Fruit of the Deceiver and Forty Hands of Night,
2nd Edition Omnibus Collection
The Jericho Bone
By James Lafond
A Punch Buggy Book
According to the travelling doctor Abd al-Latif, in the year 1201, the old, the young and the fat were devoured by fellow Egyptians in a cannibalistic hunt that lasted a year and annihilated entire communities.
The causes remain unknown.
The forces of evil unleashed by this horrible feast remain unknown.
The Jericho Bone tells the Good Doctor’s tale and suggests answers to the unanswerable through the eyes of an ancient tribal general, a bloody-handed envoy of the Caliph, a fisherman, four doctors, a bookseller, a donkey boy, a slave girl sold for her flesh rather than her companionship, a ruthless adventurer, a loquacious midwife, a wicked noblewoman, and a wet nurse attempting to save the last baby in Cairo from those who would dine upon the innocent.
The Jericho Bone
The Original Cover
An Arabian Terror Tale
Fruit of The Deceiver Omnibus Edition
Dust Cover
In the year 1201, in the midst of the worst famine in recorded history, the adults of Egypt waged a war of extermination upon its children. Nearly every child of one of the wealthiest and militarily secure nations on earth, was hunted, captured, killed, and then eaten, by strangers, parents, and grandparents. Though the poor had nothing else to eat but their young and their dead, the wealthy engaged in child-eating—as well as the gourmet preparation of overweight people—as a culinary art.
The travelling doctor, Abd al-Latif, left a detailed, yet reluctant, account of this year of grisly feasting. This is his story.
This omnibus edition includes the novella Fruit of The Deceiver, the novel Forty Hands of Night, the never before published vignette Seeds of The Deceiver, and the short The Journal of Abd al Latif.
The Jericho Bone
Copyright 2016 James LaFond
A PunchBuggy Books Publication
Portions originally serialized at
For more information about the author and his other books go to www.jameslafond.com
Inspired by the zombie crusader art of Jason Lenox and the writings of Abd al-Latif
I would like to thank Jason for graciously suggesting and permitting the use of his inspirational art for the cover of the First Edition.
The cover for this edition was prepared with the aid of Jamie King.
Edited by Danica Lorencz
Dedication
For Gerard, unforgotten
And Also For…
“The children of the poor, those who were young or already grown and had no one at all to care for them or look after them, were scattered through all parts of the town, even in the narrowest side streets, like locusts in the countryside. The poor, men and women alike, lay in wait for these unhappy children, carried them off and ate them…”
“…Nothing was more common than this kind of thing, and it would be difficult to find in the length and breadth of Egypt, even among people who live cloistered in monasteries, or women who spend
their lives in the zenana, anyone who has not been eye-witness to such atrocities. Moreover, everybody knows that there were grave-robbers who ate or sold the bodies they dug up.”
-Abd al-Latif, Useful and instructive reflections on things that I have seen and events that I have witnessed in Egypt.
PULP FICTION RENAISSANCE 