Author | Stephen King |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Suspense fiction |
Publisher | Cemetery Dance |
Publication date | April 20, 2010 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 112 |
ISBN | 978-1-58767-228-6 |
Blockade Billy is a 2010 novella by Stephen King. It tells the story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, a fictional baseball catcher who briefly played for the New Jersey Titans [1] during the 1957 season. [2]
The novella took King two weeks to write. [3] He had the following to say about the novella:
I love old-school baseball, and I also love the way people who've spent a lifetime in the game talk about the game. I tried to combine those things in a story of suspense. People have asked me for years when I was going to write a baseball story. Ask no more; this is it. [4] [5]
The book is told through a framing device, where an old man in a retirement home, George "Granny" Grantham, is telling the story to Stephen King. Granny tells of the 1957 Major League Baseball season, when he was the third base coach for a now-defunct team, the New Jersey Titans.
When the team loses both of their catchers days before the start of the season, they are forced to seek a minor league player as a last-minute replacement. The replacement turns out to be a young man named William "Billy" Blakely. Although he seems to be feeble-minded and highly susceptible to suggestion, Billy turns out to be a phenomenal player. He becomes especially well-known for his incredible stopping power at home plate, earning him the nickname "Blockade Billy" amongst fans. Billy quickly becomes endeared to the team, especially to the usually self-centered star pitcher Danny Dusen, who adopts Billy as his good luck charm. Granny, however, becomes suspicious when an opposing player, who was badly injured during a tag out, accuses Billy of intentionally slicing his ankle. Although Billy claims innocence, and there is no evidence to support the accusation, Granny is convinced that he is lying. As the season goes on, Billy's popularity continues to grow.
One day, Granny finds the team's manager in a state of panic. Refusing to divulge what's wrong, he asks Granny to cover him as manager, only stating that the team deserves one last game together. During the following game, Hi Wenders, an umpire with an antagonistic relationship to the team, makes a bad call, resulting in Granny being thrown out of the game when he argues against it, leading to chants of "kill the ump" to come from the crowd. He returns to the locker room to find the manager with two police officers and a detective. They explain that Billy is an imposter; his real name is Eugene Katsanis, an orphan who worked on the Blakely farm in Iowa. The real "William Blakely" had seemingly been murdered by Eugene alongside his parents a month previously. Granny reflects on his own speculations of the situation, guessing that Eugene had been abused by the Blakelys and that the abuse grew worse as the real William, a failing minor league player, became consumed by jealousy over Eugene's superior skill. Eventually, Eugene was provoked into murdering the family. When the call came in requesting Billy as an emergency replacement for the Titans, Eugene assumed William's identity and reported to the team in his place.
Granny is asked to send Eugene to the police alone to be arrested. Despite Granny's attempt to create a convincing pretense for sending him to the locker room, Eugene senses that something is wrong and, rather than going straight there, tracks down Wenders. Following the crowd's demands to kill the umpire, he slashes Wenders' throat before being taken into police custody. Granny goes on to describe the misfortunes the team suffered afterwards and reflects that despite their adoption of Billy as a good luck charm, he instead served as a black hole of luck, sucking it away from the rest of the team.
The book was published by Cemetery Dance on April 20, 2010 as a trade hardcover, timed to coincide with the opening of the 2010 MLB season. [6] It has cover art by Glen Orbik and interior artwork by Alex McVey. [7] First copies of the book included William Blakely's baseball card. [4] Brian Freeman's Lonely Road Books released a deluxe signed edition of Blockade Billy in the summer of 2010. [8] On May 25, 2010, Simon & Schuster released the novella as an audiobook, as well as a trade edition hardcover, featuring a bonus short story, "Morality" (originally published in the July 2009 issue of Esquire ). [9] A revised version of the story was later included in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams .
The Washington Post praised the novella, calling it "swift" and "colorful", saying that it works well because of the voice that King gives to the narrator, Granny Grantham, and "the lovingly detailed evocation of the game [baseball] as it was played in 1957". [14]
Bookreporter.com says that the theme is not "especially new", but since it is a King product it is therefore worthy of consideration. [15]
It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his 22nd book and the 17th novel written under his own name. The story follows the experiences of seven children as they are terrorized by an evil entity that exploits the fears of its victims to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It" primarily appears in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown to attract its preferred prey of young children.
