Leather Maiden

A masterly new thriller from the Edgar Award-winning writer who has “a folklorists eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteurs sense of pace” (The New York Times Book Review).

After a scandalous affair costs him his job in Houston, Cason Statler—Gulf War veteran and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist—returns home to the small east Texas town of Camp Rapture. Cason is a wreck. He drinks too much, hes stalking his ex-girlfriend, and hes wallowing in envy of his successful older brother. To get back on his feet, he takes a job at the local paper, and when he stumbles across his predecessors notes on a cold case murder file, he thinks hes found the thing thatll keep him out of trouble. No such luck. The further he digs into the case, the more certain he is that the unsolved crime is connected to a series of eerie, inexplicable events that have recently occurred in town. And he knows his suspicions are right on when he finds himself dragged into a deadly game of blackmail and murder that clearly has evil as its only goal.

Leather Maiden is a brash amalgam of suspense, raw humor, and mystery that unfolds in the vividly rendered shadowy lowlands of eastern Texas. Its country noir as only Joe Lansdale can do it.

"Cason Statler, a Pulitzer Prize — nominated journalist with a checkered past, returns to his small hometown of Camp Rapture, Tex., to work as a columnist for the local newspaper in this fine stand-alone from Lansdale (Lost Echoes). On the hunt for spicy material, Statler latches onto the story of a missing college student who disappeared under strange circumstances a year earlier. Almost immediately, Statler connects the case to a recent string of kinky, unsettling crimes throughout east Texas. What's more, his brother, a college history professor, appears to be caught in the swirl of events as a victim or possibly even a suspect. As usual, Lansdale offers salty humor, brisk plotting and appealingly off-key characters who move through a world that's at one moment folksy and the next macabre. This isn't the author's best effort — as a main character, Statler is too much a work-in-progress — but you can never go too far wrong with Lansdale, who's won an Edgar and six Stokers, among many other awards. 4-city author tour." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

A masterly new thriller from the Edgar Award-winning writer who has "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace" ("The New York Times Book Review").

Set in the vividly rendered, shadowy lowlands of eastern Texas, this masterly new thriller is from an Edgar Award-winning writer who has "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace" ("The New York Times Book Review").

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Sunset and Sawdust and Lost Echoes. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Edgar Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for literature, and seven Bram Stoker Awards. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.