Summary and Reviews of Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Heart-Shaped Box

A Novel.

by Joe Hill
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (7):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 13, 2007, 384 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2008, 320 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet.

I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . .

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more?

But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.

And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . .

A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

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In short, Hill knows his audience. If horror is your genre you're likely to find yourself satisfied with his first novel, and with book rights already sold in at least 17 countries and a movie already being planned, it's likely we'll be hearing more from Hill, son of Stephen King, before too long...continued

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

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Beyond the Book



Joseph Hillstrom King (pen name: Joe Hill), born in 1971, is the oldest son of Tabitha and Stephen King. He has an older sister, Naomi, and a younger brother, Owen. His stories have appeared in a variety of magazines and his first book, a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, won the British Fantasy Award for "Best Collection" and "Best Short Fiction" in 2006, but was not published in the USA until October 2007.

On the one hand, Hill appears to ...

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Read-Alikes

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