If the Western town of Falling Rock isn't dangerous enough due to drunks, fast guns and greedy miners, it gets a real dose of ugly when a soulless, dynamite-loving bounty hunter named Smith rides into town to bring back a bounty, dead or alive--preferably dead. In the process, Smith sets off an explosive chain of events that send him straight to the waiting room in Hell where he is offered a one-time chance to absolve himself.
Satan, a bartender also known as Snappy, wants Smith to hurry back to earth and put a very bad hombre out of commission. Someone Smith has already met in the town of Falling Rock. A fellow named Quill, who has, since Smith's departure, sold his soul to the Old Ones, and has been possessed by a nasty, scaly, winged demon with a cigar habit and a bad attitude. Quill wants to bring about the destruction of the world, not to mention the known universe, and hand it all over: moon, stars, black spaces, cosmic dust, as well as all of humanity, to the nasty Lovecraftian deities that wait on the other side of the veil. It's a bargain made in worse places than Hell.
Even Satan can't stand for that kind of dark business. The demon that has possessed Quill, a former co-worker of Satan, has gone way too far, and there has to be a serious correction.
And though Smith isn't so sure humanity is that big of a loss, the alternative of him cooking eternally while being skewered on a meat hook isn't particularly appealing. Smith straps on a gift from Snappy, a holstered Colt pistol loaded with endless silver ammunition, and riding a near-magical horse named Shadow, carrying an amazing deck of cards that can summon up some of the greatest gunfighters and killers the west has ever known, he rides up from hell, and back into Falling Rock, a town that can be entered, but can't be left.
It's an opportunity not only for Smith to experience action and adventure and deal with the living dead and all manner of demonic curses and terrible prophecies, it's a shot at love with a beautiful, one-eyed, redheaded-darling with a whip, a woman named Payday. But it's an even bigger shot at redemption.
Saddle up, partner. It's time to ride into an old fashioned pulp and horror adventure full of gnashing teeth, exploding dynamite, pistol fire, and a few late night kisses.
Author Biography
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and several hundred short pieces, fiction and non-fiction. He has received numerous awards, among them The Edgar, 10 Bram Stokers, one of them for Lifetime Achievement, and he has also received the Horror Writers Association Grandmaster Award. He has also been awarded The British Fantasy Award, The Herodotus, Inkpot, Lifetime Achievement Award, Grinzani Prize, The Golden Lion Award, The Spur Award for his novel Paradise Sky, and many others. His writing has been made into several films, including Bubba Ho-Tep, Cold in July, Christmas with the Dead, as well as TV episodes like Incident On and Off A Mountain Road for Showtime's Masters of Horror, and the Hap and Leonard series based on his series characters. Currently in progress are The Bottoms, to be directed by Bill Paxton, The Thicket, to star Peter Dinklage, as well as others. He is a member of The Texas Institute of Letters, and has been inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and is in The United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame, and the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He is writer in residence at Stephen. F. Austin University. He and his wife, Karen, live in Nacogdoches, Texas. John L. Lansdale was born and raised in East Texas. He is married to the love of his life Mary. They have four children. He is a retired Army reserve Psychological Operations Officer and a combat veteran with numerous medals and awards. He's an inventor, country music song writer performer and television programmer. He produced and directed the Television Special "Ladies of Country Music." He has produced several albums in Nashville, hosted his own radio shows and won awards for producing and writing radio and TV commercials. He was a writer and editor of a business newspaper. He has worked as a comic book writer for Tales from the Crypt, IDW, Grave Tales, Cemetery Dance and several more. He co-authored the Shadows West and Hell's Bounty novels with his brother Joe. Currently he has authored the following novels in the process of publication: Horse of a Different Color, Slow Bullet, Long Walk Home, The Last Good Day and Zombie Gold. Ben Baldwin is a freelance artist from the UK who works with a combination of traditional media, photography and digital art programmes. He has produced a number of book cover designs and magazine illustrations for publishers around the world. He has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist for the last five years and was also shortlisted in 2012 for the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Artist and won Artist of the Year in the This Is Horror Awards 2013.
