Synopses & Reviews
“Wild, mesmerizing, perversely witty….A Valentine from hell.”
—Janet Maslin, New York Times
The publication of Joe Hills beautifully textured, deliciously scary debut novel Heart-Shaped Box was greeted with the sort of overwhelming critical acclaim that is rare for a work of skin-crawling supernatural terror. It was cited as a Best Book of the Year by Atlanta magazine, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Village Voice, to name but a few. Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Neil Gaiman of The Sandman, The Graveyard Book, and Anansi Boys fame calls Joe Hills story of a jaded rock star haunted by a ghost he purchased on the internet, “relentless, gripping, powerful.” Open this Heart-Shaped Box from two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Hill if you dare and see what all the well-deserved hoopla is about.
Synopsis
A collector of obscure and macabre artifacts, from a cannibal cookbook to a used hangman's noose, unscrupulous metal band musician Judas Coyne is unable to resist purchasing a ghost over the Internet, which turns out to be the vengeful spirit of his late girlfriend's stepfather. Simultaneous.
Synopsis
The remarkable debut novel by a new master of dark fantasy...Heart-Shaped Box
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 widely known. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-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. 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 hand....
A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.
About the Author
Joe Hill is the
New York Times bestselling author of
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.
Stephen Lang's Broadway work includes Wait Until Dark, A Few Good Men, The Speed of Darkness and Death of a Salesman. His films include Last Exit to Brooklyn, Gettysburg, Gods and Generals, and Tombstone. He is the Co-Artistic Director of the Actors Studio.