Heart-Shaped Box
A Novel
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4.3 • 50 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A pulse-pounding, terrifying rollercoaster ride of a supernatural thriller—a remarkable debut novel from a blazing talent that will keep readers spellbound
Sooner or later, the dead catch up. . . .
Judas Coyne was a collector. The bizarre, the unusual, the grotesque: A cookbook for cannibals. A used hangman’s noose. A snuff film. Usually the objects were sent by the black-clad fans who made his metal band a legend and made him rich.
But this time, when his personal assistant told him there was a ghost for sale on the Internet, Jude didn’t think twice. But he should have. Of all the ghosts around him—the abusive father, the battered, resentful child Jude once was, the bandmates he betrayed, Anna, the suicidal girl he loved and dumped—this new one means to haunt him all the way to hell.
His new acquisition—delivered to his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box—is Anna’s vengeful stepdaddy. Martin Craddock swears he’s going to settle up with Jude for ruining his daughter’s life. Craddock is everywhere: on the other side of the bedroom door; in Jude’s restored vintage Mustang; outside his window, on his television screen. In his hand , a gleaming razorblade swinging from a chain.
And now the jaded rock star who’s seen it all, done it all, has never been so afraid. . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stoker-winner Hill features a particularly merciless ghost in his\t\t powerful first novel. Middle-aged rock star Judas Coyne collects morbid curios\t\t for fun, so doesn't think twice about buying a suit advertised at an online\t\t auction site as haunted by its dead owner's ghost. Only after it arrives does\t\t Judas discover that the suit belonged to Craddock McDermott, the stepfather of\t\t one of Coyne's discarded groupies, and that the old man's ghost is a malignant\t\t spirit determined to kill Judas in revenge for his stepdaughter's suicide.\t\t Judas isn't quite the cad or Craddock the avenging angel this scenario makes\t\t them at first, but their true motivations reveal themselves only gradually in a\t\t fast-paced plot that crackles with expertly planted surprises and revelations.\t\t Hill (20th Century Ghosts) gives his\t\t characters believably complex emotional lives that help to anchor the\t\t supernatural in psychological reality and prove that (as one character\t\t observes) "horror was rooted in sympathy." His subtle and skillful treatment of\t\t horrors that could easily have exploded over the top and out of control helps\t\t make this a truly memorable debut.
