High Cotton — Joe R. Lansdale

This collection of Joe R. Lansdale stories represents the best of the “Lansdale” genre -- a strange mixture of dark crime, even darker humor, and adventure tales. The stories are varied in setting and theme, but they are all pure Lansdale -- eerie, amusing, and occasionally horrific. In “The Pit,” modern gladiators square off against one another using Roman methods. An alternate-history tale called “Trains Not Taken” shows Buffalo Bill as an ambassador and Wild Bill Hickok as a clerk. Lansdale's love of large lizards and humor are evident in the stories “Godzilla's Twelve Step Program” and “Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland.”