Newly expanded to include work from recent years, Honky Tonk is as evocative and irresistible as the music itself.

Only Hap and Leonard would catch a cold case with hot cars, hot women, and ugly skinheads. The story starts simply enough when Hap, a former 60s activist and self-proclaimed white trash rebel, and Leonard, a tough black, gay Vietnam vet and Republican with an addiction to Dr. Pepper, are working a freelance surveillance job in East Texas. The uneventful stakeout is coming to an end when the pair witness a man abusing his dog. Leonard takes matters into his own fists, and now the bruised dog abuser wants to press charges. One week later, a woman named Lilly Buckner drops by their new PI office with a proposition: find her missing granddaughter, or she'll turn in a video of Leonard beating the dog abuser. The pair agrees to take on the cold case and soon discover that the used car dealership where her granddaughter worked is actually a front for a prostitution ring. What began as a missing-person case becomes one of blackmail and murder. Filled with Lansdale's trademark whip-smart dialogue, relentless pacing, and unorthodox characters, Honky Tonk Samurai is a rambunctious thrill ride by one hell of a writer.

It was supposed to be a car dealership. Instead, it became one of the most famous American music venues of all time... Only one place in the whole world can claim to be both the Carnegie Hall of western swing and the penultimate stop on the Sex Pistols’ infamous American tour. Now, for the first time ever, all the secrets of the hottest honky-tonk of the 20th Century—Cain’s Ballroom—are revealed, in the words of the people who made it happen. Spanning the famed venue’s first 75 years, from 1924 through 1999, Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk tells it all, from Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys—who became a national sensation with their clear-channel ballroom broadcasts—to U2, the Police, and Van Halen—as Cain's became an essential stop for breakout acts and cosmic cowboys. The book also covers cutting-edge alt-rock acts, metal bands, and off-the-wall attractions like ladies’ mud wrestling (which worked) and Pig Time Racing (which didn’t).

Earthy, sexy, and vivacious, the life of beloved country singer, Patsy Cline, who soared from obscurity to international fame to tragic death in just thirty short years, is explored in colorful and poignant detail. An innovator?and even a hell-raiser?Cline broke all the boys' club barriers of Nashville's music business in the 1950s and brought a new Nashville sound to the nation with her pop hits and torch ballads like ?Walking After Midnight," ?I Fall to Pieces? and "Crazy." She is the subject of a major Hollywood movie and countless articles, and her albums are still selling 45 years after her death. Ellis Nassour was the very first to write about Cline and did so with the cooperation of the stars who knew and loved her?including Jimmy Dean, Jan Howard, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Roger Miller, Dottie West, and Faron Young. He was the only writer to interview Cline's mother and husbands. This updated edition features not only a complete discography and a host of never-before-published photographs, but includes an afterword that details controversial claims about her birth, the battle between Cline's siblings for her possessions, the amazing influence Cline had on a new generation of singers and, in Cline's own words from letters to a devoted friend, her excitement as her career soared to new heights and her marriage descended to new depths.

From its beginnings as a railroad siding in 1887, Havre, Montana was a tough, wide-open town with plenty of saloons, gambling halls, opium dens, brothels, and cheap cribs. With the passage of Prohibition, it was a natural hub for smuggling illegal alcohol across the nearby Canadian border. Honky-Tonk Town tells the story of this wild and woolly frontier town.

Willie Nelson says, "Billy Joe Shaver may be the best songwriter alive today." And legions of fans agree. "Honky Tonk Hero" is the story of a man who not only walked on the wild side and lived to tell about it, but also got it all down in songs that many people consider to be some of the finest country songs ever written.

One of the most beloved country music stars of all time gives us the first collection of her lyrics and, in her own words, tells the stories that inspired her most popular songs, such as "Coal Miner's Daughter," "Don't Come Home A' Drinkin'," and, of course, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl." Loretta Lynn's rags-to-riches story--from her hardscrabble childhood in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, through her marriage to Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn when she was thirteen, to her dramatic rise to the top of the charts--has resonated with countless fans throughout her more than fifty-year career. Now, the anecdotes she shares here give us deeper insight into her life, her collaborations, her influences, and how she pushed the boundaries of country music by discussing issues important to working-class women, even when they were considered taboo. Readers will also get a rare look at the singer's handwritten lyrics and at personal photographs from her childhood, of her family, and of her performing life. Honky Tonk Girl: A Life in Lyrics is one more way for Lynn's fans--those who already love her and those who soon will--to know the heart and mind of this remarkable woman.