This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2024) |
Author | Joe Hill |
---|---|
Cover artist | Vincent Chong |
Genre | Horror |
Published | 2005 (PS Publishing) |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Limited edition hardcover |
Pages | xiv, 304 p. |
ISBN | 1-904619-47-9 |
OCLC | 60668592 |
Followed by | Heart-Shaped Box |
20th Century Ghosts is American author Joe Hill's first published book-length work. A collection of short stories, it was first published in October 2005 in the United Kingdom and released in October 2007 in the United States.
20th Century Ghosts is the first publication made by American author Joe Hill in October 2005 by PS Publishing which is based in the United Kingdom. The original release was available for pre-sale only through the publisher's website.
The collection has won several awards including the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection, [1] as well as the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and Best Short Story for "Best New Horror." The hardcover editions are collectable, especially the signed slipcased edition that had a print run of 200 copies.
In October 2007, HarperCollins released the first public edition of Hill's collection. This edition also contains the short story "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead," which was not previously published in the UK edition.
In December 2021, the collection was re-published under the title The Black Phone, as a lead-in for the motion picture based on that story in June 2022. [2]
Released in October 2005, this short story collection was released in a limited edition format only. The three formats available before publication were:
Title | Originally published in… | Available in… |
---|---|---|
Introduction (by Christopher Golden) | N/A | All editions |
"Best New Horror" | Postscripts no. 3 (2005) | All editions |
"20th Century Ghost" | The High Plains Literary Review final issue (2002) | All editions |
"Pop Art" | With Signs & Wonders (2001) | All editions |
"You Will Hear the Locust Sing" | The Third Alternative no. 37 (2004) | All editions |
"Abraham's Boys" | The Many Faces of Van Helsing (2004) | All editions |
"Better Than Home" | Better Than Home (chapbook, 1999) | All editions |
"The Black Phone" | The Third Alternative no. 39 (2004) | All editions |
"In the Rundown" | Crimewave no. 8 (2005) | All editions |
"The Cape" | Previously unpublished | All editions |
"Last Breath" | Subterranean Magazine no. 2 (2005) | All editions |
"Dead-Wood" | Subterranean Press February online newsletter (2005) | All editions |
"The Widow's Breakfast" | The Clackamas Literary Review spring/summer issue (2002) | All editions |
"My Father's Mask" | Previously unpublished | All editions |
"Voluntary Committal" | Voluntary Committal (chapbook, 2005) | All editions |
"Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" | Postscripts no. 5 (2005) | U.S. print and audio book editions |
"The Saved" | The Clackamas Literary Review spring/summer issue (2001) | U.K. slipcased edition |
"The Black Phone: The Missing Chapter" | Previously unpublished | U.K. slipcased edition |
Story Notes (by the author) | N/A | U.K. slipcased edition |
"Scheherazade's Typewriter" | Previously unpublished | All editions ("hidden" in the Acknowledgements) |
Eddie Carroll is the editor of an annual anthology entitled America's Best New Horror. As part of his job he has read and rejected many thousands of derivative stories, and he has become jaded by the process. When he reads the strangely disturbing story "Buttonboy" by Peter Kilrue, he regains his passion for his work. The plot concerns his search for the elusive Kilrue in an attempt to procure "Buttonboy" for the anthology.
The Rosebud Theatre is an old style movie palace, haunted by the semi-legendary spirit of a young woman. The girl died during a screening of The Wizard of Oz , appears infrequently throughout the twentieth century, and occasionally starts conversations with a select few moviegoers. The story is told by Alec Sheldon, the theatre owner, who worries about his approaching mortality and what will happen to the Rosebud after he retires.
This story was originally published in 2001 in an anthology titled With Signs & Wonders by Invisible Cities Press. In 2007, Subterranean Press produced a limited edition chapbook of "Pop Art" limited to 150 numbered copies and 52 lettered copies. These books were only available through the publishers website.
The plot concerns the friendship of two socially outcast boys: the narrator, who has a dysfunctional home life, and his only friend, a human boy made of inflatable plastic who has loving and supportive flesh-and-blood parents. Christopher Golden called it one of the best short stories in years.
The story of a boy who wakes up one morning to find that he has become a giant, human-sized insect.
Abraham Van Helsing, living in America following the events of Dracula , tries to teach his sons about vampires.
Story about a troubled boy whose father manages a baseball team.
Thirteen-year-old Finney is kidnapped by a man named The Grabber. Trapped in a basement room, the boy's only hope may lie in a mysterious disconnected black phone hanging on the basement wall. The phone rings at night with the whispers of the kidnapper's previous (and now dead) victims. In 2021, this short story was adapted into a film of the same title, with Ethan Hawke as The Grabber. [3]
A video store clerk comes upon a grisly scene on a weedy dirt lane.
Seven-year-old Eric learns that he can fly (well, sort of) while wearing his blue cape. After suffering a terrible injury he thinks the cape is lost, only to find the cape again years later.
The story concerns Dr. Allinger, an old man who runs a "Museum of Silence" which contains the last breaths of various people, some being famous figures such as Edgar Allan Poe.
