Richard Kadrey

Settled back in L.A., James Stark (aka Sandman Slim) must find a dead man, recover an ancient artifact, and outwit and outrun the angry old gods -- and natural-born killers -- on his tail.

All hail Sandman Slim, author Richard Kadrey's ultra-extreme anti-hero and recent escapee from Lucifer's overheated Underworld playground. Legendary author William Gibson (Neuromancer) called Kadrey's first deliciously twisted Slim adventure "an addictively satisfying, deeply amusing, dirty-ass masterpiece," and in number three, Aloha from Hell, the ruthless avenger, a.k.a. Stark, finds himself trapped in the middle of a war between Heaven and Hell....

Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim-aka James Stark-is, quite simply, one of the most outrageous uber-anti-heroes ever to kick serious butt on this or any other world or dimension. In his previous three adventures-Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, and Aloha from Hell-Stark has fled Hell for California, taken on angels, demons, outlaw bikers, zombies, covert government operatives, and all manner of monsters, while saving humankind from total annihilation on...

Working as a hitman in Hell after being snatched by demons at the age of nineteen, James Stark escapes and returns to Los Angeles, where he plots to destroy the magic circle that stole his life.

Setting down his drink, Cormac Thomas Garfield runs his fingers over a deep scar on his chest. It's the site of his first harvesting, the reason he came to Austin all those years ago.

"Wallace Gerard, you are exceeding the speed limit by fifty miles per hour. The authorities have been alerted," said the car. Wallace "Big Wally" Gerard stomped harder on the accelerator, hoping that if he got down hard enough the car's chip-embedded voice might just start screaming.

"Sirikit dreamed of spirit houses for six nights running. She passed spirit houses everyday — on her way to work, when buying groceries, and on her increasingly infrequent dates with her boyfriend. Almost every building in Bangkok had a spirit house, a place for the spirits whose land had been covered by a human house, so they would have somewhere to live and wouldn't haunt the human dwelling."

"It was a roughneck expedition a week out of LA and deep into Nevada's "Big Empty." In keeping with true western cowboy tradition, the roughnecks traveled on horseback. Specially bred and modified for the harsh climate, their steeds weren't much more than bone and gristle, fitted out with just enough wires and electrodes to keep their jerky-dry muscles moving."

"Almost forty eight tons of the dying Russian space station, Mudrosti, enter the Earth's atmosphere somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Most of the debris burns up on re-entry, but thousands of tiny glass and metal particles shower down over the west coast of the United States. One of the particles enters the roof of an office building on the corner of Sansome and Clay Street in San Francisco's financial district. The particle, a fragment of a bolt that...