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Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Joe Hill
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $0.20
You Save: $24.75 (99%)
New (63) Used (97) Collectible (32) from $0.20
Avg. Customer Rating:  302 reviews
Sales Rank: 265201
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0061147931
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780061147937
ASIN: 0061147931
Publication Date: February 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Do you sleep with the light on? Are you in the habit of checking your doors and windows before you go to bed? Maybe even checking under your bed? If you are about to crack open Joe Hill's chilling thriller Heart-Shaped Box, you might want to rethink your nighttime habits--Hill's story about an aging rock star (with a penchant for macabre artifacts) who buys a haunted suit online will scare you silly. But don't take our word for it. We asked bestselling authors (and masters of dark terror tales themselves) Scott Smith, and Harlan Coben to read Heart-Shaped Box and give us their take. Check out their reviews below, and you might want to pick up a nightlight while you're at it. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Scott Smith
 In 1993, Scott Smith wowed readers with his stunning debut thriller, A Simple Plan. Thirteen years later, he spooked us again with The Ruins, a horror-thriller about four Americans traveling in Mexico who stumble across a nightmare in the jungle.
The set-up for Joe Hill's novel, Heart-Shaped Box, is appealingly simple. Jude Coyne, an aging rock star, buys himself a dead man's suit. He acquires it online, lured by the promise that the dead man's ghost will be included in his purchase. Jude thinks this is a joke, of course. He also assumes the seller is a stranger. We soon discover that he's wrong on both counts, however, and from this point on the story moves with an exhilarating urgency. Jude wants the ghost gone; the ghost wants Jude dead. We watch, chapter-by-chapter, as they battle for survival. "Watch" is the appropriate word, too, because this is an extremely visual book. Hill's prose is lean and precise, and he renders Jude's world with impressive confidence. It feels solid, every detail both correct and fresh. And this physicality provides a firm platform for the book's otherworldly happenings, which seem all the more frightening for being so securely grounded. Hill has a flawless sense of pacing. His narrative never flags, nor does it ever move so quickly as to outrun itself. And one can sense his literary ambition pushing at the margins of the genre. There are times when his writing, for all its spare efficiency, seems to jump away from him, stopping one small step short of poetry. An e-mail to Jude from the ghost (trust me, it's not as absurd as it sounds) could even pass for something ee cummings might've written, in an especially morbid mood. And toward the end of the book, when Hill describes a trip down death's "night road" in a '65 Mustang, the passage has a startlingly lyrical beauty. The story's horror ultimately has as much to do with Jude Coyne's past--his mistakes, abandonments and betrayals--as with anything supernatural. Jude has caused a lot of pain over the years, moving through life with a carelessness that verges on the callous. His battle with the ghost brings this behavior into sharp relief, forcing him to reflect upon his own capacity for cruelty. This dawning self-awareness leavens the book's bleakness and gore (and it is delightfully gory in places) with an unexpected sweetness. Despite our initial impression, Jude is gradually revealed--both to himself and the reader--as an essentially decent, even kind man. It's this kindness, this fledgling ability to love and be loved, that will ultimately be of crucial consequence in his death struggle with the ghost. And it's what makes Hill's debut not only well-written and terrifying, but also--as it draws to its close--surprisingly moving. So go ahead, take a chance, and open his Heart-Shaped Box. I think youll be happy you did. --Scott Smith
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Guest Reviewer: Harlan Coben
 Harlan Coben is the author of the beloved Myron Bolitar series about a wisecracking sports agent, as well as stunning stand-alone novels like The Innocent and his breakout thriller Tell No One. His new novel The Woods releases on April 17, 2007.
