William R. Soldan

Desperation. Violence. Broken homes and broken hearts. Fathers, junkies, and thieves. In this gritty new collection, one bad choice begets another, and redemption is a twisted mirage. An ex-addict takes a detour with his young son and comes face-to-face with an old drug dealer and an unsettled debt. A down-on-his-luck gambler visits his estranged sister while figuring out his next play. An Iraq War vet fights a personal battle to reconcile life as a civilian. Three boyhood friends stumble upon a dark secret in a rural dump. These and the other troubled characters that inhabit the streets and alleys of these stories continually find themselves at the mercy of a cold, indifferent world as they hurtle downward and grapple for hard-won second chances in a life that seldom grants them. Praise for HOUSES BURNING AND OTHER RUINS “In Houses Burning and Other Ruins, William R. Soldan spins epic tragedies on a domestic scale. His characters struggle to survive their own poor choices in a world of limited opportunities. This makes their glaring flaws both familiar and heartbreakingly real. Inside these stories are your friends, co-workers, cousins, and neighbors hiding the shame of addiction, abuse, and extreme desperation behind an ordinary weekday mask. And it’s done so effortlessly, the urgency of the words connects with the reader immediately. Soldan is a unique, gritty literary voice in noir fiction.” —J.D. Graves, EconoClash Review “The pages bound together in Soldan’s Houses Burning and Other Ruins are jaw-dropping. Rendered in unflinching prose, these are haunting stories in which we witness the scandalous undoings of unusually deep, conflicted people that, on any given day, most would bustle right past. Soldan is the kind of writer we need right now.” —Robert Vaughan, author of Funhouse, Editor-in-Chief, Bending Genres “My gawd, these characters, these lives-on-fire characters—Soldan’s Houses Burning and Other Ruins is a stunning collection full of hardscrabble folk, written with such honesty and care that one can’t help but be reminded of the late Larry Brown.” —Adam Van Winkle, author of While They Were in the Field and Hardway Juice, Editor-in-Chief, Cowboy Jamboree “If you like your fiction atmospheric, bleak, and visceral, then Houses Burning and Other Ruins is obligatory reading. It’s a treasure trove of noir gems, which will stay with you, seared into your brain, long after you’ve turned the last page. In the manner of a great artist, Soldan’s tight and spartan prose paints a human landscape denuded of hope, but crawling with humanity, or what’s left of it—souls at rock bottom and spiraling even further down as they seek escape. Soldan delves below the façades, lays bare the trauma and disconnection that is the reality for too many and invites us into the ruinous playground of those evil twins, desolation and desperation. This is the dark side of the American Dream. Read it: you won’t forget it.” —A.B.Patterson, author of the PI Harry Kenmare novels and short stories.

Houses Burning and Other Ruins

Ewa Mazierska

Kristen Lepionka

Brendan DuBois

Tobias Carroll

Nick Kolakowski

SJ Rozan

Richie Narvaez

Todd Robinson

Chris McGinley

Scott Adlerberg

Our 240 page Issue No11, Fall 2019 edition of Mystery Tribune is a must-have featuring Brendan DuBois, SJ Rozan, William Soldan, and more. Issue No11: Fall 2019 features A curated collection of short fiction including stories by Brendan DuBois, SJ Rozan, Ewa Mazierska, Nick Kolakowski, Richie Narvaez, Todd Robinson, Chris McGinley, and William R. Soldan. Interviews and Reviews by Daniel Kraus, Scott Adlerberg, Tobias Carroll, Kristen Lepionka, and Charles Perry. Art and Photography by Jessica Almeida, Sergey Nehaev, and more. This issue also features a preview of the new graphic novel Rivers of London Volume 7: Action at a Distance by Ben Aaronovitch (Author), Andrew Cartmel (Author), and Brian Williamson (Illustrator). NY Times Bestselling author Reed Farrel Coleman has called Mystery Tribune “a cut above” and mystery grand masters Lawrence Block and Max Allan Collins have praised it for its “solid fiction” and “the most elegant design”. An elegantly crafted quarterly issue, printed on uncoated paper and with a beautiful layout designed for optimal reading experience, our Fall 2019 issue will make a perfect companion or gift for avid mystery readers and fans of literary crime fiction.

Fall 2019

Mystery Tribune / Issue No11

Bohdan Pękacki

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