Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels “The Fireman,” “NOS4A2,” “Horns,” and “Heart-Shaped Box;” “Strange Weather,” a collection of novellas; and the acclaimed story collections “Full Throttle” and “20th Century Ghosts.” He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of a seven-volume comic book series, “Locke & Key.” Much of his work has been adapted for film and TV, including NOS4A2 (AMC), Locke & Key (Netflix), and In the Tall Grass (Netflix). The Black Phone is a short story in his “20^th Century Ghosts” collection and has been adapted into a major motion picture from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions. It stars Ethan Hawke and will be released in theaters on Friday June 24, 2022. (amazon, 2022)

The Black Phone – Jack Finney is thirteen, alone, and in desperate trouble. For two years now, someone has been stalking the boys of Galesberg, stealing them away, never to be seen again. And now, Finney finds himself in danger of joining them: locked in a psychopath’s basement, a place stained with the blood of half a dozen 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 killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney.

“The Black Phone” is one of fifteen stories in Joe Hill’s first story collection, originally published as 20th Century Ghosts—the inventive and chilling compendium that established this award-winning, critically acclaimed, and bestselling author as “a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction” (Washington Post).