Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Night They Missed the Horror Show | 1988 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 2 | Love Doll | 1991 | Joe R. Lansdale | N/A |
| 3 | Tight Little Stitches on a Dead Man’s Back | 1992 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 4 | The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance | 1992 | Joe R. Lansdale | N/A |
| 5 | The Folding Man | 2010 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 6 | Dread Island | 2010 | Joe R. Lansdale | N/A |
| 7 | Bullets and Fire | 2011 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 8 | The Steel Valentine | 2011 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 9 | Incident On and Off a Mountain Road | 2011 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 10 | The Ape Man’s Brother | 2012 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 11 | Christmas with the Dead | 2012 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 12 | Hot in December | 2013 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 13 | A Bone Dead Sadness | 2014 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 14 | Black Hat Jack | 2014 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 15 | Fishing for Dinosaurs | 2014 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 16 | Hoodoo Harry | 2017 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 17 | Apache Witch and Other Poetic Observations | 2021 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 18 | Shooting Star | 2023 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
| 19 | The Unlikely Affair of the Crawling Razor | 2024 | Joe R. Lansdale | Buy |
Joe R. Lansdale’s individual short stories and novellas represent some of his most powerful and experimental work. Night They Missed the Horror Show (1988) is one of the most famous horror short stories of the last 40 years, while The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance (1992) showcases his dark humor and willingness to play with genre conventions.
This list includes novellas like The Ape Man’s Brother (2012), Black Hat Jack (2014), and Shooting Star (2023), alongside shorter pieces published individually or in limited editions. Lansdale’s short fiction has won multiple Bram Stoker Awards and is widely anthologized.