In the Mad Mountains

"Joe Lansdale squares up to the Great Old Ones—and taps into rich veins of awe and wit, with always a backbeat thrum of cosmic terror."

—Kim Newman, author of the Anno Dracula series


Eleven-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-tep) returns with this wicked short story collection of his irreverent Lovecraftian tributes. Lansdale is terrifyingly down-home while merging his classic gonzo stylings with the eldritch horrors of H. P. Lovecraft. Knowingly skewering Lovecraft's paranoid mythos, Lansdale embarks upon haunting yet sly explorations of the unknown, capturing the essence of cosmic dread.


A sinister blues recording pressed on vinyl in blood conjures lethal shadows with its unearthly wails. In order to rescue Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn traverses the shifting horrors of the aptly named Dread Island. In the weird Wild West, Reverend Jebidiah Mercer rides into a possessed town to confront the unspeakable in the crawling sky. Legendary detective C. Auguste Dupin uncovers the gruesome secrets of both the blue lightning bug and the Necronomicon.


Exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche, here is a lethally entertaining journey through Joe Lansdale's twisted landscape, where ancient evils lurk and sanity hangs by a rapidly fraying thread.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale

"The Bleeding Shadow"

Dread Island

"The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning"

"The Tall Grass"

"The Case of the Stalking Shadows"

"The Crawling Sky"

"Starlight, Eyes Bright"

In the Mad Mountains