The Legend of Charlie Fish
“Odd, creepy, funny, The Black Lagoon meets the Six Gun universe. High up on the way-cool factor. You need this.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award–winning author of the Hap and Leonard series

As an unlikely found-family flees toward Galveston, a psychic young girl bonds with Charlie Fish, an enigmatic gill-man. Meanwhile, they are pursued by bounty hunters determined to profit from the spectacle of Charlie. But the Great Storm—the worst natural disaster in U.S. history—is on its way. Josh Rountree’s strikingly original debut novel ranges effortlessly between the Gothic, pulp, literary, Western, and comedic. With his vivid imagery, evocative storytelling, and uncanny wit, Rountree enters the fine tradition of Texan storytellers, wading into True Grit by way of The Shape of Water.

As always, Floyd Betts rides into town alone. He arrives for his father’s funeral, but he is returning to Galveston, Texas, with two orphaned siblings he has rescued. Nellie, who is descended from a long line of witches, has visions from other people’s minds. Hank, her impulsive younger brother, just wants to break out his outsized revolver.

Along the way home, Floyd, Nellie, and Hank encounter a dubious traveling salesman, Professor Finn, and his henchman, Kentucky Jim. They are struggling to capture a fish-man in order to put him on cruel display. When Nellie taps into the peril of the gentle Charlie Fish, Floyd’s makeshift family expands to include the lost, two-legged amphibian.

With the circus charlatans in pursuit, ominous winds are picking up from an impending hurricane. Meanwhile, all Charlie Fish wants is to return to his home at sea.
1142206168
The Legend of Charlie Fish
“Odd, creepy, funny, The Black Lagoon meets the Six Gun universe. High up on the way-cool factor. You need this.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award–winning author of the Hap and Leonard series

As an unlikely found-family flees toward Galveston, a psychic young girl bonds with Charlie Fish, an enigmatic gill-man. Meanwhile, they are pursued by bounty hunters determined to profit from the spectacle of Charlie. But the Great Storm—the worst natural disaster in U.S. history—is on its way. Josh Rountree’s strikingly original debut novel ranges effortlessly between the Gothic, pulp, literary, Western, and comedic. With his vivid imagery, evocative storytelling, and uncanny wit, Rountree enters the fine tradition of Texan storytellers, wading into True Grit by way of The Shape of Water.

As always, Floyd Betts rides into town alone. He arrives for his father’s funeral, but he is returning to Galveston, Texas, with two orphaned siblings he has rescued. Nellie, who is descended from a long line of witches, has visions from other people’s minds. Hank, her impulsive younger brother, just wants to break out his outsized revolver.

Along the way home, Floyd, Nellie, and Hank encounter a dubious traveling salesman, Professor Finn, and his henchman, Kentucky Jim. They are struggling to capture a fish-man in order to put him on cruel display. When Nellie taps into the peril of the gentle Charlie Fish, Floyd’s makeshift family expands to include the lost, two-legged amphibian.

With the circus charlatans in pursuit, ominous winds are picking up from an impending hurricane. Meanwhile, all Charlie Fish wants is to return to his home at sea.
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The Legend of Charlie Fish

The Legend of Charlie Fish

by Josh Rountree
The Legend of Charlie Fish

The Legend of Charlie Fish

by Josh Rountree

eBook

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Overview

“Odd, creepy, funny, The Black Lagoon meets the Six Gun universe. High up on the way-cool factor. You need this.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award–winning author of the Hap and Leonard series

As an unlikely found-family flees toward Galveston, a psychic young girl bonds with Charlie Fish, an enigmatic gill-man. Meanwhile, they are pursued by bounty hunters determined to profit from the spectacle of Charlie. But the Great Storm—the worst natural disaster in U.S. history—is on its way. Josh Rountree’s strikingly original debut novel ranges effortlessly between the Gothic, pulp, literary, Western, and comedic. With his vivid imagery, evocative storytelling, and uncanny wit, Rountree enters the fine tradition of Texan storytellers, wading into True Grit by way of The Shape of Water.

As always, Floyd Betts rides into town alone. He arrives for his father’s funeral, but he is returning to Galveston, Texas, with two orphaned siblings he has rescued. Nellie, who is descended from a long line of witches, has visions from other people’s minds. Hank, her impulsive younger brother, just wants to break out his outsized revolver.

Along the way home, Floyd, Nellie, and Hank encounter a dubious traveling salesman, Professor Finn, and his henchman, Kentucky Jim. They are struggling to capture a fish-man in order to put him on cruel display. When Nellie taps into the peril of the gentle Charlie Fish, Floyd’s makeshift family expands to include the lost, two-legged amphibian.

With the circus charlatans in pursuit, ominous winds are picking up from an impending hurricane. Meanwhile, all Charlie Fish wants is to return to his home at sea.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781616963958
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Publication date: 07/25/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 192
File size: 281 KB

About the Author

Josh Rountree has published more than sixty stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Realms of Fantasy, The Deadlands, Bourbon Penn, PseudoPod, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, and A Punk Rock Future. Several of his stories have received honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth and Twenty-First Annual Collections, as well as The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection. His latest short fiction collection is Fantastic Americana: Stories from Fairwood Press. Josh lives somewhere in the untamed wilds of Texas with his wife and children, and he tweets about books, records, and guitars at @josh_rountree.

Read an Excerpt

I lay awake in the dark, listening to ghosts.

The summer heat was furious, and hard rain sounded against the roof. An electric fan clattered and hummed but failed to offer any relief. My bedclothes clung to my body, sodden with sweat, and I tossed on top of my sheets for an hour before giving up on sleep. When I turned on the bedside lamp, yellow light flooded the corners of my bedroom, and I walked barefooted to the window, looked out at the approaching hurricane.

I was not afraid of ghosts or of storms.

But they did make it hard to go to sleep.

Wind rattled the windows as I watched giant waves chip away at the beach. Black storm clouds crowded in from the Gulf, one after another. More than thirty years had passed since I first came to Galveston, since the greatest storm in memory had torn away the face of the old town and left it unrecognizable. There were few enough left who recalled the people and places stolen away by that storm, and when we passed one another on the streets, we saw reflections in each other’s eyes of all we’d lost.

We understood hurricanes better now. Could more effectively predict their path and measure their ferocity.

But they were no less deadly.

Living on the island so long, I was no stranger to storms. But something about this one felt different. Light posts swayed beside the road, and palm trees gave up their fronds to the clawing wind. A couple of men stood along the seawall, hands on their hips, suitcoats flapping. The ocean felt heavy against the world, deep with secrets, and the wind carried voices I hadn’t heard in a long time. Storms always stirred up the island’s ghosts and they whispered in my head, anxious and insistent.

Even those who tended to keep quiet spoke up during storms.

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