20th Century Ghosts - Hardcover

Hill, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1904619479 ISBN 13: 9781904619475

Publisher: PS Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

Imogene is young, beautiful, kisses like a movie star, and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead, the legendary ghost of the Rosebud theater, and one afternoon in 1945, a boy named Alec Sheldon will have an unforgettable encounter with her... in the dark...

Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with a head full of big ideas and a gift for getting his ass kicked. It's hard to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town...

Francis is unhappy. Francis is picked on. Francis doesn't have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that's behind him now. Francis is an eight-foot tall locust, and all of Calliphora, Nevada will shudder to hear him sing...

John Finney is in trouble. The kidnapper locked him in a basement, a place stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. With him, in his subterranean cell, is an antique phone, long since disconnected... but it rings at night, anyway, with calls from the dead...

Eric is a twentysomething burnout, who just lost a girlfriend and a job. Once, though, he was the Red Bolt, and with his home-made cape he could fly. Now the cape is back in his hands, and Eric's future is looking up... and up...

Nolan Lerner is guilty. His past is a thing choked with secrets, blood – and sunflowers. Only Nolan can tell the story of what really happened one summer in 1977, when his younger brother, an idiot savant named Morris, built a vast cardboard fort, with secret doors inside, doors leading into other worlds...

Like Morris Lerner's impossible cardboard fortress, 20th Century Ghoss is big enough to get lost in, a maze filled with exits into a vast country of the surreal. With an assortment of dazzling ideas stickier than flypaper, Joe Hill's unforgettable first collection introduces a startling new imagination.

About this title

Review:

"This strong, award winning collection of stories by Stephen King's son drives a stake through any cattiness that his enjoyable 2007 horror novel Heart Shaped Box was just a lucky break. The refreshing horror collection you've been looking for, even if you didn't know it. My Father's Mask is perhaps the most unsettling thing this horror reviewer has ever read." (METRO)

"Joe Hill lays to rest any doubts about one hit wonder syndrome with this unmissable bounty of short stories, all but guaranteed to add chilled spice to horror fans' spare winter evenings once the curtains have been drawn. A beast of brilliance that will swallow you whole and spit you back out again wearing a big grin." (STARBURST)

"It's wildly imaginative stuff, yet always anchored in reality. There are at least five stories here which deserve to be included in Best Of anthologies for decades to come." (Dave Golder SFX)

"Hill's shorter works have the same ingenuity as his novel 'Heart-Shaped Box' and the same populist wisdom we find in the work of his father Stephen King. What he adds is a weird poetry that is all his own." (Rox Kaveney TIME OUT)

"Even the weakest story present is fired by fierce imagination and a deceptively simple style. Joe Hill's work, while undeniably reminiscent of his father's, holds a charge and voice that is unmistakably his own. 20th Century Ghosts demonstrates this perfectly and deserves to be read." (Jes Bickham DEATHRAY)

From the Publisher:

Dear Readers

Every once in a while, a book -- and, indeed, a writer -- comes along that takes the wind right out of your sails: and I mean that in the most pleasant way possible. 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS is that book, as fine a collection of ghost and horror stories as you could ever wish to read. And Joe Hill is that writer.

Although some of these stories have appeared elsewhere, in various (albeit obscure or very low circulation) magazines, Joe has appeared on the scene pretty much fully-formed. Every one of these tales could be mistaken for the output of a writer well into his or her career. But don't take my word for it -- evidence of his skill as as a storyteller is already there . . . with Joe being a past winner of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship and the A.E. Coppard Long Fiction Prize, as well as a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. And now he's got TWO stories in the five-story shortlist for this year's British Fantasy Awards. I suspect more nominations will follow. Don't say you weren't warned.

And we're putting our money where our mouth is on this one. We've got three editions instead of our usual two: a slipcased edition with extra material and signed by Joe and Introducer Chris Golden; a regular trade hardcover edition, signed by Joe and a trade paperback edition, unsigned.

Believe me, this one's a winner.. . new talents and household names alike, and from both sides of the Atlantic.

Happy reading!

Pete Crowther

About this edition

• Publisher: PS Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1904619479
• ISBN 13: 9781904619475
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 341