I started this book a while back, but put it down, because I'm not much of a short story reader. Then life got in the way, and it got lost in the bookcase. I rediscovered it and immersed myself in Tales of the Lonesome Blues Pub.

Interesting concept, especially in that all the mentioned musician ghosts were real blues players, as far as I can tell. Why they all decided to hang out at Miss Sarah's pub, isn't entirely clear. At least Jayhawk had an excuse -- he died there. The stories were imaginative, even though I'm not particularly familiar with the Blues (more of a Jazz girl, myself.)

I wished I'd had a playlist and CD to accompany reading this. I did find that Jens created a recommended listening list but only too late to do me any good.

This book was a 2003 Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best First Novel. ( )

This book is awesome! Parts of it appeared in other forms in anthologies and a magazine, so there is a bit of repetition, but that doesn't hurt anything. Jens is a blues lover, and it shows. She includes a recommended listening list and a bibliography.

Part I: 1981 Preacherman Gets the Blues

The Lonesome Blues Pub has a resident ghost, Jayhawk, a blues player who was killed in a fire in the pub, and tradition says the first number of the night must be played on his guitar. But tonight, the guitarist flouts tradition. Big mistake, especially when someone does pick up the house guitar, and starts playing Satan Came Walking, and an old man and a little girl have to play the blues to fight hellfire.

Part II: 1989 MIss Sarah Leaves the Blues Behind

The ghosts are getting to Miss Sarah, so is the loneliness of being a single mom raising her daughter in a blues bar. To deal with the first, she brings in a psychic, and when a handsome man crosses her path, she is smitten. But instead of laying ghosts, the psychic raises them, and being with the handsome man will mean leaving the bar. Her daughter, Little Mustang, though, plays blues with the ghosts, and will keep their home going.

Part III: 1991 Tracks of a Hellhound

In which a long-lost recording of Robert Johnson is found and played, requiring the intervention of Johnson himself to send the hellhound back where it came from.

Part IV: 1996 Damned Fool Man

In which Miss Mustang and her cohorts deal with the ghost of a serial killer, and a bar full of people with the Lovesick Blues

Part V: 2000 Stranger Ev'rywhere

Harpsicrazy is a paranoid schizophrenic harpsichord player, trying to keep the voices quiet. He's a regular at the bar, and Miss Mustang knows just how to handle him. And then a college kid thinks it'll be funny to drop something in Harpsicrazy's drink.

This is the best story of the bunch. Jens gets right into the head of Harpsicrazy, and a good bit of it, the best of the best, is told from his point of view.

This book was a 2003 Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best First Novel.