THE COMPLETE DRIVE-IN by JOE R. LANSDALE
THE COMPLETE DRIVE-IN by JOE R. LANSDALE
All Three Classic Novels Collected in One Paperback
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THE DRIVE-IN: A B-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in TexasTHE DRIVE-IN 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels
THE DRIVE-IN 3: The Bus Tour
The end of the 1980s. Drive-in movie culture is mostly dead with one significant exception: THE ORBIT DRIVE-IN. A drive-in theater so large it houses multiple stories-high screens that fill the sky, and can hold four thousand cars and all the people who can squeeze in them. It’s a lit city that fills to the brim on Friday nights, crowds gather for the Dusk-to-Dawn Horror Shows. Horns honk, BBQ grills sizzle, people yell and act the fool, ready for the marathon of one low-budget horror film after another. But then suddenly the world changes in front of their eyes, not on the screens. A comet, red and smiling with jagged teeth, flashes across the sky. People try to leave but find they are trapped by some acidic goo surrounding the entire drive-in. They grow hungry, homicidal and suicidal. Then along comes the Popcorn King, a jiving, rhyming creature formed by blue-white lightning, with four arms and a popcorn bucket on its head. A monster as strange and dangerous and mesmerizing as the creatures and villains on the screens. It offers the starving masses food, but there’s always a price to pay for survival. And THEN things start to get wicked…
[synopsis taken from back cover]
Friday night at the Orbit Drive-in: a circus of noise, sex, teenage hormones, B-movie blood, and popcorn. On a cool, crisp summer night, with the Texas stars shining down like rattlesnake eyes, movie-goers for the All-Night Horror Show are trapped in the drive-in by a demonic-looking comet. Then the fun begins. If the movie-goers try to leave, their bodies dissolve into goo. Cowboys are reduced to tears. Lovers quarrel. Bikini-clad women let their stomachs’ sag, having lost the ambition to hold them in. The world outside the six monstrous screens fades to black while the movie-goers spiral into base humanity, resorting to fighting, murdering, crucifying, and cannibalizing to survive. Part dark comedy part horror show, Lansdale's cult Drive-In books are as shocking and entertaining today as they were when they debuted in the '80s and '90s. Get all three books in THE COMPLETE DRIVE-IN, out now in paperback.
[synopsis taken from Joe's site]
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"For all the amazing work Joe has given his readers, I think The Drive-In is one of his best." - Cemetery Dance
"...a rocket-ship ride through the heart of darkness, full of junk-food thrills and doom, and not to be missed." - The A.V. Club
"Joe Lansdale is a born storyteller." - Robert Bloch
CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR THE MAGIC WAGON
"To the 1980s what True Grit was to its decade."—Dean R. Koontz
"Part tall tale, part suspense story, part dark fantasy, The Magic Wagon is wholly unique and unfailingly SUCCESSFUL."—Ed Gorman, Trails West
"A delight."— Books of the Southwest
"An assortment of colorful, often humorous characters gives this insightful and gritty tale authenticity and a sense of wonder."— Booklist
"Pure escapist reading."— The Antioch Review
"This is a rare, wonderful book."—Lewis Shiner, The Austin Chronicle
"Joe R. Lansdale proves he can show his readers a good time—and leave them a little something to think about afterward."— The New York Times Book Review
CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR BUBBA AND THE COSMIC BLOOD-SUCKERS
“A worthy follow-up to a modern cult classic.” – San Francisco Book Review (Glenn Dallas)
“It makes [Bubba Ho-Tep] seem like a Sunday School lesson in comparison.” – Cemetery Dance (Blu Gilliand)
“Pure, unabashed pulp fun. It doesn’t skimp on the stakes (or the gore, for that matter), but it’s not all grim and gritty, either. It’s vintage Lansdale, and the best part of all is that it proves there’s plenty of room for more Bubba stories down the line.” – Cemetery Dance (Blu Gilliand)
“In this gore-spattered funfest, master of the macabre Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series) fills in the backstories of the characters from his novella Bubba Ho-Tep (which became a cult classic film).” – Publishers Weekly
“Joe R. Lansdale does a great job with the characters and building the dread. The author grabs you from the first scene and doesn't let go until the last page. The story is filled with wild fights, strange monsters, sex, and ghosts. The pink Cadillac even makes an appearance.” – Cedar Hollow Horror Reviews
JOE R. LANSDALE TITLES FROM BOOKVOICE PUBLISHING: The Magic Wagon [Limited Edition Hardcover and eBook]
Bubba Ho-Tep / Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers [Paperback]
The Complete Drive-In: The Drive-In 1/2/3 [Paperback and eBook]
ABOUT JOE:
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale has written novels and stories in many genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, mystery, and suspense. He has also written for comics as well as "Batman: The Animated Series." As of 2018, he has written 45 novels and published 30 short-story collections along with many chapbooks and comic-book adaptations. His stories have won ten Bram Stoker Awards. a British Fantasy Award, an Edgar Award, a World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, a Sugarprize, a Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, a Spur Award, and a Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been inducted into The Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and several of his novels have been adapted to film.
Frequent features of Lansdale's writing are usually deeply ironic, strange or absurd situations or characters, such as Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy battling a soul-sucking Egyptian mummy in a nursing home (the plot of his Bram Stoker Award-nominated novella, Bubba Ho-Tep, which was made into a movie by Don Coscarelli). He is the winner of the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the Edgar Award, and ten Bram Stoker Awards.
His Hap and Leonard series of ten novels, four novellas, and three short-story collections feature two friends, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, who live in the fictional town of Laborde, in East Texas, and find themselves solving a variety of often unpleasant crimes. The characters themselves are an unlikely pairing; Hap is a white, working-class laborer in his mid-forties who once protested against the war in Vietnam and spent time in federal prison rather than be drafted; Leonard is a gay, black Vietnam vet. Both of them are accomplished fighters, and the stories (told from Hap's narrative point of view) feature a great deal of violence, profanity, and sex. Lansdale paints a picture of East Texas which is essentially "good" but blighted by racism, ignorance, urban and rural deprivation, and government corruption. Some of the subject matter is extremely dark, and includes scenes of brutal violence. These novels are also characterized by sharp humor and "wisecracking" dialogue. These books have been adapted into a TV series for the SundanceTV channel and a series of graphic novels began publication in 2017. Season 2 of the television series is based on the second Hap and Leonard novel, Mucho Mojo, and season 3, which premiered on 3/7/18, is based on the third novel, The Two-Bear Mambo. [from joerlansdale.com]