Kindle Daily Post

New to Kindle: Horror by Cusick and McCammon

Just in time for Halloween, we've got two major horror launches on Kindle.

First up: Richie Tankersley Cusick, an author rooted in Southern mystery, has eight newly available titles for only $2.99 for a limited time! Richie Tankersley Cusick’s horror classics include Fatal Secrets, Help Wanted, Silent Stalker, The Drifter, The Locker, The Mall, Trick or Treat, and Vampire. Originally published in the early nineties, these thrillers were influenced by Cusick’s rich history with Louisiana’s old plantation houses, aboveground cemeteries, moss-draped oak trees, crumbling churches, haunted roads and the murky waters of the bayou, and are now finding a fresh audience among Kindle readers looking for a good scare. “I had a haunted childhood,” says Cusick, who has written more than twenty-five novels, including contributions to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer book series. She was nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Help Wanted, a story of a girl who takes a part-time job sorting through the library of a woman who committed suicide, but she soon finds out that this job is not just demanding—it’s deadly.

Also new to Kindle are nine terrifying tales by New York Times bestselling master of horror Robert R. McCammon, including Swan Song, his first novel to win the coveted Bram Stoker Award. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, McCammon, an Alabama native, contributed significantly to the reemergence of the horror genre by crafting intense, character-driven narratives that blended elements of magical realism, science fiction, fantasy, and Southern gothic literature. McCammon’s Swan Song tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world in which a girl with psychic abilities struggles to evade a mysterious force intent on destroying all remaining traces of beauty and hope. The novel is regarded as a horror classic in the same league as Stephen King’s The Stand. Recently, we called it “a monster of a horror book, brimming over with stories and violence and terrific imagery—God and the Devil, the whole works.”

Eight other new-to-Kindle titles by Robert McCammon offer up the opportunity for readers to step further into his unforgettable worlds. On the eve of D-Day, a British secret agent with unique powers goes behind Nazi lines in The Wolf’s Hour. A UFO crash sends a small Texas town into uproar in Stinger. In Mine, a mother fights to rescue her newborn from a six-foot-tall madwoman. A bizarre murder is only the beginning of Boy’s Life, as the magic of one boy’s Alabama town will transform him into a man. Two young psychics do battle with an ancient evil in Mystery Walk. A moment of madness forces a Vietnam veteran to run for his life in Gone South. In Usher’s Passing, a struggling author must confront the dreadful secrets of his famous family’s past. And finally, Blue World features a novella and twelve stories from the master of supernatural horror—and although monsters, demons, and murderers fill these pages, in McCammon’s world the most terrifying landscape of all is the barren wasteland of a lost man’s soul.

Halloween Guest Post: Jennifer Weiner on "Recalculating"

Jennifer Weiner is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of seven books, including Best Friends Forever, Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and Certain Girls. Her new Kindle Single is a terrifying, otherworldly tale of the restless dead.

***

One of the questions that motivates writers--one that haunts us, you could say--is the one I call "the great what-if." Consider technology. We live in a world where we can store ten thousand songs in a device the size of a pack of playing cards, pause live TV shows, download movies to our tablets, beam books into our Kindles, and buy anything from jeans to jewelry from the comfort of our couches. We can tweet and text and Facebook; we can Google potential romances (and Google-stalk the discards), and when we want to go somewhere new, we just plug the address right into the GPS, and we're off.

Few of us would want to ever go back to a world without those conveniences, but still… what if?

Even the sleekest and smartest new toys occasionally let us down. Screens crack, networks crash, banks accidentally email our Social Security number to thirty thousand strangers. Things fall apart, the center will not hold, the Fail Whale lurks in the shallows… and, if we allow for the possibility of human error, maybe it's not too radical to think about inhuman error, too.

Last Tuesday, I was driving back from a suburb I'd never visited. "Take me home," I told the GPS… and, maybe because it was so dark, and the road so empty, and Halloween just around the corner, I started thinking: What if, I wondered, the GPS took me to a cemetery instead?

Just like that, I had a story. An abused wife. A dead husband who was determined not to stay dead. A gift-wrapped box in the attic. And, inside, a GPS that would tell her to make some desperately wrong moves.

Here's where technology became my friend again. On Wednesday morning, I told my agent that the Story Fairy had left me something scary. If I wrote it, say, right now, was there any chance we could e-publish it on Halloween?

