20th Century Ghosts - Hardcover

Joe Hill

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 Ghosts 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

From the Back Cover:

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 . . .

About the Author:

Joe Hill is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Horns and Heart-Shaped Box and the prizewinning story collection 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner award–winning writer of an ongoing comic book series, Locke & Key. His new novel, NOS4A2, will be published in May 2013. You can follow Joe on Twitter, where he goes by the inspired handle of @joe_hill.

About this edition

• Publisher: PS Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1904619479
• ISBN 13: 9781904619475
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304