Tough 2: Crime Stories

Literature & Fiction

Pluck, Thomas

Bracken, Michael

KOLAKOWSKI, NICK

SOLDAN, WILLIAM R.

Welsh-Huggins, Andrew

Rowland, C.A.

Mattilla, Matt

Smith, Rob McClure

Short Stories & Anthologies

Redneck Press

The award-winning crime fiction anthology series is BACK, jamming its literary finger straight up your readin' nose with EIGHT new original tales of love, losers, larceny, lacerations, and lunatics. THE LONG DRIVE HOME by William R. Soldan NUT LOBBY by Preston Lang BEING FRED by Travis Richardson THE NIGHT THEY BURNED OL’ BIG TEX DOWN by Christopher Fulbright VIRGIN SACRIFICE by David Rachels PARADISE by Rena Robinett A NICE PAIR OF GUNS by Nick Kolakowski MERCY by Dale Sandlin

THUGLIT Issue 21

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Rachels, David

Lang, Preston

Richardson, Travis

Fulbright, Christopher

Robinett, Rena

Sandlin, Dale

Mystery

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Desperation. Violence. Broken homes and broken hearts. Fathers, junkies, and thieves. In this gritty new collection, one bad choice begets another, and redemption is a twisted mirage. An ex-addict takes a detour with his young son and comes face-to-face with an old drug dealer and an unsettled debt. A down-on-his-luck gambler visits his estranged sister while figuring out his next play. An Iraq War vet fights a personal battle to reconcile life as a civilian. Three boyhood friends stumble upon a dark secret in a rural dump. These and the other troubled characters that inhabit the streets and alleys of these stories continually find themselves at the mercy of a cold, indifferent world as they hurtle downward and grapple for hard-won second chances in a life that seldom grants them. Praise for HOUSES BURNING AND OTHER RUINS "In Houses Burning and Other Ruins, William R. Soldan spins epic tragedies on a domestic scale. His characters struggle to survive their own poor choices in a world of limited opportunities. This makes their glaring flaws both familiar and heartbreakingly real. Inside these stories are your friends, co-workers, cousins, and neighbors hiding the shame of addiction, abuse, and extreme desperation behind an ordinary weekday mask. And it's done so effortlessly, the urgency of the words connects with the reader immediately. Soldan is a unique, gritty literary voice in noir fiction." -J.D. Graves, EconoClash Review "The pages bound together in Soldan's Houses Burning and Other Ruins are jaw-dropping. Rendered in unflinching prose, these are haunting stories in which we witness the scandalous undoings of unusually deep, conflicted people that, on any given day, most would bustle right past. Soldan is the kind of writer we need right now." -Robert Vaughan, author of Funhouse, Editor-in-Chief, Bending Genres "My gawd, these characters, these lives-on-fire characters-Soldan's Houses Burning and Other Ruins is a stunning collection full of hardscrabble folk, written with such honesty and care that one can't help but be reminded of the late Larry Brown." -Adam Van Winkle, author of While They Were in the Field and Hardway Juice, Editor-in-Chief, Cowboy Jamboree "If you like your fiction atmospheric, bleak, and visceral, then Houses Burning and Other Ruins is obligatory reading. It's a treasure trove of noir gems, which will stay with you, seared into your brain, long after you've turned the last page. In the manner of a great artist, Soldan's tight and spartan prose paints a human landscape denuded of hope, but crawling with humanity, or what's left of it-souls at rock bottom and spiraling even further down as they seek escape. Soldan delves below the façades, lays bare the trauma and disconnection that is the reality for too many and invites us into the ruinous playground of those evil twins, desolation and desperation. This is the dark side of the American Dream. Read it: you won't forget it." -A.B.Patterson, author of the PI Harry Kenmare novels and short stories.

Houses Burning and Other Ruins

Shotgun Honey

Three months back there was a suicide bomb in Tunisia, a prison riot in Colombia, and Australia was on fire. Italy fought a losing battle with an insidious virus, which went on to engulf the planet in a worldwide pandemic. The first world shut down. Then we watched a public execution, by a so-called peace-keeper. Then the rioting and looting began—and you know what came next, because you’re living it. The world in 2020 isn’t what it once was. The west is on fire with revolution and unrest. Violent crime and lawlessness are on the rise. Which is good news if crime is your business. And whether the world bounces back or burns down to ashes, there will always be storytelling. For Switchblade, storytelling is our business, and business is good. This is the twelfth issue of the world’s only no-limit noir digest magazine. Featuring 13 reality-check, hard luck tales of the human condition, before and after Covid-19.

Switchblade: Issue Twelve (Switchblade Volume One)

MILLER, Andrew

Tucher, Albert

Whitehurst, Patrick

Sweeney, Elliot F.

Sanville, Walter

Pettigrew, Nathan

Zelazny, Jon

Sweetman, E.F.

Latta, D.K.

Caledonia Press

Rust Belt, USA, where steel is dead, hope is scarce, and hardship is a way of life. Miles Junction is but one of many Northeastern Ohio towns long forgotten and left behind, its residents living on the cusp of financial, emotional, even spiritual destitution. An old trapper becomes the scapegoat for a boy’s brutal murder. An out-of-work diesel mechanic resorts to crime in order to provide for his wife and son. A teenage girl braves a brutal winter storm to protect a tragic secret. A recovering drug addict wrestles with temptation and bears the weight of an uncertain future. These and the other working-class characters that populate this collection know struggle intimately and understand that desperate times often call for desperate measures. Their lives are linked by a ruined yet starkly beautiful post-industrial landscape—a desolate vestige of our fractured American dream. Taking place during the last few decades of the twentieth century and those following the new millennium, "In Just the Right Light" is a glimpse at one region’s bleak inheritance and the precarious lives of those who remain to rummage through the fallout of its past.

In Just the Right Light

Literary

Unsolicited Press

Rock and a Hard Place, Issue 6: Summer 2021

LYONS, MATTHEW

LALUMIÈRE, CLAUDE

JAYNE, SERENA

ROSMUS, CINDY

ESTERHOLM, JEFF

and a Hard Place Press, Rock

FREIMOR, JACQUELINE

HART, GABRIEL

Independently published

Undone Valley

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