20th Century Ghosts » (Reprint)

Joe Hill is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Heart-Shaped Box, the award-winning collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and a critically acclaimed comic book series, Locke & Key.

A dazzlingly original, award-winning collection of visions and nightmares from the New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box.

Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon on an afternoon in 1945...Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town...Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing...John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead...

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...

The Washington Post - Elizabeth Hand

20th Century Ghosts, the melancholy and very fine story collection by Joe Hill, comes with an impeccable literary pedigree and a great backstory. Hill was born Joseph Hillstrom King, son of the writers Tabitha and Stephen King, and developed his chops the old-fashioned way, publishing work in literary magazines and anthologies here and in England. When he began shopping his first collection around, it was turned down in the United States and finally appeared in 2005 from a small British press. That edition garnered numerous awards, including the William Crawford Award for best first fantasy book, and won its author a contract at Morrow, which earlier this year published his bestselling horror novel, Heart-Shaped Box. Now Americans finally get a chance to see what all the noise was about: This new edition of 20th Century Ghosts includes a previously unpublished story, and the collection should establish its author as a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction.