20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

20th Century Ghosts

by Joe Hill

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.

Reviewed by empressbrooke on

3 of 5 stars

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I picked this up because one of my favorite authors, [author:Christopher Golden], wrote the intro. He does horror really, really well, so if he liked it, then surely I would, too.

I thought it was better than the last collection of short stories I read ([book:Paper Cities]), but not as good as Hill's full-length novel [book:Heart-Shaped Box]). Hill provides a pretty broad spectrum of horror stories, some of them being so subtle that it takes a reread to find the horror.

I can see why Golden likes it; Golden and Hill share a similar brand of horror. It isn't just things jumping out and yelling "Boo!" - it's the slow, creeping chill when things start to go wrong.

Although some of the stories just fell flat for me, I did especially like the title story and the longer novella at the end, Voluntary Committal.

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  • Started reading
  • 9 August, 2008: Finished reading
  • 9 August, 2008: Reviewed