During the Great Depression, a drifter encounters a widow whose offer of food and fresh clothing may be too good to be true.
A failed comedian meets his now-married ex-girlfriend during the filming of Dawn of the Dead.
Thirteen-year-old Jack's parents take him on an unexpected trip to their cabin on Big Cat Lake. Along the way they play a game made up by Jack's mother in which they are being chased by the "playing card people". At the cabin Jack finds various masks, which he is told must be worn to disguise themselves from the playing card people. Jack grows weary of the game, but soon he finds that it may not be a game at all.
Robert Albert Bloch was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized for radio, cinema and television. He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. His writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film. He began his professional writing career immediately after graduation from high school, aged 17. Best known as the writer of Psycho (1959), the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was a protégé of H. P. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously encourage his talent. However, while he started emulating Lovecraft and his brand of cosmic horror, he later specialized in crime and horror stories working with a more psychological approach.
Howard Waldrop was an American science fiction author who worked primarily in short fiction. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2021.
'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1976 and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.
Mark V. Ziesing is an American small press publisher and bookseller, founded by Mark Ziesing. Active as a bookseller, from 1972 to present; Ziesing was in publishing, from the mid-1980s into 1998. The Ziesing publishing imprint specialized in science fiction, horror, and other forms of speculative fiction. Originally based in Willimantic, Connecticut and in partnership with his brother Michael, he published two books by Gene Wolfe under the name Ziesing Brothers.
Glenn Chadbourne is an American artist. He lives in Newcastle, Maine. He is best known for his work in the horror and fantasy genres, having created covers and illustrated books and magazines for publishers such as Cemetery Dance Publications, Subterranean Press, and Earthling Publications. Mr. Chadbourne is known for his sense of humour and down to earth manner, as well as the stark honesty of his work.
Cemetery Dance Publications is an American specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992. They later expanded to encompass a magazine and website featuring news, interviews, and reviews related to horror literature.
Dark Visions is a horror fiction compilation, with three short stories by Stephen King, three by Dan Simmons and a novella by George R. R. Martin. It was published by Orion on August 10, 1989. The collection was first published, with the same seven stories, under the title Night Visions 5, by Dark Harvest on July 1, 1988. The book was also issued under the titles Dark Love and The Skin Trade. The compilation is part of Night Visions, a series of horror fiction anthologies.
Edward Lee is an American horror novelist who has written 40 books, more than half of which have been published by mass-market New York City paperback companies such as Leisure/Dorchester, Berkley, and Zebra/Kensington. He is a Bram Stoker award nominee for his story “Mr. Torso,” and his short stories have appeared in over a dozen mass-market anthologies, including the award-winning “999”. Several of his novels have sold translation rights to Germany, Greece, Romania, and Poland. He also publishes quite actively in the small-press/limited-edition hardcover market; many of his books in this category have become collector's items.
Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.
Terence William (Terry) Dowling, is an Australian writer and journalist. He writes primarily speculative fiction though he considers himself an "imagier" – one who imagines, a term which liberates his writing from the constraints of specific genres. He has been called "among the best-loved local writers and most-awarded in and out of Australia, a writer who stubbornly hews his own path ."
Heart-Shaped Box is the debut horror novel by American author Joe Hill. The book was published on February 13, 2007, by William Morrow.
James Arthur Moore was an American horror novelist and short story writer, and role-playing game author.
October Dreams is an anthology of Halloween-themed memories and short stories edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish. Jack Ketchum's "Gone" was nominated for the 2000 Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Fiction.
Rhialto the Marvellous is a collection of one essay and three fantasy stories by American writer Jack Vance, first published in 1984 by Brandywyne Books, a special edition three months before the regular. It is the fourth and concluding book in the Dying Earth series that Vance inaugurated in 1950. One of the stories was previously published.
Locke & Key is an American comic book series written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, and published by IDW Publishing.
Without Sorcery is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by American writer Theodore Sturgeon. The collection was first published in 1948 by Prime Press in an edition of 2,862 copies of which 80 were specially bound, slipcased and signed by the author and artist. The stories first appeared in the magazines Astounding and Unknown.
Bad Moon Books is a publishing company owned by Roy K. Robbins in Garden Grove, California. In the middle of 1986, they began as a bookseller only, but in 2007 they began publishing. Their works include many Black Quill Award and Bram Stoker Award winners and nominees. Bad Moon Books' publications include limited edition paperbacks and hardcovers.
Lonely Road Books is a small press publishing company founded in 2007 by Brian James Freeman and Richard Chizmar and based out of Forest Hill, Maryland. They are a publishing company that specializes in deluxe signed limited edition books. Lonely Road Books has released the anthology Dark Forces: The 25th Anniversary Special Edition edited by Kirby McCauley, and they have released and are releasing books by notable writers Stephen King, Ray Garton, Douglas Clegg, Stewart O'Nan, Mick Garris, and more.
Bleeding Shadows is a short story collection by American author Joe R. Lansdale. It was published by Subterranean Press on 28 November 2013. This volume contains 30 short stories that span Lansdale's extensive career. This book is the largest collection of Mr. Lansdale's short stories available to date.