Great short fiction

Here's the best short story I've read this summer. By best I mean it really stuck out as something special. In terms of literary quality, Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," probably takes it.

But Joe R. Lansdale's "The Night They Missed the Horror Show," is one of those stories you put down excited and exhausted. Lansdale may not have the polished prose of Hemingway, or Raymond Carver, for a better contrast, but his storytelling is truly unique, lurid and powerful. Things happen in Lansdale's short stories, and this one drags you along with it as if you were the dead dog. He's a great writer in that respect, that his stories are just damn good stories with no other justification or judgement necessary. Before I oversell it, read this story now. It's short.

Here's an excerpt, but that doesn't mean you don't have to read the whole thing, lazy Internet people:

He finally focused on something in the highway. A dead dog.
Not just a dead dog. But a DEAD DOG. The mutt had been hit by a semi at least, maybe several. It looked as if it had rained dog. There were pieces of that pooch all over the concrete and one leg was lying on the curbing on the opposite side, stuck up in such a way that it seemed to be waving hello. Doctor Frankenstein with a grant from Johns Hopkins and assistance from NASA couldn't have put that sucker together again.

This one is from High Cotton, a best-of anthology with author notation. It's great if you can find it. Then there's "The Bottoms," probably his best novel and most critically respected. I also like "The Drive-In" for some really pulpy fun.