From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

A husband’s obsessive desire for a child leads to an unexpected manifestation of his yearning in a nightmarish short story about fatherhood dreams by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill.

Willy and Marianne’s farmhouse in Maine has acres of meadow and fresh air, and a lonesome bridle path in the forest along which Willy daydreams and ambles. When he’s loaned a decrepit old baby stroller to cart his groceries home, the rickety squeak of the wheels comforts him. So do the sweet coos of a baby Willy knows can’t be real. Can it? In this twisted thicket, wishes come true—with a price.

Joe Hill’s The Pram is part of Creature Feature, a collection of devilishly creepy stories that tingle the spine and twist the mind. They can be read or listened to in one petrifying sitting.

Introduction by Joe Hill

In this career horror retrospective, World Horror Grandmaster Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-tep; Hap and Leonard) tackles racism and human cruelty as de­ftly as he conjures demon nuns and Elder Gods. Featuring an original introduction from Joe Hill, this much-anticipated volume showcases the best of Lansdale’s terrifying short stories—menacing, astute, and wildly inappropriate.

Bestselling author Joe R. Lansdale is known for his gritty mysteries and his eccentric horror. As an eleven-time Bram Stoker Award winner, Joe Lansdale cooks up an inimitable recipe of Southern Gothic and Southern fried chicken that continues to delight his many fans and influence generations of horror legends.

Lansdale mashes up crime, Gothic, mystery, fantasy, and science-fiction, filtered through a raw, violent world of dark humor and unique characters. Lansdale is one of the early American horror writers to portray racism not as abstract but as realistic, intimate, and impossible to ignore.

In Lansdale’s nightmarish visions, you’ll discover psychotic demon nuns, a psychopathic preacher, cannibals, 80-year-old Elvis, undead strippers, ­ flying ghost fish, Elder Gods, possessed cars, and the worst evil of all: mankind.

Contents

Introduction by Joe Hill
“The Folding Man”
“Hoodoo Man and the Midnight Train”
“God of the Razor”
“My Dead Dog Bobby”
“Tight Little Stitches in a Deadman’s Back”
“By Bizarre Hands”
On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folk
“Love Doll: A Fable”
“Mister Weed-Eater”
“The Bleeding Shadow”
“Not From Detroit”
“The Hungry Snow”
“Dog, Cat, and Baby”
Bubba Ho-tep
“Fish Night”
“Night They Missed the Horror Show”

A young man who has improbably escaped death twice reveals his secret in a spine-tingling short story by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill.

Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.

Discover the terrifying funhouse world of Christmasland and the ageless monster who rules it. Climb into the passenger seat as Hill and artist Charlie Wilson III explore Charlie Manx's twisted beginnings, introduce a new and depraved cast of characters to Christmasland, and take us for a 100 MPH ride down an icy nightmare road in a car with no brakes...

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass,” one of two stories co-written with Stephen King and the basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.
A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” soon to be an episode on Shudder TV’s Creepshow, two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.
Replete with shocking chillers, including two previously unpublished stories written expressly for this volume (“Mums” and “Late Returns”) and another appearing in print for the first time (“Dark Carousel”), Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.

A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.
Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”
Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.

Aging, self-absorbed rock star Judas Coyne has a thing for the macabre -- his collection includes sketches from infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a trepanned skull from the 16th century, a used hangman's noose, Aleister Crowley's childhood chessboard, etc. -- so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it.
The black, heart-shaped box that Coyne receives in the mail not only contains the suit of a dead man but also his vengeance-obsessed spirit. The ghost, it turns out, is the stepfather of a young groupie who committed suicide after the 54-year-old Coyne callously used her up and threw her away. Now, determined to kill Coyne and anyone who aids him, the merciless ghost of Craddock McDermott begins his assault on the rocker's sanity.

Imogene is young, beautiful . . . and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945. . . . Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . . John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead. . . . Nolan knows but can never tell what "really" happened in the summer of '77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds. . . . "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past. . . ."

美國20年來最偉大的驚悚小說，2007最耀眼的恐怖驚悚之作，《紐約時報》暢銷榜熱門話題。異常鬼魅，壓迫人心，請不要在夜晚獨自閱讀。
“昨天晚上我開始閱讀《心形盒》，拿起來就放不下。哪怕房子著火了我也顧不得了。喬·希爾的作品充滿了恐怖、救贖和詭異。我敢肯定，從翻開第一章開始，你就跑不了了。”——凱利·林克（《初學者的奇跡》作者）
“《心形盒》從一個假想開始，在網上賣鬼魂。可是它不止于此，每個字都讓你冷徹心肺，每一頁都充滿著驚奇，每一章都曲折回環。這部作品的發表標志著一位新的懸疑大師登場了。”——詹姆斯·羅林（《圣骨地圖》、《黑色密令》作者）
搖滾明星裘德喜歡收藏稀奇古怪的物品，有十六世紀農夫的骷髏頭，有十七世紀女巫的供認狀。一天，裘德在網上心血來潮地買了一個鬼魂。不久，他便收到了一個黑色的心形盒子，里面放了一件死人穿過的喪服。
不久，裘德便慢慢感到了這個鬼魂的存在。先是在無人的辦公室里，他聽到有人輕聲說話。終于，鬼魂的形象出現了，無論裘德走到哪，鬼混都如影隨形，它出現在陰暗的樓道中，裘德的車里，甚至電視屏幕上也會兀自出現鬼魂的雙眼，剃刀會無緣無故地出現在裘德手中，讓裘德自殘。不僅如此，鬼魂開始發出聲音，逼迫裘德按它的命令行事，裘德極力反抗，但只是徒勞，因為他根本無法用刀用槍殺死這個沒有身形的鬼魂。當裘德的私人助理丹尼莫名其妙自盡之后，裘德終于感到了絕望。他和女友偷偷出逃，可是連他們自己也不知道鬼魂是否就在身旁，更為不幸的是，鬼魂居然借助附體實施控制。
網絡鬼魂究竟是帶著怎樣的怨毒而來，它要完成的事一個怎樣的復仇計劃？
本書作者喬·希爾被譽為美國真正的天才作家，曾兩次獲得恐怖小說獎和20世紀鬼故事獎。在這部作品中，他將心理懸疑與超自然巧妙地糅為一體，情節錯綜復雜，懸念頻出，時時有脊骨發涼的感覺，讓人讀罷而后快

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 one afternoon in 1945. . . . </p>
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. . . . </p>
Francis is unhappy. Francis 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. . . . </p>
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. . . . </p>