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 All I wanted was for my life, when you picked it up in your hands, to have some weight to it. 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. 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 “A book of five linked stories, each an elegiac, quietly devastating postapocalyptic narrative . . . These vignettes form a constellation of perspectives that echo, refract, and deepen one another to form a mosaic that mirrors the splintered and disordered world . . . Intimate and mythic.” — 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 James Sallis has published eighteen novels, including Drive , which was made into a now-iconic film, and the six-volume Lew Griffin series. He is a recipient of the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the Deutsche Krimipreis, and the Brigada 21 in Spain, as well as Bouchercon’s Lifetime Achievement Award. His biography of Chester Himes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and he has been shortlisted for the Anthony, Nebula, Edgar, Shamus, and Gold Dagger Awards. 1. At 10:36 as I’m listening to accounts on the radio of a plane lost over the Arctic Sea, the noise from within the trunk gets to be so annoying that I stop the car, open up and whack the guy with the cut-down baseball bat I stowed under the front seat. The ride’s a lot better after that. They never find the plane. Where I’ve pulled off is this little rise from which you can see the highway rolling on for miles in both directions, my very own wee grassy knoll. The trees off the road are at that half-and-half stage, leaves gone brown closer to the ground, those above stubbornly hanging on. Because of Union Day there’s little traffic, two semis, a couple of vans and a pickup during the time I’m there, which is the only reason I’m risking everything to be out here and on the road taking care of one last piece of business. Even the government’s mostly on hold. What they never understood, I’m thinking as I get back in the car, what it took me so long to understand, is that after rehab I became a different person. Not as in some idiotic this-changed-my-life blather, or that last two minutes of screen drama with light shining in the guy’s eyes and throbs of music. Everything changed. How the sky looks in early morning, the taste of foods, longings you can’t put a name to. Time itself, the way it comes and goes. Learning all over how to do the most basic things, walk, hold onto a glass, open doors, brush teeth, tie shoes, put your belt on f