Well, this is timely.

No sooner do I admit that I’ve been on a recent weird western kick (just two days ago, actually), than I receive an advance proof of what could well be my favorite book of the lot: John Joseph Adams’s splendid new anthology Dead Man’s Hand, which includes a tantalizing assortment of short stories from many of the leading writers in the genre.

How the West Was Weird!

From a kill-or-be-killed gunfight with a vampire to an encounter in a steampunk bordello, the weird western is a dark, gritty tale where the protagonist might be playing poker with a sorcerous deck of cards, or facing an alien on the streets of a dusty frontier town.

Here are twenty-three original tales — stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic—produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Orson Scott Card’s first Alvin Maker story in a decade, and an original adventure by Fred Van Lente, writer of Cowboys & Aliens. Other contributors include Tobias S. Buckell, David Farland, Alan Dean Foster, Jeffrey Ford, Laura Anne Gilman, Rajan Khanna, Mike Resnick, Beth Revis, Fred Van Lente, Walter Jon Williams, Ben H. Winters, Christie Yant, and Charles Yu.

Dead Man’s Hand will be published by Titan Books on May 13. It is 409 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.

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