20th Century Ghosts

By: Joe Hill

Narrated by: David LeDoux

Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

A dazzlingly original, award-winning collection of visions and nightmares from the New York Times best-selling author of Heart-Shaped Box.

Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon on an afternoon in 1945....Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town....Francis is unhappy. He was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead.

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.

©2005, 2007 Joe Hill (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

• Audie Award Winner, Short Stories/Collections, 2008

"Most of the stories display the unself-conscious dash that made Hill's novel an intelligent pleasure....Not just for ghost addicts." (Kirkus Reviews)

A Fun Read

I really enjoyed this book. The stories were fun and creepy. I would recommend this to Fans of twisted tales.

really good

I have always been curious about Joe Hills work and watching the black phone finally made me take the leap into this book and honestly I love it he's a very good story teller

wonderful

David LeDoux does an amazing job of bringing Joe Hills stories to life! easy to listen to, soothing to hear and recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in the supernatural stories.

An emotional roller coaster!

I never thought I’d be crying over a popped balloon one minute, and sick to my stomach at the sight of bugs the second.

Collage of Cliffhanger

Such detail and in depth story writing. Always wanting more, but sedated enough to keep the story going in your mind. The performer reading the book, is quite talented. Though, if I am honest there were a few recordings that sounded like he was choking on air. Almost has if he was recording and suddenly yawned in the session.

All in all. Great style, great reader, and great Ghost Stories.

It was Okay?

Not as good as I was hoping, I much prefered his first novel, but not bad for passing the time around halloween, but warning to the buyer, not all of the "ghosts" in this book are spooks, and that can be a little misleading...

Looking Forward to More

Joe Hill is definitely not Stephen King, but he is his son, and he's got a ton of potential. All of the stories were at least engaging, some very much so. I liked the variety.

The reader did a solid job. Not my favorite by a long shot but his voice went well with the characters as most of them were juveniles. I think he will also improve.

The production on the other hand was weird... the pauses between chapters or breaks I'm the story were sometimes filled with ambient noise or music to lead you in, but the breaks between books were poorly demarcated and we're often so quick you barely were able to process that you were starting a new book, and this is partly Joe Hill's fault because he often ends his stories abruptly and allows the reader to fill in the rest which some people I'm sure will take issue with. Overall it was good and I'll be giving him more chances.

Eh…not thrilled

My favorite was “Voluntary Committal”…I loved the overall story about a spectrum individual & all the possible gifts they have. What truly bothered me was the lack of any definitive/complete endings to the stories. Spent majority of time setting up beautiful descriptions of characters & situations so really cared about them…then abrupt ending without closure. Doing that once/twice is OK to leave to your imagination, but almost every story was like that. Liked them, just deeply disappointed…many times rewound the story sure that I missed something in the abrupt ending….sad.

hmm

I'm sure there wAs a good story in there but it mostly felt incomplete. I was waiting for them to all tie into each other like a timeline yet backwards or something that has a twist at the end.

Not as good as I expected

most of the stories have an unfinished feel to them, they left me more confused than entertained. there are a couple of good ones though.