Return with us now to those purple haze days of platform shoes, rhinestone studded sunglasses, COINTELPRO, the Panthers, disco and blaxploitation in Forty-Four Caliber Funk, an anthology of prose stories inspired by those times. From Daddy Cool by Donald Goines, Shaft by Earnest Tidyman, and the influences of figures such as Malcolm X and Che Guevara, Timothy Leary and William Burroughs -- with a soundtrack by Donna Summer, the Chi-Lites, James Brown, and The Rolling Stones. Forty-Four Caliber Funk is a collection of crime, mystery and street smart short stories either set in that era or as those times have reverberated to us now in the second decade of a new century. Contributors include Eisner and Inkpot awards winner Mika Baron, who co-created the iconic comics character Nexus; Shamus award winner John Shepphird, the bestselling Elaine Viets, former San Francisco policeman and licensed private eye Jerry Kennealy; and former editor at Holloway House, the infamous birthplace of Street Lit, Emory Holmes II. The editors are Chester Himes award winner Gary Phillips and Robert J. Randisi, winner of the 2016 Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Legends Award.