20th Century Ghosts is a collection of short stories from the pen of Joe Hill. The stories cover a variety of topics, which summon up a wide range of feelings and sensations in the reader. In the title story – 20th Century Ghost, a young man encounters the ghost of a woman in a movie theatre. Soon after this she begins to take over his dreams. As he confides in the theatre owner it becomes apparent that his is not the first to find himself in this situation.

Pop Art is a bizarre little story of two young boys who become firm friends at school. Nothing remarkable about this you say – well, there is when you discover that one of the boys is inflatable! What follows is the story of the two growing up and discovering the restrictions that life places on you when you are inflatable.

You Will Hear the Locust Sing follows the experiences of Francis Kay as he transforms into a giant insect - rather reminiscent of the 1950s horror films that I loved as a child.

All in all this is a very varied selection of stories that has something to interest most readers. To label the collection as Horror is to do the book a disservice. These stories are much more than simple scary tales. They investigate various aspects of the human psyche, one moment managing to put a real chill up your spine and the next making you feel extremely sympathetic towards the plight of the characters.

Short stories are not usually my thing – I prefer weighty fantasy tomes - but when I do read collections of shorts I like them to bring me a new perspective. This collection certainly does that. I also find that short stories are ideal for introducing new authors and, although this is not Hill's debut collection, this book introduced a new author to me – certainly one I will look out for in the future.

A fresh modern approach to the horror genre that brings a new dimension to the idea of horror short stories.

Synopsis
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 twentysomething burnout, who just lost a girlfriend and a job. Once, though, he was the Red Bolt, and with his home-made 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...

Like Morris Lerner's impossible cardboard fortress, 20th Century Ghosts is big enough to get lost in, a maze filled with exits into a vast country of the surreal. With an assortment of dazzling ideas stickier than flypaper, Joe Hill's unforgettable first collection introduces a startling new imagination.