You, dear reader, are obviously somewhat versed in making online purchases, so today, immediately after you click on the yellow "Add to Shopping Cart" on the top right hand corner of this page, why not do an online search and buy something totally unique? Like, say, a vengeful ghost. That is what rock-star Judas Coyne does, thinking it will be a laugh, fun for his "sick-o" collection of such things. It seems a random buy, but Judas soon learns that it is anything but. This particular ghost is one Craddock McDermott, step-father to recent suicide victim and boy, is he cranky. He demands revenge for his step-daughters death, which he blames on Judass shabby treatment of her. Or is he after something else? There are Amazon readers who will give you a better plot summary. Don't read them too closely because Joe Hill provides plenty of fun surprises. Heart-Shaped Box is a true spine-tingler. I dont use that hyphenated word much anymore. We have seen and read it all, haven't we? But right away, in the first chapter, there was a subtle line that made the hairs on the back of my neck go up in a way I haven't experienced since I first discovered great horror as a teenager. Hill writes with a sure hand. The prose is compelling. Like most memorable tales of horror, this book is more about redemption than scary moments--though Heart-Shaped Box has plenty of scares. They are visceral, shocking and very well done. The characters are flawed and real. The father-son relationship adds texture and surprising poignancy. So here's the thing. My guess is, you wont find a ghost to buy online, but if you read the Heart-Shaped Box, you will be getting something that will haunt you and startle you and stay with you and yes, visit you in your dreams. Sleep well, dear reader. --Harlan Coben
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Product Description
Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . . For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more? But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing. And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . . A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 297 more reviews...
 Boring January 5, 2009
It took everything I had to get to the end of this book, in spite of one of its good points; which was its relevance to the spooky nuances of the Internet. Entirely cliche and predictable. The behaviors of the characters were enough to make you want to rip out the pages and scratch the surface for more depth, or maybe scratch your eyes out. I have never provided a review for Amazon but feel it is my duty to help others avoid several hours of wasted time. I would recommend that you skip this book and not be drawn in by its only other good point... a catchy title.
 Didn't live up to the hype... January 3, 2009
Maybe I'm disappointed because of the 4/5 star rating. Or maybe because I put faith in the review by Harlan Coben. Or maybe it's both of those added to the fact that I was REALLY looking forward to a unique story that was genuinely scary - and this book was not, I am sorry to report. I guess I'm really surprised to not like the book after reading all of the rave reviews. In my opinion the story was not very original, the ghost not really scary, and the characters not intriguing. I can't say that I would recommend this to fans of the genre.
A good read December 28, 2008
When I saw this book in hardcover, a novel about a rock star named Judas Coyne who purchases a ghost in a heart-shaped box for $1000, I thought it was interesting, but I had so much to read and I though maybe I'll read it when it comes out in paperback. I looked at the author photo and thought he looked familiar. Then, I don't know, a few weeks later, I discovered that the author, Joe Hill was the the second child of Tabitha and Stephen King.
I went back to the book shelves, and looked at the back flap where that picture was again and now I saw it. Joe Hill looked a lot like his dad. As a fan of Stephen King -having read almost every novel he's published - I wanted to see for myself if Joe Hill (an abbreviated form of his given name and a reference to executed labor leader Joe Hill, for whom he was named) could write a spooky story that kept me coming back to his dad for the last 30 years.
Sure enough, I think he did.
When Heart-Shaped Box finally came out in paper, I bought and put it at the top of my reading list -which happens all the time, by the way, pushing other books away.
Anyway, the novel and the author have very similar styles as his father. Major themes about the past, and how it never leaves you behind, remind me a many of times of the elder King's works. So does the characters themselves, who evoke a terrible childhood, which is another trademark of Stephen King, along with paying attention to details with language, accents.
Now, its not to say anything of this is bad. By and far, Joe Hill speaks in his own voice, and Heart-Shaped Box is an effective and powerful first novel. I look forward to see how Mr. Hill grows and see if he can be a creepy and suspenseful as his dad.
Boring December 26, 2008
A very slow paced story with uninteresting characters and not in the least bit scary. Don't waste your time with this one. I gave this 2 stars as opposed to one star because of the musical references through out the book and I liked the names of the lead character's dogs.
Good First Novel About Rock N' Roll And A Psychotic Ghost. December 23, 2008
The beginning of this has its creepy and weird moments, but the second half of this one is what really pays off. When you reach page 250, prepare for some really good writing.
When you think about what Joe Hill picked as a premise for his first book-a rock star buys a haunted suit and is then chased by the ghost of it-you realize that he actually picked something hard to make good.
In the world of ghost stories, you can't even count how many there are. I don't care how original the concept is, most of the time, a writer doesn't even want to go near the word ghost. But Joe Hill did, stuck it out, and did a good job for his first time out.
The beginning is a bit slow, setting everything up, but strap yourself in for the last half of the book, which I think is the best.
There are a lot of worse first novels out there. Pick this one up and at least you'll be turning the pages way past your bedtime.
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