Slate: Underrated Books of the Year Flavorwire: Best Independent Press Books of 2015





LitReactor: Best Books of 2015

Brooke and Sugar are contract killers without a contract. Bird is the 13-year-old who appears in their camp one night, with no memory and palms as smooth as stones. Driven from town after a bathhouse brawl, it's only a matter of time before the sheriffs will find them. Before the cannibals and stampedes and marauders will find them. Before the past will clamber up from where they buried it, covered in animal skins and teeth.

In Haints Stay, Colin Winnette breaks down the classic Western and builds a bloody lean-to from the scraps. Brutal, surreal, and darkly funny, this bold new novel follows an ever-expanding cast of characters - each in the pursuit of their own brand of justice and belonging.



Colin Winnette is the author of several books, most recently Coyote and Haints Stay. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Believer, and Lucky Peach. He lives in San Francisco.



'In his astonishing portrait of American violence, Haints Stay, Colin Winnette makes use of the Western genre to stunning effect'



''Haints Stay' turns the Western on its ear'



'[One of] LitReactor's favorite reads of 2015'



'Haints Stay puts to mind the very best contemporary novels of the old West... But Colin Winnette has his own dark and delightful and surprising agenda. Be wary. He might be the new law in town'



'Winnette portrays his serial killers with an odd grace and punctuates his circular narrative with murders, revenge killings, a shooting spree, and a heroic arc for wannabe gunslinger Bird that is broadly, darkly humorous'