FREEZER BURN by Joe R. Lansdale - BOOK - ADVANCE READING COPY

If you think you knew Joe R. Lansdale—whose work People hailed as "10-alarm chili, pretty strong stuff!"—look again. Here, America's most outrageous author gleefully breaks society's last taboos... and introduces a fiercely drawn protagonist you'll almost hate yourself for liking.

Once again, the scene is East Texas: Lansdale country. Loner, loser, and sometime armed robber Bill Roberts is the wrong kind of mama's boy - mom is in the back room collecting both Social Security checks and flies. But Bill wants more easy money, and his latest scheme is about to thrust him into a bizarre new world. A raid on the fireworks stand just across the road turns into a bungled display of bullets, blood, and police badges. Bill hightails it into a nearby swamp and soon, like his mom, starts attracting insects. And when he stumbles out of the mud a day later and bumps into the camp of a cut-rate traveling country freak show, he finds an ideal way to evade the cops.

Among the pinheads, pumpkin heads, the bearded lady, and the dog-man, Bill and his swollen, mosquito-bitten face are a near-natural fit. He's accepted by the group and its silver-haired, enigmatic master of ceremonies. Especially warm and welcoming is the ringleader's irresistible, luscious young wife. Bill Roberts, trouble magnet and felon, is in over his head... struggling for control in a world more twisted than a carnival fun house... a world as ominous as this freak show's main attraction, the mysterious frozen man whose mute, sinister aura seems to tie them all together. Vivid, shocking, brutal, and peopled by characters who-in spite of their strangeness or weaknesses-mirror our deepest fears, Freezer Burn sizzles.