"I've been on a short story kick recently, and was happy to see Joe Hill come up with a short story collection of his own called Strange Weather. These stories are highly unusual (hence the title) and - at least for me - funny. Joe Hill craftily weaves the bizarre with his unique sense of humor. The first story, 'Snapshot,' is about a creepy Polaroid-like camera that erases the memories from a person's mind when a picture is taken of them. Stephen King (Joe Hill's father) fans will see this story as a nod to a short story King wrote in the early 90's called The Sun Dog, (from Four Past Midnight) which also entails a creepy camera that has a penchant for taking the same picture over and over again until a horrid dog appears (in the picture) with intent to escape into the picture taker's world. The four short stories in Strange Weather are definitely not run-of-the-mill, and are quite imaginative. I'll be mum on the other three stories in this collection and allow you to discover them yourself. Happy reading!"
Publisher William Morrow
Publication Date 2017-10-24
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / Science Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780062663115
A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill. "One of America’s finest horror writers" (Time magazine), Joe Hill has been hailed among legendary talents such as Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, and Jonathan Lethem. In Strange Weather, this "compelling chronicler of human nature’s continual war between good and evil," (Providence Journal-Bulletin) who "pushes genre conventions to new extremes" (New York Times Book Review) deftly expose the darkness that lies just beneath the surface of everyday life. "Snapshot" is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by "The Phoenician," a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap. A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in "Aloft." On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. "Rain" explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world. In "Loaded," a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning. Masterfully exploring classic literary themes through the prism of the supernatural, Strange Weather is a stellar collection from an artist who is "quite simply the best horror writer of our generation" (Michael Kortya).
