Southern Gods

Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station - is said to make living men insane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil. But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell...

"A bit of HP Lovecraft, a touch of William Hjortsberg, Southern Gods is an effective combination of cosmic horror and southern Gothic traditions. John Hornor Jacobs will turn heads with this debut."
--Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation

"In SOUTHERN GODS, John Hornor Jacobs turns the classic blues horror story of the devil at the crossroads into a true Lovecraftian nightmare. Steeped in Southern Gothic - and not for the faint of heart! - this is a bold and mighty debut written with breathtaking assurance. Powerful, horrific and beautiful, Southern Gods is a revelation and Jacobs is an author to shout about. Both deserve to go very far indeed." -- Adam Christopher, author of Empire State (Angry Robot, January 2012)

"John Hornor Jacobs' fantastic debut novel, SOUTHERN GODS, is both terrifying and beautiful. His eye for detail and compelling characters makes this one you'll remember long after you've finished it." - Stephen Blackmoore, author City of the Lost (DAW Books 2012)

"Southern Gods marks the return of a much-missed archetype in dark literature -- the genuine anti-hero. In Lewis "Bull" Ingram, John Hornor has created one of the most compelling and complex central characters I've encountered in a long time. The tragedy of his situation gives his every action, even the most brutal, an undercurrent of poignancy that's certain to create conflicted feelings within readers. Add to that the quirky yet bone-chilling cosmology lurking in the background of Ingram's quest, throw in a good measure of crisp, literate dialogue, sprinkle tensions and terrors liberally throughout, and you've got the recipe for a hands-down winner. Compulsively readable and definitely memorable, Southern Gods will ensure that you'll never hear radio interference quite the same way again." -- 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Gary A. Braunbeck, author of Coffin County and Far Dark Fields

"Great Yuggoth, what a great debut novel! With a sure hand for intriguing characters and deft plotting, John Hornor Jacobs establishes himself as an author to heed. The prologue to this exceptional novel is one of the most terrifying things I have ever shivered through. It will kiss your paltry soul with fear. With superbly handled echoes of Chambers and Lovecraft, we encounter the mystery of that Tattered Man, Ramblin' John Hastur, who escorts us to the arcane secrets beyond the sun, beyond the stars, beyond that long black veil!" -W. H. Pugmire, author of The Tangled Muse

"Hell-hound blues! Zombies! Lovecraft! Jacobs' engrossing gris-gris will take ya down to the crossroads and on then to the Deep Places where the hungry Old Ones sho gon git'cha!" -Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., author of SIN & ashes

"John Hornor Jacobs. Remember the name, because if there's any justice in the universe, he's going to be a big deal one day soon. John's prose is by turns lyrical and tough-as-nails. He effortlessly conjures an eerie southern landscape that will surely haunt the dreams of anyone who reads Southern Gods." --Bryan Smith, Author of Darkened and House of Blood

"John Hornor Jacobs' novel Southern Gods is filled with real people, real Southern flavor, and real soul. Pull up a chair, tuck your bib in, and feast on this welcome addition to the horror smorgasbord." -- Christopher Ransom, author of the international bestseller The Birthing House

"Southern Gods is a tour de force of Dixiefied darkness and depravity! Every page drags you downward, ever downward, into the blackest and most fetid cellar of the human -- and inhuman -- psyche. An incredibly intense and gruesomely gratifying first novel by John Hornor Jacobs!" -- Award-winning author, Ronald Kelly

"Implied tentacles, motherfuckers. Read it." - Kent Gowran, Pushcart Prize Nominated Author and Editor of SHOTGUN HONEY, Flash Fic Crime Zine.