The Big Book of Hap and Leonard


Joe R. Lansdale - 2018
    Williams (The Wire) and James Purefoy (Altered Carbon).Hap Collins looks like a good ’ol boy, but his lefty politics don’t match. His buddy, Vietnam veteran Leonard Pine, is even more complicated: black, conservative, gay . . . and an occasional arsonist. With Hap and Leonard on the job, small-time crooks all on the way on up to the Dixie Mafia are extremely nervous.Everyone's favorite ass-kicking Texan duo are further immortalized in this expanded collection of tall tales, slick nonfiction, and four full-length novellas.Foreword for The Big Book of Hap and LeonardJoe R. Lansdale can be a pain in the ass. That’s why this book exists.Hap and Leonard collected all of the not-so-dynamic duo’s previously published shorter adventures (circa 2016) plus the original story “Not Our Kind,” basically everything that’s not a novel, in one handsome volume. This being the 21st century and all, an ebook edition was required. And therein lies the problem.Seems Joe had promised the digital rights to the novellas “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and the short story “The Boy Who Became Invisible” to another publisher than Tachyon. So we could wait until 2018 for the ebook, when the rights reverted, or figure out something else. We opted for the latter.The ebook Hap and Leonard Ride Again contained all of the material present in Hap and Leonard except for the trio of stories mentioned above. Since the remaining material scarcely made for a book, we added the original short story “The Oak and the Pond,” the Marvin Hanson novella “A Bone Dead Sadness,” Joe’s comic script adaptation of “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” my interview with Joe, and an original remembrance about the creation of Hap and Leonard by Bill Crider, who sadly died while we were putting together The Big Book of Hap and Leonard.When Joe offered us the rights to “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” we decided it was best to combine the two editions into this one super—dare I say big—book you hold in your virtual hands.Sometimes a pain in the ass leads to gold. Not sure if this qualifies as such but if not, it’s damn close.Rick Klaw, editorAustin, TexasFebruary 23, 2018Table of ContentsForeword for The Big Book of Hap and Leonard by Rick KlawAn Appreciation of Joe R. Lansdale by Michael KorytaJoe R. Lansdale, Hap and Leonard, and Me by Bill CriderHyenasVeil’s Visit (co-written by Andrew Vachss)Death by ChiliDead AimA Bone Dead SadnessThe Boy Who Became Invisible (story)The Boy Who Became Invisible (comic book script)Not Our Kind (original e-book publication)The Oak and the Pond (original e-book publication)Bent TwigJoe R. Lansdale Interviews Hap Collins and Leonard PineInterview with Joe R. LansdaleThe Care and Feeding and Raising Up of Hap and Leonard

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes


Anita Loos - 1925
    Outrageous, charming, and unforgettable, she’s been portrayed on stage and screen by Carol Channing and Marilyn Monroe and has become the archetype of the footloose, good-hearted gold digger, with an insatiable appetite for orchids, champagne, and precious stones. Here are her “diaries,” created by Anita Loos in the Roaring Twenties, as Lorelei and her friend Dorothy barrel across Europe meeting everyone from the Prince of Wales to “Doctor Froyd” – and then back home again to marry a Main Line millionaire and become a movie star. In this delightfully droll and witty book, Lorelei Lee’s wild antics, unique outlook, and imaginative way with language shine.

The Third Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack: Poul Anderson


Poul Anderson - 2014
    Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. This volume collects 8 classic stories:WITCH OF THE DEMON SEAS (1951)DUEL ON SYRTIS (1951)SECURITY (1953)SENTIMENT, INC. (1953)THE SENSITIVE MAN (1954)THE CHAPTER ENDS (1954)THE VALOR OF CAPPEN VARRA (1957)INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1963)And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see the more than 170 entries in the MEGAPACK™ ebook series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!

The Fort


Bernard Cornwell - 2010
    But Massachusetts was determined to expel the British, and they sent a fleet to 'captivate, kill and destroy' the enemy. Told from both sides of the battle, this story features real figures from history.

Follow the Stone


John Locke - 2011
    International best-selling author John Locke (Saving Rachel, Wish List, Now & Then, Lethal People, Lethal Experiment) tackles a new genre, with hilarious results.Follow the Stone (An Irreverent Western Adventure) is a good-hearted, rollicking story about a former gunslinger and his crablike scout, who journey West with a mail order bride, a witch, and a wagon full of prostitutes!

