucking undead, I chose to put my investigative reporting talents to good use as a PI in Chicago; I've got my work cut out for me.Mingling with society's artsy crowd isn't my favorite pastime, but someone's got to navigate their way through the world of big money and bigger egos to find the killer of a young talent who deserved more than to be laid out on a canvas.My snooping has gotten me in occasional trouble with both sides of the law, so I'm used to cops and mobsters using me for target practice. But my thirst for the red stuff is getting out of control. I'm not sure what scares me more: the price on my head, or the darkness gnawing at my gut.And if that desire isn't bad enough, there's the hot-blooded daughter of a client who has big eyes for yours truly--and a jealous boyfriend.
Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense
Joyce Carol Oates - 2018
There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself―as brilliantly demonstrated in these six stories.The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In “The Long-Legged Girl,” an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgewood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband’s latest conquest? In “The Sign of the Beast,” when a former Sunday school teacher’s corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder―but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in “Night-Gaunts,” a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft.Reveling in the uncanny and richly in conversation with other creative minds, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing―and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.The woman in the window --The long-legged girl --Sign of the beast --The experimental subject --Walking wounded --Night-gaunts
Don't Look Back
Gregg Andrew Hurwitz - 2014
Eve wanders off the trail, to a house in the distance with a menacing man in the yard beyond it, throwing machetes at a human-shaped target. Disturbed by the sight, Eve moves quickly and quietly back to her group, taking care to avoid being seen. As she creeps along, she finds a broken digital camera, marked with the name Teresa Hamilton. Later that night, in a rarely used tourist cabin, she finds a discarded prescription bottle—also with the name Teresa Hamilton. From the camera's memory card, Eve discovers Teresa Hamilton took a photo of that same menacing looking man in the woods. Teresa Hamilton has since disappeared.Now the man in the woods is after whoever was snooping around his house. With a violent past and deadly mission, he will do anything to avoid being discovered. A major storm wipes out the roads and all communication with the outside world. Now the tour group is trapped in the jungle with a dangerous predator with a secret to protect. With her only resource her determination to live, Eve must fight a dangerous foe and survive against incredible odds—if she's to make it back home alive.
Fire in the Hole
Elmore Leonard - 2001
In Leonard's first original e-book, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (featured in Pronto and Riding the Rap) returns to the Eastern Kentucky coal-mining country of his youth. When Boyd Crowder, a mail-order-ordained minister who doesn't believe in paying his income taxes, decides to blow up the IRS building in Cincinnati, Givens is asked by the local marshal to intervene. This sets up an inevitable confrontation between two men on opposite sides of the law who still have a lingering respect for each other. Throw into the mix Boyd's sister-in-law, Ava, who carries a torch for Raylan along with a deer rifle, and you've got a funny, adrenaline-charged novella only Leonard could have written.