From the author of Bleed and The Rib From Which I Remake the World comes a triptych of historical horror novellas. A pair of Texas oil men strike something more valuable than crude that turns avarice to murder-and summons something that should never have been awakened-in "Black's Red Gold." In "Kennon Road, " a disillusioned American corporal stationed in Baguio in the wake of the Philippine-American War discovers the gruesome truth behind the Filipino legend of the man-eating Manananggal. And on the lonesome desert highways of the American Southwest, a trucker befriends a haunted, hitchhiking Vietnam veteran with whom she confronts the horrors waiting in the hills and caves to feed in "Deadheader." Monsters both human and otherworldly converge in Ed Kurtz's At the Mercy of Beasts.