Daddy-Long-Legs


Jean Webster - 1912
    For the first time in her life, she had someone she could pretend was "family." But everything was not perfect, for he chose to remain anonymous and asked that she only write him concerning her progress in school. Who was this mysterious gentleman and would Jerusha ever meet him?

A Poor Wise Man


Mary Roberts Rinehart - 1920
    This engrossing story begins, "The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over all a gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty. Sometimes the softened towers of the great steel bridges rose above the river mist like fairy towers suspended between Heaven and earth. And again the sun tipped the surrounding hills with gold, while the city lay buried in its smoke shroud, and white ghosts of river boats moved spectrally along.

The Complete Saki


Saki - 1976
    The good wit of bad manners, elegantly spiced with irony and deftly controlled malice, has made Saki stories small, perfect gems of the English language. Here for the first time, are the collected writings of Saki--including all of his short stories ("Reginald", "Reginald in Russia", "The Chronicles of Clovis", "Beasts and Super-Beasts" "The Toys of Peace", and "The Square Egg"), his three novels (THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON, WHEN WILLIAM CAME and THE WESTMINSTER ALICE), and three plays (THE DEATHTRAP, KARL-LUDWIG'S WINDOW and THE WATCHED POT. You are invited to meet once again Clovis, Reginald, the Unbearable Bassington, and the other memorable characters etched so superbly by the pen of H.H. Munro. "In all literature, he was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around."--Roald Dahl. Introduction by Noel Coward.(less)

How to Capture a Duke


Bianca Blythe - 2016
    When her dying Grandmother worries about Fiona’s future, Fiona stammers that she’s secretly engaged. Soon she finds herself promising that she will introduce her husband-to-be by Christmas. One dutiful duke… Percival Carmichael, new Duke of Alfriston, is in a hurry. He’s off to propose to London’s most eligible debutante. After nearly dying at Waterloo, he’s vowed to spend the rest of his life living up to the ton’s expectations. One fallen tree… When Fiona tries to warn a passing coach about a tree in the road, the driver mistakes her for a highwaywoman. Evidently he’s not used to seeing women attired in clothes only suitable for archaeology waving knives. After the driver flees, Fiona decides she may as well borrow the handsome passenger…

The Petty Demon


Fyodor Sologub - 1905
    It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main hero, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting, he is at once a victim, a monster, a silly hypocrite, and a sadistic dullard. The plot moves from Peredonov’s petty quest for a promotion to arson and murder via one of the most incredible and uproarious scandal scenes in world literature, the masquerade ball, which the boy Sasha attends as a beautiful geisha. Even in its censored form, it is one of the most provocative and sexually open of Russian books. Sologub removed many passages which would have been unacceptable at the time of publication. In this edition these censored sections are appended, and all are keyed so that the reader can place them in the novel as it was written.

Nothing So Strange


James Hilton - 1947
    Mark Bradley in London she was only eighteen. She and her mother were both attracted by "Brad," and the situation thus engendered proved fateful, since it led to Brad's association with a great Viennese physicist and to his involvement in a tragic drama. But there was another drama, larger and less personal, that drew him into its widening orbit, a drama that became a secret and later an obsession.Probing yet protective, Jane's love makes the strong thread in a pattern of deeply moving and significant events—strange events, too—and yet, to quote Daniel Webster, there is often "nothing so strange" as the truth.Although the earlier scenes of Nothing So Strange are laid abroad, its outlook is American and its climax could only have taken place in America. It is as exciting and as human as anything Mr. Hilton has ever written.