My agent called my publisher, and everyone on that end swung into action. While I was writing, they were designing a cover, securing an ISBN, putting together pre-sale links and, eventually, getting the piece edited and formatted. Today, on Halloween, you can buy the story I called "Recalculating," a bittersweet treat about what happens when the devices designed to help us decide that they have other things in mind.

I hope you like it. I hope it freaks you out a little bit, too. And, if you've got any long trips planned and you're relying on your GPS to see you there safe, I hope you'll pack a map.

Why Our Fascination with Vampires Just Won’t Die

Frank Delaney is the author of the Kindle Single, Undead ($0.99), the back story of the original Dracula, and its creator, Bram Stoker. Here he discusses readers’ undying thirst for Vampire stories:

Think of this as your trick ‘n treat: ninety-nine years since his physical death, Abraham - “Bram” - Stoker is still alive. Watch True Blood, ask Sookie Stackhouse, read Anne Rice. Stoker didn’t start the vampire craze, but he did make the most enduring contribution to the genre with his 1897 novel, Dracula (originally titled Un-Dead).

The novel isn’t remarkable--and that’s being kind. It’s so clumsy that he must have written it with a hammer, and it’s full of vampires.

There must be reasons for all this non-stop vampire-building. Do we want the dead to come back to us, especially if they were people we had desired? Or has life grown so brutish that we’re looking for some crude idea of immortality, however creepy? Especially if we have more power dead than alive? You can even drag politics into it. Dracula is an aristocrat, a landlord--sucking the blood of his peasants.

The gut reason, though? We love to hate blood, sex, and death--the most real stuff of our lives. And we’ll never tire of them; we haven’t since we first sat around our fires in the hovels of ancient civilization and worked out why that person lying silent, cold and stiff in the corner will never come back. Or will he? And if he did--well, wasn’t that a trick and a treat?

A Feast for Readers: Tasty Titles for $2.99 or Less

For all of October, we've featured 100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or Less. In the waning days of the month, and with the holidays around the corner, we wanted to highlight a few books featuring the joys, humor, and history of food and drink. If any of these books is your cup of tea, now's the time to get it. These deals expire on October 31.

Quick-Fix Vegetarian: Healthy Home-Cooked Meals in 30 Minutes or Less
by Robin Robertson, $2.39
Written by best-selling vegetarian chef Robin Robertson, and named "Best New Cookbook" by PETA when it was relased in 2007, this book features 150 recipes and provides both novice and longtime cooks with practical and robust vegetarian dishes that can be prepared in less time than it takes to have a pizza delivered.

 

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis by Kingsley Amis, $2.99
The most helpful Amazon customer review of this book says it all: "If you're interested in reading about the drinking life, where better to start than with a collection of writings on drink by Kingsley Amis, introduced by Christopher Hitchens? ... Everyday Drinking offers up enough drinking experience to float an aircraft carrier."

 

 

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook, $2.39
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, says that "With great skill and compassion, Estabrook explores the science, ingenuity, and human misery behind the modern American tomato. Once again, the true cost is too high to pay." Mark Bittman, author of the Kindle Singles Bittman's Kitchen and Cooking Solves Everything, calls it "masterful."

 

Bon appétit, readers!

Author Spotlight: Ransom Riggs on Halloween Costumes

Ransom Riggs is the author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

At first, collecting strange old photographs was just a hobby. I picked them up at antique stores and flea markets when I had the time, but I wasn’t, you know, serious.  Then I found a way to incorporate some of my favorites into my first novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which hit shelves back in June. Much to my continuing surprise and delight, it’s become a best-seller, and was chosen by Amazon’s editors as one of the best books of 2011. (Check out the trailer! Unlike my found photos, I made it myself.)  Now I’m working on a sequel (due out in 2013), and have been scouring the universe for even more, even creepier vintage photos with which to fill it. Which is how collecting other people’s cast-off snapshots has become, weirdly, part of my job.

What that means, other than that I have to find a way to explain to the IRS that the $200 I shelled out for a photo of a bouffant-haired woman fox-trotting with an anatomical skeleton was indeed a tax-deductible business expense, is that I have lots of unsettling photos in boxes under the couch in my office. (I suppose it also means that impressionable children and people with nervous conditions shouldn’t peek inside boxes in my house, but really, they should just learn not to break into my house.) There are many, many more photos in those boxes than could ever hope to find homes in my books -- so what to do with them? Halloween, it just so happens, is the perfect time to trot some of them out.

