Delta Blues Anthology now in paperback includes Charlaine Harris's "Crossroads Bargain"

The blues are at home anywhere, but the epicenter is Clarksdale, Miss., the setting for at least a third of the 19 original stories in this virtuoso crime anthology. Despite the common theme, this diverse volume ranges from Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly's What His Hands Had Been Waiting For, a memorably redemptive story set during the 1927 flood of the Mississippi, to John Grisham's long, haunting Fetching Raymond, in which members of a dysfunctional family trek to notorious Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary. James Lee Burke's Big Midnight Special is a powerful story about a Parchman Farm inmate driven too far. Several tales play off the legendary crossroads meeting of the devil and Robert Johnson, including Michael Lister's Death at the Crossroads, Charlaine Harris's Crossroads Bargain, and Daniel Martine's Kidd Diamond. Other contributors include Les Standiford, Ace Atkins, Nathan Singer, Dean James, and Haines