The DNA Cowboys Trilogy: The Quest of the DNA Cowboys/Synaptic Manhunt/The Neural Atrocity


Mick Farren - 2002
    With influences that range from Star Trek to Kung Fu, from the Marquis de Sade to Sam Peckinpah, Farren has created a bizarre universe populated with pre-teen dictators, huge twin-brained domestic lizards, and growing bio-computers tended by martial arts-practising monks. Farren let his imagination run wild and the results are awesome. Expect fanciful weapons, medieval jails, public hangings, Albert Speer architecture, gunfights, stiletto heels and femmes fatales in tight clothing, orgies, orgasms, and undefined monsters called Disruptors that suck up all life and logic. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys: Striding out of the small township of Pleasant Gap - reproduction pistols in their hands, portable generators at their belt - come Billy and Reave, the DNA Cowboys. They hit the long and winding trail through the molecular dissolution of the Nothings, teetering on the edge of non-existence, to Graveyard and beyond...Synaptic Manhunt: Brother Jeb Stuart Ho's mission will take him out into the sick, post-cataclysmic world, to the pleasure city of Litz, with its Sex-O-Mats, its Torture-Parlours, its genetically-bred courtesans, where Billy and Reave, the DNA Cowboys, have found their private hells.The Neural Atrocity: The all-knowing, all-providing computer at Stuff Central has made a critical error that could mean the end of human life. Against all its programming, the cloning plant at Stuff Central has supplied A.A. Catto - sadistic child-woman ruler of Quahal - with enough genetically-engineered soldiers to realise her dream of world conquest. The Brotherhood orders Jeb Stuart Ho to stop her.

A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life


Greg Jenner - 2015
    In this gloriously entertaining romp through human history, peppered with amusing pop culture references, Greg Jenner explores the gradual and often unexpected evolution of our daily routines.This is not a story of politics, wars or great events, instead Greg Jenner has scoured Roman rubbish bins, Egyptian tombs and Victorian sewers to bring us the most intriguing, surprising and sometimes downright silly nuggets from our past. Drawn from across the world, spanning a million years of humanity, this book is a smorgasbord of historical delights. It is a history of all those things you always wondered - and many you have never considered. It is the story of your life, one million years in the making.The UK paperback edition (2016) is revised and updated with extra facts.OTHER REVIEWS:"If you find yourself secretly relishing your children's Horrible Histories books, you will love Greg Jenner's jolly account of how we have more in common with our ancestors than we might think ... all human life is here, amusingly conveyed in intriguing nuggets of gossipy historical anecdote" (DAILY MAIL)"A wonderful idea, gloriously put into practice, Greg Jenner is as witty as he is knowledgeable" (TOM HOLLAND)"Delightful, surprising and hilarious, this is a fascinating history of the everyday objects and inventions we take for granted" (LAUREN LAVERNE)"Greg Jenner's magpie mind takes you through the history of who we are and what we do, answering tons of questions you never thought to ask" (AL MURRAY)"Like visiting the most wonderful and cluttered museum, each chapter like another room teetering with illuminating ideas and information" (ROBIN INCE)"Hugely entertaining...full of astonishing insights" (HISTORY REVEALED MAGAZINE)"Jenner has a vivid, colloquial turn of phrase...lively, funny and completely absorbing" (CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE)

100 Years of The Best American Short Stories


Lorrie Moore - 2015
    For the centennial celebration of this beloved annual series, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls “all its wildnesses of character and voice.” These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time. Here is Ernest Hemingway’s first published story and a classic by William Faulkner, who admitted in his biographical note that he began to write “as an aid to love-making.” Nancy Hale’s story describes far-reaching echoes of the Holocaust; Tillie Olsen’s story expresses the desperation of a single mother; James Baldwin depicts the bonds of brotherhood and music. Here is Raymond Carver’s “minimalism,” a term he disliked, and Grace Paley’s “secular Yiddishkeit.” Here are the varied styles of Donald Barthelme, Charles Baxter, and Jamaica Kincaid. From Junot Díaz to Mary Gaitskill, from ZZ Packer to Sherman Alexie, these writers and stories explore the different things it means to be American.

Tutt and Mr. Tutt


Arthur Cheney Train - 1919
    The rare lawyer happy to forego his fee, Tutt specializes in defending the downtrodden against the powerful and the corrupt. In Manhattan and his hometown of Pottsville, New York, he argues cases involving murder, forgery, and theft, always finding some arcane legal point to save the day—much to the chagrin of the prosecution. In this delightful collection, Tutt brings his sharp mind and genial wit to bear on the cases of the “Mock Hen and Mock Turtle,” the “Hepplewhite Tramp,” the “Lallapaloosa Limited,” and many others.   Based on author Arthur Train’s experiences working in the offices of the New York District Attorney, Tutt and Mr. Tutt is a must-read for fans of legal mysteries.   This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.