Description: "A compelling call for compassion and resilience in the maw of social dissolution from literary legend James Sallis, master of many genres and Nebula, Edgar, and Shamus-nominated author of Drive In a not-so-distant future the United States has fragmented, balkanizing into unstable provinces often at war with one another, and Americans, their great promise not so much lost as forfeited, are encountering the terrors and devastation so much of the world daily lives with. Throughout a land littered with refugees, ruins, orphaned children, soldiers, militia, and fugitives, people go on about their daily lives as best they can. The five linked stories of World's Edge track the false starts and stall-outs of a nation and civilization trying to rise again, to rebuild, and of individuals caught up in that rebirthing. As ever, the only true history lies in the story of individual lives, in the old rag and bone shop of our hearts"-- Provided by publisher.
Review Quotes: Praise for World's Edge
"Sallis' tale, or tales, depends for its power on individual insights and a thematic throughline: Apart from all those unbridled conflicts, the nightmare future it presents sounds a great deal like this morning's headlines. A supercut of videos and aphorisms that, like all dystopias, uses prophecies of tomorrow to raise hard questions about today."
--Kirkus Reviews
--Booklist Praise for James Sallis
"The power of simplicity and the musical ring of truth as only Sallis can deliver it--as he has done bravely, consistently, for the last few decades."
--Los Angeles Times "Then there's James Sallis--he's right up there, one of the best. It is quite possible that speaking of Jim Sallis in the same tone as Poe and Dostoevsky is not overblowing on my part."
--Harlan Ellison "James Sallis is one of our greatest living crime writers . . . Try to get his words, his stories, his people out of your head. Just try."
--Laura Lippman, author of Lady in the Lake
"Sallis is a sure hand--characters and prose, of course, dialogue, too, but he is also a subtle weaver of plot, with the perfect level of push. His descriptions evoke a place more real than mere realism could render, and his people speak and sweat and live and die and it's all a great pleasure."
--Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone "One of the most enjoyable and most important writers working today, James Sallis has quietly revolutionized an entire genre of literature."
--Sara Gran, author of Come Closer "Only America seems able to produce writers whose careers are as unconventional and whose talents are as diverse as James Sallis."
--Le Monde