So without further ado, allow me to share some of my favorite Halloween-themed found photos with you. Some are of people wearing Halloween costumes. Others have nothing to do with Halloween, but are Halloweenishly creepy. Several come from the collections of friends of mine, who were kind enough to let me share them here.

Let’s begin with a little Halloween history -- people from years past wearing Halloween masks and costumes, which I find much more frightening than costumes today. These two little girls are a typically horrifying example:

Photo courtesy Robert Jackson 

This pirate-costumed boy isn’t terribly frightening, but there’s something so classic  about him -- and the Radio Flyer by his side -- that I just love it. Also, the way he almost seems to be popping out of the side of the frame is really eye-catching. Argh, matey!

 
Photo courtesy Angelica Paez

Then there are the twisted clown masks worn by the father-and-son pair below. It’s just ... problematic.

Photo courtesy Robert Jackson

Some of my favorite finds have been color photos, but they are difficult to work into my books -- they’re too different from the other photos. That doesn’t mean they’re not just as bizarre and unsettling as the black-and-white stuff, though. Take this guy, for instance:

Oh, here’ s a tip. If you want your grandkids to come visit you in the hospital, DON’T DO THIS:

Here’s a funny one, also in color. (This one nearly made it into my book of found photos with writing on them, Talking Pictures, which comes out in April. Shameless plug!) I don’t know what’s scarier, his mask or his suit:

Photo courtesy Angelica Paez

And then there’s this little snapshot, which I found loose in a bin at a swap meet. I wish there were something written on the back, some explanation, but there’s not. My best guess is that it’s a mask that lies forgotten in a back room of some Hollywood FX house -- but who knows. He kinda reminds me of Sloth from The Goonies.

If you can’t afford a Halloween costume, you can always just hold a skull in front of your face:

 

Photo courtesy Robert Jackson

Okay, time for some scary kids -- my speciality! Here’s one of my absolute favorites:

It looks like a still from a some lost prequel to The Exorcist, but really, she’s just doing a headstand. (Confession time: I rotated the picture 180 degrees for added effect.)

But still. Nightmare time.

Hey -- know what’s still scary, even after thirty years of people ripping off Diane Arbus? TWINS.

I can almost hear them on my doorstep now -- Avon calling!  Yikes.

I’m fairly certain that the ladies below (at least I assume they are ladies) are not siamese twins. Nor is it Halloween: the picture, found by my friend Angelica in an album chronicling life in a Texas sanatorium, is dated July 4, 1936. That makes it no less horrible or Halloweenish. (Side note: is it ironic that they chose to celebrate our nation’s independence by dressing as two people grafted together at the hip?)

 

Photo courtesy Angelica Paez

I hate to creep ‘n’ run, but I should probably save some of these for the next book! Before I do, though, I’ll leave you with this -- probably the only photo here that keeps me up at night.

Happy Halloween!

Twisted Morals: A Serial Killer with a Higher Purpose

Guest post by D.M. Annechino author of the new thriller, Resuscitation, just $4.99 on Kindle.

Early in my writing career—about 20 years ago—I didn’t quite understand the difference between writing as an art and writing as a business. After penning four novels, and accumulating the most impressive file of rejection letters (almost as thick as a NY telephone directory), it finally dawned on me. In order for a first-time novelist to break through the fortress built around the commercial publishing world, an unpublished author has to come up with a different angle: something truly unique. Whether an original plot idea, vivid, lifelike characters, or prose that reads like poetry, the wannabes need an idea to grab a publisher’s attention.

For my first novel, They Never Die Quietly ($3.99), the hook was the villain. As a religious fanatic with a perverse sense of right and wrong, I created a man whose twisted interpretation of his spiritual beliefs gave him a license to commit the most unimaginable acts of depravity with the unconditional endorsement of his God. This, of course, made it possible for me to create a monster whose evil had no boundaries.

For the next book in the series I faced a quandary: I had already created a villain so evil and so unmerciful that he pushed the limits of the reader’s imagination. How could I top that?

After kicking a few possibilities around, an idea hit me. Are any of us truly incorruptible? If we longed for something so desperately, could we be tempted to abandon all of our principles and moral values to get what we wanted? Whether fame, fortune, beautiful women, or global recognition, what might we do to fulfill a secret desire?  What might it take for a man with integrity, strong moral values, and a career focused on helping people, to step into a dark world from which he could never return?

