New reviews posted 12 October 2019

Signed copies (personalized on request) of the latest Sallis books are available from The Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Section spéciale pour mes lecteurs français Mise à jour 28 décembre, 2014

No Exit Press: Sallis' UK publishers.

Soho Press: Sallis' primary US publishers

Host Publications: publishers of Limits of the Sensible World and Potato Tree

Lew Griffin book cover gallery (U.S. reissues)

French book cover gallery

February, 2022 news: In late 2019, in concert with release of Jim's new novel, Sarah Jane, Soho published a beautiful new matched set of the six Lew Griffin novels, thought by many to be classics. This year the trend continues as earlier work steps out again — three books back on the street, highlighting something of the range and breadth of Jim's work. First, in March, Open Road Media brings out an ebook of his landmark biography of the great black American writer, Chester Himes: A Life ("Smart, conscientious...stylish" — New York Times). In June, inaugurating its new nonfiction series, Soho Syndicate publishes a revised version of Jim's long out-of-print book on Himes, Jim Thompson, and David Goodis, Difficult Lives, piggybacking it with a new collection of essays on crime writers under the title Hitching Rides. This one includes, among others, pieces on Jean-Patrick Manchette, Boris Vian, Gerald Kersh, Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson. Then, in September, Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, introduces a striking new edition of Drive, "a perfect piece of noir fiction" according to the New York Times, and the source for Nic Refn's Cannes-winning film. Shorter work set to appear this year includes Jim's 49th and 50th book columns for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, new stories in Flash Fiction Magazine, Pulp Literature, and Analog, plus another written for Maxim Jakubowski's anthology in memory of Cornell Woolrich, Black Is the Night.

Thanksgiving 2021 news: Jim's new book column, an essay on Octavia E. Butler occasioned by the recent Library of America volume, is in the Nov/Dec issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A reading of his first published story, "Kazoo" from New Worlds, is featured along with stories by others at Dead Airways and a new story, "Revenance," a personal favorite of Jim's, is just out in the journal Vautrin.

November 2021 news: Jim's new collection, Dayenu and Other Stories, is just out from New Rivers Press, who in 2015 so beautifully published Black Night's Gonna Catch Me Here: New and Selected Poems. From the back cover: "Reflecting as always his deep respect for classic science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, Dayenu and Other Stories collects 22 of Jim's new tales. Bluesmen whose thoughts become real, chatty philosophic spiders, revenant cars, thawed-out hitmen, TVs reporting people to police, a character condemned to life as a sidekick in hack novels..."

August 2021 news: "The pandemic and laziness — far more of the latter than former," Jim says, as apology for his lack of posting here, even with quite a lot going on:

• Jim's latest collection, Dayenu and Other Stories, is due in September from New Rivers Press, which previously published his Black Night's Gonna Catch Me Here: New and Selected Poems in an absolutely stunning edition.
• The new, revised edition of long out-of-print Difficult Lives, piggybacked in a single volume by a second collection of introductions and critical essays on other such crime writers as Gerald Kersh, Derek Raymond, and Patricia Highsmith, titled Hitching Rides, will be out from Syndicate Books in July 2022, inaugurating a new line of nonfiction for the publisher.
• Next year will also see an ebook of Chester Himes: A Life from Open Road Media, and a new edition of Drive from Sourcebooks.
• Meanwhile, Jim's latest novel Sarah Jane publishes in France, from Rivages/Noir, next month. It's been chosen as a book-of-the-month there; in Germany, it will become a two-part radio play.

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Elsewhere on the web...
Another Time, Another Place (review)
Artaud (poem)
Autumn Leaves (story)
Blue Yonders (story)
Book of Hours (poem)
The Book Not Written (essay)
Career Moves (story)
Darkness and Light (Disch memorial)
The Darkly Talented Patricia Highsmith (review)
The Dead All Have the Same Skin (review)
Dear Floods of Her Hair (story)
The Death of Poetry (poem)
The Death of Virgil (poem)
Departures (poem)
Feverish Country, This (essay)
Four Poems (poems)
Five Poems (poems)
Get Along Home (story)
Greatest Hits (story)
Heidegger's Body Parts (poem)
Incomparable Paco (essay)
Jumping Tracks (essay)
Late Dinner (poem)
Quilts (short short)
When Fire Knew My Name (story)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction — Books — May/June 2020. James Sallis reviews fantasy and SF fiction for F&SF.