In steel-tipped prose, Craig Davidson conjures up a bleak world populated by hardscrabble pugilists, fighting dogs, sex addicts, and others held captive by their own bad luck and bad decisions. Visceral and with a dark urgency, Rust and Bone is a strikingly original debut.

Craig Davidson is a Canadian author of short stories and novels, who has published work under both his own name and the pen names Patrick Lestewka and Nick Cutter. His style has been compared to that of Chuck Palahniuk.

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"Davidson . . . smudges the line between comedy and horror, cruelty and mercy. His remarkable stories are challenging and upsetting. . . . Don't look for comfort, here." —Chuck Palahniuk

"Davidson's stories . . . present a world without obvious hope. Yet they are all so carefully crafted that the prose itself offers some kind of redemption. Sometimes so tough as to be volcanically sentimental, unreal, sometimes acutely accurate and tender, they represent a powerful debut." —Globe and Mail

"The landscape of Rust and Bone is a war zone. With each story, the author digs both feet into the canvas and slings forth a blizzard of body blows that will knock you on your ass. When it comes to raw power, Davidson is truly a force to be reckoned with." —Thom Jones

"Stark oppositions often pack the punch in these gritty tales about American tough guys on the ropes." —The Guardian
"In prose so clean it has been stripped down to the bone, Craig Davidson gives us the demi-monde of dogfights, bar brawls, and washed-up boxers that Hemingway first brought into our literature. Since then, only a very few writers have described that dead-end world and its broken, desperate, self-deluded, sometimes tragic inhabitants with a clear-eyed, essentially sympathetic authenticity, and with Rust and Bone, Davidson takes a prominent place among them. He is a writer of immense power and surprising, accurate insights." —Peter Straub

"Davidson writes with a precision and power that's hard to ignore. . . . Excellent." —The Independent

"There is a strikingly original tone to Mr. Davidson's stories. The prose is spare yet elegant, the insights are fresh and real, and best of all there is a boundless humanity in Mr. Davidson's writing: a love of life that is beautifully woven with an acute sense of its darkness. This is in every way an extraordinary book." —Clive Barker

"Like a gleeful bull in the china shop of staid and worthy CanLit, Davidson is defining his own literary identity by shattering conventions." —National Post

"Equal parts poetry and brawny prose, Rust and Bone is an original book written with intelligence, humour, and style." —Devin Krukoff

"A strong stomach, an open mind and a morbid sense of humor are essential to enjoying Davidson's accomplished, macabre first collection. . . . Davidson . . . is a fine young writer with a keen sense of the absurd and a bracing, biting wit." —Publisher’s Weekly

"Even when Davidson pushes the limits of what a reader can stomach, he never loses our attention or our empathy." —Library Journal

"Davidson matches his stellar, energetic descriptions of physical confrontation with subtle, quirky explorations of human motivation." —Booklist