Collections

"Highly entertaining. . . . Those looking for a fun romp amid crime and killers will be satisfied." Publishers Weekly. Here, from an extraordinary writer equally at home in California noir and bayou dope deals (with zombies), is a sharp, profane and stunning collection of short fiction. As NPR said, some of these crime stories would cause Nancy Drew to faint into her plate of cucumber tea sandwiches.

Three novellas by Gary Phillips in one collection. Malcolm Cavanaugh Bleekston, MC Bleak, McBleak, enjoys hobnobbing with the one percenters and stealing from them. In The Extractors, he puts his life on the line to take a greedy man’s gain while wondering if his girlfriend sees through his façade. Ned “Noc” Brenner is a drifter with an unusual skill set—he’s an extreme athlete good at whatever he does be it MMA fighting to riding a motorcycle off a mountaintop. After winning in an all-night poker game, this sets in motion a series of events in The Anti-Gravity Steal where Noc must use all his abilities to prevent wholesale destruction. Part Shaft and part Batman sans the cowl, Luke Warfield, a philanthropist with a black ops background, the Essex Man, goes on the trail in 10 Seconds to Death of the villain who killed his foster father and uncovers not only ghosts from his past, but must stop a deadly plan of mass slaughter in his own backyard. Bonus Essex Man short story, “Murder by Remote Control.”

Award-winning author, screenwriter, and editor Gary Phillips gathers his most thrilling, outlandish, and madcap pulp fiction in an 17-story collection that straddles the line between bizarro, science fiction, noir, and superhero classics. Aztec vampires, astral projecting killers, oxygen stealing bombs, undercover space rangers, aliens occupying Los Angeles, right wing specters haunting the ’hood, masked vigilantes, and mad scientists in their underground lairs plotting world domination populate the stories in this rip-snorting collection. In these pages grindhouse melds with blaxploitation along with strong doses of B movie hardcore drive-in fare. Phillips, editor of the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir , and author of One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem , said this about pulp. “The most common definition of pulp is it’s fast-paced, a story containing out there characters and a wild plot. There is that. But certainly, as we’ve now arrived at the era of retro-pulp, these stories have elements of characterization: not just action, but a glimpse behind the steely eyes of these doers of incredible deeds.” As an added bonus, Phillips resurrects Phantasmo, a Golden Age comics character created by Black artist-writer E.C. Stoner in an all-new outing of ethereal doings (includes 4 original illustrations by cover artist Adam Shaw).