Resuscitation, my second novel, explores these questions and illustrates how one honorable man struggles with a choice between good and evil. -- D.M. Annechino

The Call Is Coming From Inside The House!

In this guest post Duane Swierczynski reviews John Rector’s new thriller Already Gone, available on Kindle for $4.99.

Books are like houses.

Some houses, you can tell right away they’re about to collapse at any moment and you need to scramble out quick. Other houses may seem okay at first, but then you realize that maybe the ceiling’s too low, or there’s not enough natural light in the living room, or the floors creak too much. Finally there are some houses that are expertly crafted, both in terms of structural integrity and design. But the problem is, you’ve been inside dozens of houses just like it. Zzzzz.

And then you have houses like the ones John Rector builds.

Thank God there isn’t a literary zoning commission, because I have a feeling they’d be constantly red-flagging his ass.

Don’t get me wrong: Rector’s novels—which so far include The Cold Kiss, The Grove and now Already Gone—are structurally rock solid. But you can’t help but marvel at how much weight is supported by his lean, spare sentences. The whole thing should collapse—but doesn’t.

A few steps in, you may think you’ve been inside houses like these before… but then you take another few steps and think, Oh man, this place is much bigger inside than it seemed outside, and then a more steps and you’re screaming, Holy crap I can’t believe all of this stuff was under the floorboards!

You don’t find houses like these everyday.

Which is why I was super-thrilled to score an early copy of Already Gone at the most recent Bouchercon, the world mystery convention. I even, um, kinda (and I’m a little ashamed to admit this) snatched it out of my friend’s hands when she pulled it out of her convention swag bag. “You don’t mind if I swap you for this, do you? I promise, I’ll mail to you later…” What can I say? When I find houses/books like the ones Rector builds, I get a little ruthless.

While I don’t want to spoil Rector’s diabolical architecture, let’s step up onto the porch for a minute so you can see a bit of what you’re in for.

We open with a college professor, Jake Reese, who’s enduring a serious beating outside a college-town bar. (See? Already this is your kind of house.) Jake thinks to himself: okay this sucks, but I’ll get through it:

A few bruises, wallet gone, nothing I can’t walk away from.

Which is when Rector springs the first of many, many nasty surprises:

Then I see the bolt cutters.

The muggers proceed to forcibly remove his… well, you’re going to have pick up a copy (or steal it from a good friend at a convention) to find out. This isn’t just a cheap shockeroo to open the novel. No, John “Bolt Cutters” Rector keeps the shocks coming, chapter by chapter, all of them earned, and all of them blindsiding you. You could boil down the plot, and it would sound like a lot of other plots: “Bad stuff from a guy’s past comes back to haunt him.”

But remember: this is just the porch. And oh man, you have no idea what’s inside.

I’ve been through thousands of houses; I’ve even built a few of them myself. But I’m telling you, I couldn’t even begin to predict the floorplan of this baby.

So take a step inside Already Gone. I promise, you won’t regret it. Just make sure you close the door behind you, okay? I wouldn’t want your screams of delight to tip off the neighbors.

 

Duane Swierczynski is the author of several crime thrillers, including Severance Package, which has been optioned by Lionsgate films. He also writes the X-Men spinoff Cable for Marvel Comics as well as Immortal Iron Fist. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and children.

“The Dead Man” Series $0.99 on Kindle

Author Spotlight: Lee Goldberg on “The Dead Man” Series

The Dead Man series is the continuing story of Matt Cahill, an ordinary man who survives a terrible accident with a horrific side effect: he can see the evil in people as a rotting, festering, physical decay, one that's spread like a plague by a mysterious supernatural figure known as Mr. Dark. Now Matt is pursuing Mr. Dark and trying to stop the evil from spreading.

William Rabkin and I are both experienced authors but we've also spent twenty years writing & producing network TV series together. Writing books is a lonely profession, involving a single writer facing a blank screen.

But writing television is a collaborative experience, with a room full of writers plotting stories together, then going off to write their individual episodes under the "showrunners" hands-on, creative supervision.

Now we are bringing that episodic TV approach to The Dead Man novels, which is not only making it possible for us to publish a new book every month, but also to capitalize on the creativity, experience, and unique voices of a dozen successful authors representing a wide variety of genres.

The two of us wrote the first book and twelve story-lines, then invited writers we admired, or who we loved to read, and or who we were dying to work with, to write episodes, or in this case novels, in the world of The Dead Man.

We were surprised and delighted by the enthusiastic response that we got. It turns out there are many novelists who crave the creative interaction that's common place in TV...but while also ending up with a work they can still feel is uniquely their own. And that's the case with each monthly Dead Man tale.

As the "showrunners" of The Dead Man, William Rabkin and I still shape every story and manuscript to maintain the consistency of the character, the world, and the story-telling, just as we would on a TV series.

But unlike a TV episode, each book is still very much a reflection of each individual author's point-of-view and told in their unmistakable voice.–Lee Goldberg

Dead Man Series, $0.99 each for a limited time

Face of Evil (Dead Man #1) Matt Cahill survives a shocking accident...and discovers that he now can see a nightmarish netherworld that exists within our own. Ring of Knives (Dead Man #2) Matt infiltrates a lunatic asylum to speak to a madman who may hold the secret to defeating Mr. Dark...and ends up fighting for both his sanity and his life. Hell in Heaven (Dead Man #3) Matt wanders into a bizarre town seemingly trapped in the past and tormented by an unspeakable horror.

The Dead Woman (Dead Man #4) Matt meets a woman who may see the same dark world that he does…and who may be able to reveal the secrets behind his mysterious rebirth. The Blood Mesa (Dead Man #5) Matt must save a group of archeologists and graduate students who dig up a Native American ruin...and awaken an ancient evil. Kill Them All (Dead Man #6) Matt is pursued by a well-armed, ruthless mercenaries into a dying, western town...where he has to make a last stand and prevent a slaughter. (Pre-order, Nov. 22)

Each book in “The Dead Man” series is just $0.99 on Kindle for a limited time.

“The Dead Man” Series $0.99 on Kindle

Jane Fonda Slept Here: An Introduction to "Damned"

Before I wrote Damned I stalked Jane Fonda for weeks.  I knew what she ate and drank.  I even slept in her bed.  Before Jane I’d shadowed Goldie Hawn, and before Goldie was Caroline Kennedy.  Before Caroline, I lose track.  My obsession was either Irvine Welsh or Maya Angelou or Deepak Chopra, and before you call the cops I assure you that I broke no laws.

I was on book tours following closely in the wake of their promotional book tours.  Luxury hotels know that a steady stream of writers is always circulating the nation, and this means deep-pocketed business travelers, so why not designate one nice room as an “Author’s Suite” and capture that lucrative market?

Some Author’s Suites feature a cozy gas fireplace.  Some have a separate sitting room with a wet bar.  But what they all include is bookcases, and lining those shelves are the books written by everyone who’s ever slept there.  Each book spine represents a night in that bed.  The custom is that the hotel manager sends your latest book, the one you’re promoting, to the room with a note asking if you’ll autograph it. You check in, sign the book, and leave it for the hotel to display.

Go ahead, check into the Author’s Suite in your city and there will be my newest book, Damned, a novel about a little girl who wakes up in Hell.  Her name is Madison Spencer, and she’s eternally damned to Hades without a clue regarding her cause of death.  She just has to muddle through and make the best of a very bad situation.  As do we all, from time to time.  For little Madison Spencer, Hell is a place--like a hotel mattress--of accumulated dead skin and loose hairs.  Hidden boogers.  Dried fluids.    

Of course we all know that a hotel bed is, for want of a better word, shared.   In the children’s bedtime story, the Three Bears might want to know, “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”  But the rest of us do not.  In the Author’s Suite, unfortunately, a glance at the bookshelves tells you the entire resume of your mattress.  There’s David Sedaris, Amy Tan, Paula Deen, Michael Chabon, and a thousand others.  The autographs are usually dated, and if you’re determined and creepy, like me, you can puzzle out exactly who’s played Goldilocks in the nights immediately preceding the day of your arrival.  And if you’re truly neurotic, like me, you’ll examine that suite the way a police detective scours a crime scene.

My novel Damned is patterned after the Judy Blume classic Are Your There, God?  It’s Me, Margaret.  In Blume’s book a girl finds herself relocated to the suburbs and forced to adjust.  It’s the same crisis we find in Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption.  It’s the same sickening anxiety we all suffer on the first day of a new job, or the first day in a new school, or on every day of a coast-to-coast book tour.  That’s why we love these stories.  