The Dark Tower is a series of eight novels, one novella, and a children's book written by American author Stephen King. Incorporating themes from multiple genres, including dark fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and Western, it describes a "gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. The series, and its use of the Dark Tower, expands upon Stephen King's multiverse and in doing so, links together many of his other novels.
Granny is a term and nickname for a grandmother, a female grandparent, and may refer to:
Brian James Freeman is an American author whose fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies including Borderlands 5, Corpse Blossoms, and all four volumes of the Shivers series. His first novel, Black Fire, was written under the pseudonym James Kidman. Published in 2004 by Leisure Books and Cemetery Dance Publications, the book was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, one of the major awards in the horror genre. His work has been nominated for several awards in the horror genre over the years. Cemetery Dance Publications recently published his Blue November Storms, a new novella, and The Illustrated Stephen King Trivia Book, which he wrote with Stephen King expert Bev Vincent. Acclaimed horror artist Glenn Chadbourne created over fifty unique illustrations for the book.
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.
Richard Thomas Chizmar is an American writer, the publisher and editor of Cemetery Dance magazine, and the owner of Cemetery Dance Publications. He also edits anthologies, produces films, writes screenplays, and teaches writing.
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.
Glen Orbik was an American illustrator known for his fully painted paperback and comic covers, often executed in a noir style.
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.
The following is a complete list of books published by Stephen King, an American author of contemporary horror, thriller, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 400 million copies, and many of them have been adapted into feature films, television movies, and comic books. King has published 65 novels/novellas, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five nonfiction books. He has written over 200 short stories, most of which have been compiled in book collections. Many of his works are set in his home state of Maine.
Al Sarrantonio is an American horror and science fiction writer, editor and publisher who has authored more than 50 books and 90 short stories. He has also edited numerous anthologies and has been called "brilliant" and "a master anthologist" by Booklist.
Alan Marshall Clark is an American author and artist who is best known as the illustrator and book cover painter of many pieces of horror fiction. He was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel for his 2005 book Siren Promised.
Ur is a novella by Stephen King. It was written exclusively for the Amazon Kindle platform, and became available for download on February 12, 2009. An audiobook edition was released on February 16, 2010 by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by Holter Graham. Ur was collected in King's 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, heavily revised.
Ronald Kelly is best known as a speculative fiction and "southern-fried" horror writer. His tales are usually set in the Southern United States and feature language and actions that are associated with those regions.
Harry Shannon is an American novelist, songwriter and entertainer. He was born Harry Rivard Siebert in Reno, Nevada, to Dr. William L. Siebert and Belle Elizabeth (née) Cazier. He has a brother, Dwight W. Siebert, and a sister, Marsha Desiderio. Shannon was married from 1978 to 1988 to Swiss singer Suzanne Klee. In 1994 he married songwriter Wendy Kramer. They have one child, Paige Emerson Shannon, born 1999.
Doctor Sleep is a 2013 horror novel by American writer Stephen King and the sequel to his 1977 novel The Shining. The book reached the first position on The New York Times Best Seller list for print, ebook, and hardcover fiction. Doctor Sleep won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel.
Full Dark, No Stars, published in November 2010, is a collection of four novellas by American author Stephen King, all dealing with the theme of retribution. One of the novellas, 1922, is set in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, which is the home of Mother Abagail from King's epic novel The Stand (1978), the town the adult Ben Hanscom moves to in It (1986), where Alice and Billy stop for a while towards the end of the book Billy Summers, and the setting of the short story "The Last Rung on the Ladder" (1978). The collection won the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Best Collection, and the 2011 British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Also, 1922 was nominated for the 2011 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.
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.
A Face in the Crowd is a novella by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan, originally published as an e-book on August 21, 2012, as well as an audiobook, read by Craig Wasson. A hardcover edition was published in July 2023 in an omnibus edition, paired with Richard Chizmar's The Longest December.
Flight or Fright is a horror anthology edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent, published by Cemetery Dance Publications on September 4, 2018. All of the stories within the anthology are about flight-based horrors.