20th Century Ghosts

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It's not such a bad thing to be labeled a "literary horror writer," but to describe the stories in 20th Century Ghosts as strictly "horror" or "supernatural" would be patently inaccurate. Stories like "Better Than Home" and "The Widow's Breakfast" seemingly veer toward the supernatural or weird but are ultimately character sketches of two very different families. "You Will Hear the Locust Sing" is a great Kafka-Goes-B-Movie take on revenge. "Best New Horror" is a story that (sort of) gives itself away as it nears the climax yet you have to keep going because you can't believe that you're reading a story this good, this darkly comic, this daring. There's the disturbing and incestuous "My Father's Mask" and a twist on the superhero theme in "The Cape." And I'll bet good money that you won't read a story more touching than "Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead" for a good long while. Or at least not one that uses the filming of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead as back drop. This is a short story collection that will have you staying up late -- and pulling the covers over your head when you turn off the lights.

Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . .

Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust,and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

Nolan knows but can never tell what really happened in the summer of '77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vastcardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds. . . .

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

"Alternately sad, scary, strange and at times even sweet, these tales will haunt you long after youGÇÖve read them." (Parade (a "Parade Pick"))

Joe Hill is the author of a previous novel, Heart-Shaped Box, a story collection, 20^th Century Ghosts, and an occasional comic series, Locke & Key.

336 pages