When you check into an Author’s Suite, most likely Judy and Stephen’s books and dead skin will still be in residence, there.  Chances are some of my other books – Fight Club, Pygmy, and Choke--are also on the shelf, and each represents a night I’ve lolled in the adjacent bed.  This background is something you might or might not want to know before spending the night.

Such knowledge is a slippery slope.  Trust me.  Once I realized that Jane Fonda had occupied “my” bed the night before me--that my book tour was following so closely in her gorgeous footsteps--I was like a dog with a bone.  Be warned: Room service waiters can be bought.  So can bellmen and car service drivers, and when prompted with cash they usually sing like canaries.  It’s not my goal to get anyone fired for tattling, but Jane likes to order cucumber slices to diminish any puffiness around her eyes.  Very thin, chilled slices.  And woe to the room service waiter who delivers thick ones at room temperature.  Goldie likes Fiji water. 

My interest in these matters is not prurient.  My point is: Jane and Goldie and Caroline know how to be famous.  Luxury hotel suites.  Chauffeurs.  Room service.  These are just part of their everyday landscape.  My own background runs to trailer houses situated on gravel roads accessed by dented pick-up trucks.  I’m desperate to learn the ropes of being famous, so I bribe everyone.  I comb each Author’s Suite for stray hairs, fingernail parings, little forensic clues.  I strip off the bed sheets and mattress pad and hunt for stains.  I interrogate the staff.  Like my pitiful narrator in Damned, poor Madison Spencer, I’m trying to learn a new system, make friends, get along.  And I’m trying like crazy to figure out how I got here in the first place.

God knows I didn’t get here by being nice.

Now, if you’ll forgive me, I need to go slice some chilled cucumbers.

Unpublished Fiction by James Jones Unveiled

Posthumously published works regularly make their way onto bookshelves: authors pass away and leave nearly finished novels and memoirs in the hands of their estates. Given the processes of publishing, it's not uncommon for a book to debut a year--or even five years--after a writer has died.

But when a collection debuts more than sixty years after it was initially written, and more than thirty years after the author's death—that is a major event.

Recognized by The New York Times as “one of the significant writers of his generation,” James Jones (1921-1977) is best known as the author of From Here to Eternity , which was reissued to great acclaim with previously censored scenes and dialogue earlier this year. 

Now, that book’s predecessor has been unveiled for the first time. It is To the End of the War : Unpublished Fiction.

The interrelated stories and characters in To the End of the War were initially developed by Jones as his first, unpublished novel, They Shall Inherit the Laughter. Set during World War II, the autobiographical work caught the attention of legendary Scribner editor Maxwell Perkins, who ultimately felt the reading public was not ready for such provocative themes. In the introduction to “Night Train,” Hendrick writes: “Maxwell Perkins had an inkling that Jones was giving a realistic picture of his world in late 1943, but he was unable to help Jones reshape his story. Perkins timidly believed the American public was not interested in Jones’s subject and that civilians and military people would have been insulted by the presentations. Perkins was probably wrong.”

At Perkins’s encouragement, Jones shelved the project and developed From Here to Eternity, which went on to win the National Book Award. His later novels, Some Came Running (1957), Pistol (1958), The Thin Red Line (1962), and Whistle (1978) solidified Jones’s reputation as one of the most accomplished authors of the World War II generation.

The stories in To the End of the War, however, remained unavailable to readers.

Now, some sixty years later, these stories have been published for the first time, featuring an illustrated biography of Jones that includes rare photographs from the author’s estate.

To the End of the War contains twelve never-before-published stories by James Jones. Edited and with introductory material by George Hendrick, stories in To the End of the War--from “Night Train” to “Johnny Meets Sandy”--stand as testaments to Jones’s remarkable talent, evident from the start of his career. His themes remain as prescient today as they were in 1943. Whether examining the mistreatment of wounded men who were declared fit for additional combat service, portraying anti-Semitism in the Army, or challenging the prevailing conventional wisdom about other large American institutions, Jones “did not worship sacred cows,” according to Hendrick.

We are fortunate to finally have the opportunity to read the first works of one of the preeminent American writers of the twentieth century.

In addition to To the End of the War, other James Jones titles currently available on Kindle include From Here to Eternity, Pistol, Go to the Widow-Maker, The Ice-Cream Headache and Other Stories, The Merry Month of May, A Touch of Danger, and Whistle.