20th Century Ghosts

Joe Hill

Mar 2009 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

Joe Hill’s award-winning story collection, featuring “The Black Phone,” soon to be a major motion picture from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions

Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . .

Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

Nolan knows but can never tell what really happened in the summer of '77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds. . . .

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past. . . .

The first collection from #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts is an inventive and chilling compendium that established this award-winning, critically acclaimed author as “a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction” (Washington Post).

Ratings and reviews

One of my all time favorites, Joe Hill proves he has the chops to scare just like the biggest names in horror. 5 thumbs way up, I have re- read this already 3 times and have been terrified every time... read this book now!

20th Century Ghosts has to be my favorite short story collection I have had the pleasure of reading. In fact, this was the first collection I've read cover to cover without skipping around and cherry-picking stories. Better than Clive Barker or Stephen King, this still has the mojo of their works without the filler. If you want a more detailed description, read the introduction before diving into the stories.

Feels like he didn't know how to end some stories so he didn't bother. They're all written beautifully but just aren't very well carried out. Really disappointed

About the author

Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Fireman, NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box; Strange Weather, a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections Full Throttle and 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, Locke & Key. Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).