Four free short stories by Joe R. Lansdale are free in the Amazon store and from iTunes, courtesy of small publisher Gere Donovan Press. This US publisher specializes in bringing backlist titles back as ebooks, scanning paperbooks into ebook form for authors who don't have electronic editions (including at least two read-throughs to check for OCR errors). It looks like they are also publishing some short stories, as well as full novels, such as Dana Stabenow's backlist (two of which are still free
Fire and Ice and
Second Star).
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road (Kindle/
iTunes)
Book Description
"Easing her back against a tree trunk, she sat and listened, watching for that strange face, fearing it might abruptly burst through the limbs and brush, grinning its horrible teeth, or worse, that he might come up behind her, reach around the tree trunk with his knife and finish her in a bloody instant."
“Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” is one of Joe Lansdale’s most popular and terrifying short stories. Adapted for television, it appeared as an episode of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series.
Bullets and Fire (Kindle/
iTunes)
Book Description
"Dad told me once, that if people don't care about where they live, the way they act, people they associate with, they get lost in the dark, can't find their way back cause there's no light left. I had taken a pretty good step into the shadows tonight." It's payback time, in this short story by Joe R. Lansdale.
The Steel Valentine (Kindle/
iTunes)
Book Description
“Even before Morley told him, Dennis knew things were about to get ugly. A man did not club you unconscious, bring you to his estate and tie you to a chair in an empty storage shed out back of the place if he merely intended to give you a valentine. Morley had found out about him and Julie.”
A short story in the tradition of Fleming or Dahl, “The Steel Valentine” is a gem, exemplifying the suspense writing of Joe Lansdale.
Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back (Kindle/
iTunes)
Book Description
They did it — they launched the damned nukes and the world went pretty much straight to hell. Not many survived, but some of those who did emerged twenty years later, to a world where mutant whales heaved themselves across the blackened, dry seabed of the Pacific, and the roses… oh God, the roses.
“Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” is a chilling post-nuclear short story by Joe R. Lansdale.
