A hippie commune has invaded Black River Falls. While the majority of the townspeople believe that the bohemians have the right to stay–despite how bizarre some of their ways can seem. As always, there is a minority that constantly accuses them of everything from criminal activities to satanism. As usual, lawyer and private investigator Sam McCain finds himself in the middle of the controversy, especially when the teenage daughter of Paul Mainwaring, one of the town’s wealthiest men, is found murdered in the commune’s barn. A deeply troubled young man, and Vietnam vet named Neil Cameron, is immediately charged with the crime, but Sam has serious doubts.

In this lively and poignant new novel, Ed Gorman offers listeners his richest portrait yet about Black River Falls and its people.

This collection of short stories displays Ed Gorman’s talents as a masterful storyteller across a range of genres.

A mysterious and beautiful girl who teaches arrogant young men about true love, a lonely traveling salesman who learns that his passenger is Death, children who can absorb the psychic pain of their parents, a desperately pursued serial killer who hides his face under gauze in a hospital room, and a woman who loves the alien infant nobody else wants–these stories and ten others make up this collection by award-winning author Ed Gorman. Here are stories that led him to be called “one of the best” by Dean Koontz and “one of the most original writers in crime fiction today” by Kirkus Reviews. Here you’ll find the extraordinary range of storytelling skill and powerful emotions that won Gorman the prized International Fiction Award.

Included in Different Kinds of Dead, and Other Tales are “Different Kinds of Dead,” “Deathman,” “A Girl like You,” “Loverboy,” “Muse,” “Riff,” “The Brasher Girl,” “Survival,” “Masque,” “Second Most Popular,” and others.

This collection reveals the extraordinary range of storytelling skill and powerful emotions that won Gorman the prized International Fiction Award. His protagonists, gritty and gruff, are strangely likable, and his writing, according to Mystery News, is “powerful, disturbing, [and] often poetic.”

In 1967, a brutal murder in the midst of an anti–Vietnam War group sparks an investigation by Sam McCain, in Ed Gorman’s most politically charged mystery yet.

When we last saw Sam McCain he had been drafted to fight the war in Vietnam. But Sam’s military career ended in boot camp when he was accidentally shot in the head and forced to spend three months in a military hospital to recover.

Sam has now returned to his hometown of Black River Falls, where he works as a lawyer and part-time investigator for the court of the snobbish but amusing Judge Esme Whitney.

Two of Sam’s oldest friends are caught up in the same battle. Veteran Steve Donovan brutally belittles and finally savagely beats his old friend, veteran Will Cullen, when Cullen announces he’s joined the antiwar group.

When Cullen is found murdered, the obvious suspect is Steve Donovan, but Sam has serious doubts about the man’s guilt. At least three people had reasons to murder Cullen, and Sam begins to suspect he’ll discover even more as his investigation heats up, in this dynamic new politically charged mystery novel by a veteran of the form.

Peter Madsen became a priest to atone for a life of violence and a wartime tragedy and thought he had put away his gun for good. But then a grief-stricken young woman who’s like a daughter to him sets out on a quest of vengeance, and Madsen is forced to take up the gun again as he sets out to save her from herself. 

What Madsen doesn’t know is that he’s about to walk into a dangerous web of tangled emotions—lust, greed, hatred, and more—that will culminate in a shocking crime and a deadly showdown on the dusty street of a frontier town. 

This classic novel now available again from Rough Edges Press demonstrates once more why Ed Gorman is one of the most acclaimed Western authors of all time. His tough, spare narrative voice, his painfully human characters, and his sure grasp of storytelling make VENDETTA a compelling reading experience.