20th Century Ghosts (Short Stories) - Joe Hill

Written by Joe Hill
Read by David Ledoux
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape
Awards: Audie Award, Bram Stoker Award
Release date: October 30, 2007
Duration: 12:11:11

Hill, the son of horror master Stephen King, runs a diverse gamut that includes some unapologetic chillers along the lines of the book’s title story. Fully developed characters with complex emotional lives enhance the 14 horror stories in this extraordinary debut collection.

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, and one afternoon in 1945, a boy named Alec Sheldon will have an unforgettable encounter with her… in the dark… 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. Francis is picked on. Francis doesn’t have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that’s behind him now. Francis is an eight-foot tall locust, and all of Calliphora, Nevada will shudder to hear him sing… 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… Eric is a twenty something burnout, who just lost a girlfriend and a job. Once, though, he was the Red Bolt, and with his homemade cape he could fly. Now the cape is back in his hands, and Eric’s future is looking up…and up… Nolan Lerner is guilty. His past is a thing choked with secrets, blood—and sunflowers. Only Nolan can tell the story of what really happened one summer in 1977, when his younger brother, an idiot savant named Morris, built a vast cardboard fort, with secret doors inside, doors leading into other worlds…

Admittedly, a few of the briefer works may leave listeners longing for more fully developed story lines, but Hill consistently manages to evoke emotional responses and provoke unsettling questions, which makes for a worthwhile experience.

“A series of terrifying accounts of the macabre is brought to life through David Ledoux’s splendid reading. Ledoux offers a straightforward approach, making Hill’s startling tales as believable as they are frightening. As narrator, Ledoux understands these stories–be it the dazzlingly imaginative “Pop Art” or the tense “Best New Horror,” in which the central character is a horror editor who finds himself entrapped in one of his stories. Hill is a master at creating a high-tension atmosphere that never ceases to pay off with a scare. This innate ability is perfectly realized by Ledoux, who knows precisely when to increase his tone and pitch, or let his voice accelerate to increase the stakes. Dark, bruiting, and realistic, Ledoux’s performance is underplayed where it could go over the top.” -AudioFile