"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. You''ll never look at the howling void in the black heart of the universe the same way again." --Kim Newman, author of the Anno Dracula series "Cosmic horror is alive and well in this eerie collection of what Bram Stoker Award winner Lansdale ( Moon Lake ) considers to be his eight best Lovecraftian tales, each with different settings and styles and often pulling from other authors'' oeuvres as well. ''Dread Island'' riffs on Mark Twain, opening with the line ''this here story is as true as that other story that was written down about me and Jim,'' and going on to tell of how Huck Finn risks his life to save Tom Sawyer from a mysterious evil. Lansdale''s mimicry extends to Edgar Allan Poe as well; ''The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning'' is a new C. Auguste Dupin exploit, in which the sleuth looks into eyewitness accounts of oddly colored lightning. A third highlight, ''The Tall Grass,'' evokes Algernon Blackwood, as a businessman traveling in the West has an unsettling experience when his train stops after midnight in the middle of a patch of unusually tall prairie grass that ''shifted in the moonlight like waves of gold-green seawater pulled by the tide-making forces of the moon.'' Lansdale fans and Lovecraft devotees alike will be impressed.

" (Oct.) -- Publishers Weekly "Here''s Lovecraft''s trick: he uses polyphony, many voices, to build his narrative case for the existence of cosmic squids whistling in the dark. Here is Lansdale''s trick: doing it better." --Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and I Am Providence "Horror royalty Joe Lansdale''s take on cosmic horror and the Cthulhu Mythos is everything you''d hope for--bloody, profane, grimly humorous, and as vivid as Technicolor hell splashed on a 20-foot tall silver screen." --Laird Barron, author of Not a Speck of Light "Playful, ambitious, surprising and so much fun to read. What a thrill to watch a modern master play literary games with the greats." --Victor LaValle, author of The Ballad of Black Tom "Joe Lansdale is an American treasure--he''s funny and he can write whatever he wants to, in whatever genre he chooses and IT WILL BE GOOD. In these stories inspired by Lovecraft, Joe lets his imagination run wild .

Highly recommended!" -- Char''s Horror Corner "Lansdale proves once again with In the Mad Mountains , as he has over his long and triumphant career, to be a master of every genre he touches." --Rae Wilde, author of Merciless Waters and I Can Fix Her "A consistently entertaining, varied, horrifying, and vividly told collection." -- Umney''s Alley "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." --Paul Finch, author of Never Seen Again "For fans of horror fiction searching for something spine-chilling, this book is exactly what you''ve been waiting for." -- Bibliophileverse "Lansdale has a wide fan base for good reason, but this book presents a wonderful opportunity to expand it even further by suggesting this collection to fans of twenty-first century cosmic horror authors such as Hailey Piper and Lucy Snyder." -- Booklist "It''s a perfect spooky season/Hallowe''en read, even better with a buddy. The cover art by Mike Mignola is a nice bonus and suits the book perfectly." -- Nonstop Reader "The book may be inspired by Lovecraft, but the stories take advantage of all the author''s areas of expertise and his sense of humor in an often creepy and always entertaining collection.

-- Silver Screen Library "Lansdale''s tales are fun, carefully constructed, and an important contribution to the opus of cosmic horror in our fallen world." --Steve Capone, Jr., author of Jimmy vs. Communism 5/5 stars. "What an eclectic, delicious collection of creepy short stories that Joe Lansdale has written." -- Hall Ways "A whip-like tentacle of poison that wraps itself around you, dragging you into deep corners of darkness while your heart pistons into overdrive." -- Read@Joes "Scary, fun, and cosmic as all hell. Lansdale is a master in just about every genre imaginable (not sure if he''s ever tried his hand at children''s books, but that could be interesting), and it shows here.

" -- Dave Writes and Draws Praise for Joe R. Lansdale "A folklorist''s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur''s sense of pace." -- New York Times Book Review "A terrifically gifted storyteller." -- Washington Post Book Review "Like gold standard writers Elmore Leonard and the late Donald Westlake, Joe R. Lansdale is one of the more versatile writers in America." -- Los Angeles Times "A zest for storytelling and gimlet eye for detail." -- Entertainment Weekly "Lansdale is an immense talent." -- Booklist "Lansdale is a storyteller in the Texas tradition of outrageousness.

but amped up to about 100,000 watts." -- Houston Chronicle "Lansdale''s been hailed, at varying points in his career, as the new Flannery O''Connor, William Faulkner-gone-madder, and the last surviving splatterpunk . sanctified in the blood of the walking Western dead and righteously readable." -- Austin Chronicle.