Fishing for Dinosaurs and Other Stories

Dust jacket illustration by Timothy Truman.

Fishing for Dinosaurs and Other Stories by Joe R. Lansdale is an all-novella collection that features “Sixty-Eight Barrels on Treasure Lake,” an original that clocks in at over 28,000 words. The collection proper is preceded by a general introduction by hisownself, while each of the novellas is introduced by, variously, Robin Hobb, Poppy Z. Brite, Richard Chizmar, David J. Schow, and Norman Partridge.

From Wild to Wilder, you are offered a journey into the Worlds of Joe R. Lansdale. Go on a fishing trip for dinosaurs in the arctic and meet numerous characters from adventure novels and pulps, as a man unsure of his identity awakens to discover he has a job to do, if he only knew what it was and who he was. Cave men. Secret lairs. The strange group who rule the world, and She Who Must Be Obeyed, all come together in a rollicking adventure on an icy lake that contains an unexpected secret.

Visit the old West and be at the famous fight of Adobe Walls with Nat Love and his friend Black Hat Jack. Trapped in a adobe hut, a nest of crusty buffalo hunters battle angry Comanches who want to drive the hunters off their land, and make sure they don't come back.  Be witness to the epic battle that occurred there. Dark, funny, adventurous, with bad language.

Visit an island graveyard for super criminals. It's just across the bay from a secret prison for those criminals, as well as deadly monsters. One of the executed villains, an executed creature made of will and mud,  is about to be buried on the island. But not everything dead stays dead, and when it awakens, it definitely gets up on the wrong side of the grave.

Find out the true story of the Ape Man, as told by his Australopithecus brother, as they venture from their hidden jungleworld of dinosaurs, to the modern world of an alternate universe New York where Zeppelins sail the skies and movies are still made on film. Find out how the Ape Man's falls for The Woman, and how a venture into film fails dramatically, ends with death and a humiliating act that no one wants to name. Watch as the primitive falls from grace, and the New World offers temptations, disappoints, and some hard-core adventure.

Out in the Old West there are tons of myths and legends, and sometimes those legends just might be true. A young bartender named Rabbit, teams up with a beautiful sawmill worker, Sally Bleedhead, and sets out to lead some of the nastiest villains in existence to a hidden valley, as well as stolen gold, and a quest to fill sixty-eight barrels with a strange treasure that will reveal the deadly secrets of the lost valley.

Contents:

• Introduction: “Fishing for Stories” by Joe R. Lansdale
• Introduction  “What Joe Lansdale Means to Me” by Robin Hobb
• Black Hat Jack
• Introduction: “On Lost Worlds” by Poppy Z. Brite
• Fishing for Dinosaurs
• Introduction: “I Should’ve Known Better” by Richard Chizmar
• The Ape Man’s Brother
• Introduction: “The Yarning” by David J. Schow
• Prisoner 489
• Introduction: “Harryhausen, Houdini, and Hisownself” by Norman Partridge
• Sixty-Eight Barrels on Treasure Lake