20th Century Ghosts cover art

20th Century Ghosts

Featuring The Black Phone and other stories

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20th Century Ghosts

By: Joe Hill
Narrated by: David Ledoux
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About this listen

 COMPLETE and UNABRIDGED
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.

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, picked on; he doesn't have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that's behind him now. 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...

Meet these and a dozen more, in 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS, irresistible, addictive fun showcasing a dazzling new talent.
Read by David Ledoux
(P) 2007 HarperCollins Publishers©2005 Joe Hill Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Fantasy Fiction Horror Short Stories Scary Mind-bending

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Critic reviews

Each of these chilling tales arrests you from the opening sentence and leads you - trustingly, thanks to the simple mastery of the story-teller - into a place of gulping fear.
[An] inventive collection . . . brave and astute.
Hill's best stories veer away from the well-trodden creep shows and back alleys of genre writing into more dangerous territory: suburban basements, ball fields and schoolyards.
Hill's stories are visceral and nasty in places, but never gratuitous. The collection as a whole is polished and well written. Even the most macabre themes are handled exceptionally well, so one story ever feels exploitative or trashy. Joe Hill is definitely one to watch. (Ross Sutcliffe)
Fully developed characters with complex emotional lives enhance the 14 stories in Joe Hill's extraordinary collection ... There's not a false note or disappointing effort in this volume.
The collection of short stories ranges from creepy to sweet, with an impressive arsenal of tactics to attack your psyche.
[Hill] displays consummate skill in a variety of genres . . . Amusing, moving, horrifying-Ghosts runs the full spectrum.
Alternately sad, scary, strange and at times even sweet, these tales will haunt you long after you've read them.
One of the best [horror] collections of the year. Hill is a relative newcomer who consistently creates creepy, very disturbing stories
The selections range from the mundane to the surreal, with a strong emphasis on the kind of horror tale perfected by Ray Bradbury, Peter Straub and Stephen King.
All stars
Most relevant
The stories are really well read and capture Joe’s writing perfectly but the audio quality seems to slip and distort at times.

Brilliant book but the quality is poor

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I picked this up after listening to and loving NOS4A2. There is some great writing here but nothing that grabbed me in the same way the novel did. Something that maybe threw me was how many of the main characters were children in these stories. I'd have preferred more adults I guess.

That being said, it was still enjoyable.

The use of music is a bit daft and cobbled on too, but that's only a minor Setback.

Some good short stories

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I absolutely love Horns, N0S4A2 and Heart shaped box, the Joe Hill novels I have listened to so far, but I dident enjoy this and I'm not even sure why really , I just couldn't help but feel the style of writing was different, this is the 2nd set of Joe Hill short stores I've tried, but I just don't feel as excited or compelled by these stories .

Not like his other (longer) Novels

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Loving this audio edition. The narrator is engaging and reads voices in differing tones that doesn't feel odd or distracting. Even female characters, which I find a good number of narrators struggle with).

Obe niggle is the incidental music. There is an instance of a convincingly creepy incidentsl, but it is placed very peculuarly. it is very rarely - if ever - applied at the srart or end of stories. it is, howevet, shoehorned between some mid-story scene change, and *always* at non-creepy moments, making you wonder if something sinister is occuring (but you'd not noticed) - but nothing sinister is happening!
I can only prsume that these are CD breaks, where the production was made for CD initially, and the incidental music was applied to onky the start and end of each CD, no matter whre the story had got to!
I wonder if this could get fixed.

Great and varied selection of short stories, engaging narrator. looking forward to Hill's first full novel.

All round great audio, but what about the music?

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Really enjoyable and interesting selection of short stories. There's a great mix of horror, chills, atmosphere, twists and carefully constructed tales, crafted to provoke thought and keep you eager to reach the climax of each inclusion. Wherever you think each story is going *spoiler* it's not going there! Some of the notions are completely absurd and ridiculous but just allow yourself to pick up what the the author is laying down and buy into the world that's being laid out for you. I have the Kindle version (as well as buying paperback copies for a few people who I know will enjoy how these stories play out) and I also have the Audible version which is what I will review. The performance was very good as a whole. Delivery, style, voices - the performances were acted out rather than 'read'! Just a slight negative, and it's totally a personal annoyance which others might not care about or notice but whenever the performer tries to play a child he goes into 'giddy/excitable' mode. Rounding off words hurriedly to distinguish the difference to an adult character. It's hard to explain (but it annoyed me a little). However, he (David Ledoux) does an incredible job, don't get me wrong, I couldn't do it and he has great enthusiasm. The only 'real' down, and a pretty big 'down' for the Audible version, is that it isn't broken down per story, as most of short story collections are, which is a lot nicer to navigate when settling in for a listen. Instead, this seems to be broken down per chapter or something with no indication as to which story it is so you can't just jump into your favourite story for a little chilling tale before bed, it's a real shame

Interesting and varied

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