Gutshot: Weird West Stories

The place of the cowboy in fiction is wrapped up in violence and elegiac beauty. Their stories are underpinned by misery and threat. But in among the guns, knives and blood, there was love and hope and glory. The 20 tales between these covers offer a bizarre take on the myths of the Old West. You are as likely to meet a villain from the 21st century as a varmint from the 19th. There are monsters, real and imagined. There are ghosts and gangsters, masked men and marauders. There are showdowns and final sunsets. Above all there is the kind of awe that we all yearn for in our stories. Gutshot is a Smith & Wesson gripped by a skeletal fist, chambers loaded with alien ice, muzzle pointed at your heart . . .CONTENTSIntroduction by Conrad WilliamsPassage by Alan Peter RyanThe Black Rider by James LovegroveThe Alabaster Child by Cat SparksThe Ghost Warriors by Michael MoorcockBlue Norther by Zander ShawIn the Sand Hills by Thomas TessierWhite Butterflies by Stephen VolkEl Camino de Rojo by Gary McMahonThe Bones that Walk by Joe R LansdaleGhosts by Amanda HemingwayThe Boy Thug by Christopher FowlerKiss the Wolf by Simon BestwickWaiting for the Bullet by Mark MorrisCarrion Cowboy by Paul MeloySome Kind of Light Shines from Your Face by Gemma FilesSplinters by Peter Crowther and Rio YouersAll Our Hearts are Ghosts by Peter AtkinsBeasts of Burden by Sarah LanganWhat God Hath Wrought? by Adam NevillThose Who Remember by Joel Lane