Lansdale, who routinely crosses genres and attracts both mainstream and cult fans, delivers a story collection heavy on fantasy. Bumper Crop contains 26 stories mixing fantasy with horror and laced with the author's signature macabre humor. (Not surprisingly, five of the stories were originally published in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine.) As Lansdale notes in his introductory material, many of these stories draw heavily from the Fredric Brown/Robert Bloch/Bradbury tradition. When he's on a roll with horror material, however, Lansdale pushes things a good bit further than any of those older writers. In the crisply written lead story, "God of the Razor," for example, a demonic object fills whoever touches it with a lust to murder. Perhaps the highlight of this collection is "Bestsellers Guaranteed," a dark little fantasy about a murderously competitive publishing industry. For Lansdale fans looking to gather some of the author's harder to find material.

— Elliott Swanson

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