Old Mars

Prolific Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale has won the Edgar Award, the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the American Mystery Award, the International Crime Writer’s Award, and nine Bram Stoker Awards. Although perhaps best known for horror/thrillers such as The Nightrunners, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Bottoms, The God of the Razor, and The Drive-In, he also writes the popular Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series—Savage Season, Mucho Mojo, The Two-Bear Mambo, Bad Chili, Rumble Tumble, Captains Outrageous—as well as Western novels such as The Magic Wagon, and totally unclassifiable cross-genre novels such as Zeppelins West, The Drive-In, and The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels. His other novels include Dead in the West, The Big Blow, Sunset and Sawdust, Acts of Love, Freezer Burn, Waltz of Shadows, and Leather Maiden. He has also contributed novels to series such as Batman and Tarzan. His many short stories have been collected in By Bizarre Hands; Sanctified and Chicken Fried; The Best of Joe R. Lansdale; The Shadows Kith and Kin; The Long Ones; Stories by Mama Lansdale’s Youngest Boy; Bestsellers Guaranteed; On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with the Dead Folks; Electric Gumbo; Writer of the Purple Rage; Fist Full of Stories; Bumper Crop; The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent; Selected Stories by Joe R. Lansdale; For a Few Stories More; Mad Dog Summer: And Other Stories; The King and Other Stories; Deadman’s Road; High Cotton: The Collected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale; and an omnibus, Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal. As editor, he has produced the anthologies The Best of the West, Retro Pulp Tales, Son of Retro Pulp Tales (with Keith Lansdale), Razored Saddles (with Pat LoBrutto), Dark at Heart: All New Tales of Dark Suspense (with wife Karen Lansdale), The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners, and the Robert E. Howard tribute anthology, Cross Plains Universe (with Scott A. Cupp). An anthology in tribute to Lansdale’s work is Lords of the Razor. His most recent books are two new Hap and Leonard novels, Vanilla Ride and Devil Red, as well as the short novels Hyenas and Dead Aim, the novels Edge of Dark Water and The Thicket, two new anthologies—The Urban Fantasy Anthology (edited with Peter S. Beagle), and Crucified Dreams—and three new collections, Shadows West (with John L. Lansdale), Trapped in the Sunday Matinee, and Bleeding Shadows. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Here he tells the suspenseful story of a young girl who sets off on a rescue mission with many lives at stake, realizing quite well that it’s dangerous—but perhaps not realizing quite how dangerous it’s going to become.