20th Century Ghosts

Joe Hill is a recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship and the winner of the A.E. Coppard Long Fiction Prize, William Crawford, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. His short fiction has appeared in literary, mystery and horror collections and magazines in Britain and America.

For more information, visit www.joehillfiction.com, visit joehillsthrills.tumblr.com, or follow @Joe_Hill on twitter.

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 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 . . .

“Hill’s best stories veer away from the well-trodden creep shows and back alleys of genre writing into more dangerous territory: suburban basements, ball fields and schoolyards.” — Washington Post
“[An] inventive collection . . . brave and astute.” — New York Times Book Review
“Fully developed characters with complex emotional lives enhance the 14 stories in Joe Hill’s extraordinary collection,20th Century Ghosts. There’s not a false note or disappointing effort in this volume.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The collection of short stories ranges from creepy to sweet, with an impressive arsenal of tactics to attack your psyche.” — Boston Globe
“20th Century Ghosts is Hill’s first collection of short stories and displays consummate skill in a variety of genres . . . Amusing, moving, horrifying—Ghosts runs the full spectrum.” — USA Today
“Alternately sad, scary, strange and at times even sweet, these tales will haunt you long after you’ve read them.” — Parade
“[A] lovely, earnest collection of short fiction.” — Village Voice
“[O]ne of the best [horror] collections of the year. Hill is a relative newcomer who consistently creates creepy, very disturbing stories.” — Locus
“Each tale is unique, and the collection proves that Hill’s talent is not limited to horror, but extends well into the mainstream.” — Denver Rocky Mountain News
“[A] new take on the fantasy-horror genre...Highly recommended.” — The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia)
“The selections range from the mundane to the surreal, with a strong emphasis on the kind of horror tale perfected by Ray Bradbury, Peter Straub and Stephen King.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“This solid, inventive, scary collection of stories reveals a writer who has thought hard about the problematics of horror.” — New York Times on 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS
“Each of these chilling tales arrests you from the opening sentence and leads you — trustingly, thanks to the simple mastery of the story-teller — into a place of gulping fear.” — Daily Mail (London) on 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS
“Subtle and disturbing in equal measure.” — Coventry Telegraph on 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS
“Irresistible stories.” — Evening Herald (Ireland)