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Book Summary and Reviews of 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

20th Century Ghosts

by Joe Hill

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2007, 336 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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 . . .

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"This new edition of 20th Century Ghosts includes a previously unpublished story, and the collection should establish its author as a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction." - Washington Post.

"[A]stounding. Though most of the stories have elements of horror, the overall mood of the collection is one of heartbreaking wonderment. Highly recommended for short story and horror fiction collections." - Library Journal.

"A collection of pleasantly creepy stories follows Hill's debut novel (Heart Shaped Box, 2007)." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about 20th Century Ghosts was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Joe Hill Author Biography

Photo: J. Lassen

Joseph Hillstrom King, born in 1971 (pen name: Joe Hill), is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box. His second novel, Horns, was made into a feature film starring Daniel Radcliffe; his third, NOS4A2, is forthcoming as a TV series from AMC. His book of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, won the Bram Stoker Award and British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. His most recent work, Strange Weather, a collection of novellas, was published in the autumn of 2017. He earned the Eisner Award for Best Writer for his long-running comic book series, Locke & Key, featuring the eye-popping art of Gabriel Rodriguez. Look for that one as a Netflix show in the not-too-distant future.

Link to Joe Hill's Website

Other books by Joe Hill at BookBrowse
  • Heart-Shaped Box jacket
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