Heart-Shaped Box

“Wild, mesmerizing, perversely witty….A Valentine from hell.”
 —Janet Maslin, New York Times

The publication of Joe Hill’s beautifully textured, deliciously scary debut novel Heart-Shaped Box was greeted with the sort of overwhelming critical acclaim that is rare for a work of skin-crawling supernatural terror. It was cited as a Best Book of the Year by Atlanta magazine, the Tampa Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and the Village Voice, to name but a few. Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling Neil Gaiman of The Sandman, The Graveyard Book, and Anansi Boys fame calls Joe Hill’s story of a jaded rock star haunted by a ghost he purchased on the internet, “relentless, gripping, powerful.” Open this Heart-Shaped Box from two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Hill if you dare and see what all the well-deserved hoopla is about.

Aging death-metal rock legend Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals...a used hangman's noose...a snuff film. But nothing he possesses is as unique or as dreadful as his latest purchase off the Internet: a one-of-a-kind curiosity that arrives at his door in a black heart-shaped box...a musty dead man's suit still inhabited by the spirit of its late owner. And now everywhere Judas Coyne goes, the old man is there—watching, waiting, dangling a razor blade on a chain from his bony hand.

Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Fireman, NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box; Strange Weather, a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections Full Throttle and 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, Locke & Key. Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).

“A thriller with moments of terror and genuine humor.” — People

“A wild, mesmerizing, perversely witty tale of horror . . . . a Valentine from hell.” — New York Times

“Heart-Shaped Box is, quite simply, the best debut horror novel since Clive Barker’s Damnation Game...It’s the kind of book that the overworked adjectives people use on book jackets—relentless, gripping, powerful, a genuine page-turner—were really meant to describe, for it’s all of those things, and enormously smart besides. A genuinely scary novel filled with people you care about; the kind of book that still stays in your mind after you’ve turned over the final page. I loved it unreservedly.” — Neil Gaiman

“Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box starts with a premise that is as simple as it is brilliant: a ghost for sale on the Internet. But here is a tale that is far from a one-trick pony. It chills with every word, surprises with every page, and twists with every chapter. Here is a debut as literate as it is horrifying . . . and the resounding introduction of a new master in the field of suspense.” — James Rollins

“Heart-Shaped Box. . . rocks. It’s a flat-out, white-line, turbo-charged, relentless, bleakly humorous, and, above all, honest story . . . Hill’s fealty to the autumnal suspirations of the darkest sorts of dread is instantly apparent. And this, as they say, is just the beginning.” — Austin Chronicle

“The shocks in Hill’s riveting debut novel can be lurid and blood-drenched, or as quietly chilling as a casual phone call from an old, dead friend.” — Entertainment Weekly

“Dark, taut, and deliciously terrifying. Heart-Shaped Box is a roaring good read.” — New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs

[Hill]’s got horror down pat, and his debut is hair-raising fun.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A relentlessly scary ghost story.” — Bookseller (London)

“Hill is flawless in his ability to articulate frailties that humanize his characters and make the vulnerable to intrusions of the strange . . . . One of the most confident and assured new voices in horror and dark fantasy to emerge in recent years.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Powerful . . . a fast-paced plot that crackles with expertly planted surprises and revelations . . . a truly memorable debut.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“You can’t go wrong with Heart-Shaped Box.” Top Five Fiction-Books of 2007 — The Observer

“A fast-paced journey on wheels borrowed from hell’s used-car lot, and there aren’t a lot of comfort breaks...The pictures [Hill] painted colored my dreams and darkened my mood even after I’d put the book down.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

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