Stray Bullets Volume 1

For the first time ever, the complete award-winning first arc of Stray Bullets in paperback! Follow the lost lives of people who are savagely torn apart by events beyond their control: The innocent world of an imaginative little girl is shattered when she witnesses a brutal double murder. An introverted young boy on the verge of manhood gets a lesson on just how far is too far when he falls for a needy woman who lives life in the fast lane. Or party with a pair of low-rent hoods who learn what is really important in life just when they shouldn't. And even learn the story of the most infamous gangster who ever lived, Amy Racecar, who talks to God, lunches with the President, and just may be responsible for the end of the world. These are some of the tales that will rip out your guts and break your heart.

Starred Review. This unforgettable epic of lowlife criminals in Baltimore in the 1980s pulls no punches. An obsessed junior gunsel in love with a corpse; an abused little girl who takes refuge in violent fantasies of robbing banks; a lonely woman who picks up a teenage boy; a hit man who looks like Jesus Christ—these are only a few of the indelible characters caught up in Lapham's ultra-violent saga. Jumping in time from 1977 to 1997, the seven stories in this book are interrelated in subtle ways. Joey, the murderous youth from the first story, appears in another piece, set 17 years earlier, as a boy walking in on his mother having sex with a random guy at a party. Ginny Applejack, in a sad tale of child abuse, is transmogrified into Amy Racecar, a nihilistic antiheroine who is Bonnie and Clyde rolled into one. Lapham's heartbreaking yet detached stories show how petty criminals delude themselves into thinking they're just one score away from leaving it all behind. But even the most sympathetic characters can't break free, like Led, a young punk who finds true love at a wild party and thinks nothing of robbing a liquor store when the party runs out of beer. Lapham's fluid, keenly observed art elevates even the melodramatic moments into stunning instants of shattering truths and savage consequences. (Mar.)