The remarkable debut novel by a new master of dark fantasy...Heart-Shaped Box

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 widely known. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-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. 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 hand....

A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.

• January 2012 Indie Next List
• December 2011 Indie Next List
• November 2011 Indie Next List