20th Century Ghosts
Featuring The Black Phone and other stories
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4.3 • 25 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
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.
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, picked on; he doesn't have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that's behind him now. 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...
Meet these and a dozen more, in 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS, irresistible, addictive fun showcasing a dazzling new talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fully developed characters with complex emotional lives enhance the 14 horror stories in Hill's extraordinary debut collection. In "Abraham's Boys," Count Dracula's nemesis, Dr. Van Helsing, tries to teach his young sons his dispassionate methods of vampire slaying, but succeeds only in demonstrating his soullessness. "Voluntary Committal" tells of an idiot savant who applies his uncanny architectural skills to helping his adored older brother find a suggestively sinister way to remove problems from his life. Whether detailing relationships between children and parents or between teenage peers, Hill is flawless in his ability to articulate frailties that humanize his characters and make them vulnerable to intrusions of the strange. This is particularly noticeable in the title story, about a haunted cinema whose young female ghost seduces patrons with unfulfilled lives, and the surreal "My Father's Mask," which disturbs with subtle hints of taboo sexuality. There's not a false note or disappointing effort in this book, which introduces one of the most confident and assured new voices in horror and dark fantasy to emerge in recent years.
Customer Reviews
What happened to Scheherazade?
Really enjoyed these stories. But I did expect that the embedded-tale-teller - set up in the early stories - would return. Felt like a missed opportunity. But each story was well-framed, interesting ideas bursting forth. I wonder if some are thumbnails for novels. Nice mix of horror and homely familiarity, fantasy and the prosaic. Such a confident voice.
Thanks, Mr "Hill", for this excellent afternoon's distraction.