These 23 tales (plus a bonus weird Western story with Harley Allen!)-including the cult favorite, "Slow Mary"-take you along dark, unlined roads and into dark minds less traveled. Held together by themes of isolation and loneliness, existentialism and hope, and choice versus fate, and at turns both disturbing and darkly comical (while often tinged with sadness), this collection explores both speculative fiction and realism: horror and dark fantasy, road stories and crime, dark drama and soft sci-fi, and surrealism and magical realism. ". . . conjures from the dust and dirt of Americana both the horror and pathos of life on the edges. Each story spins out a heightening dread, the prose swinging from brutal to beautiful and back again." - John Hornor Jacobs, author of This Dark Earth, Southern Gods, and The Twelve-Fingered Boy ". . . demonstrates an astonishing breadth of imagination in this collection, along with memorable characters and a style that's as clear and crisp as it is hard-hitting. Back Roads & Frontal Lobes is a master class in fiction writing, wildly entertaining and highly recommended!" - Tim Waggoner, author of Writing in the Dark and We Will Rise About the Author (s): Brady Allen grew up in a small rural town in southern Ohio and now resides in Dayton, Ohio. He has two daughters and a dog, and he taught writing at a local public college for twenty-five years. Besides reading, writing, and spending time with family, he loves listening to Reds baseball on the transistor radio and Waylon Jennings. He is at work on a second collection of short stories, Outliers & Inner Urges, and a dystopian horror/sci-fi series, still untitled.