Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill, Artwork by Gabriel Rodriguez

Locke and Key:Welcome to Lovecraft
by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez
$15.00

Hardcover: 152 pages

Publisher: IDW Publishing (September 24, 2008)

ISBN-10: 1600102379

ISBN-13: 978-1600102370

Annotation/Flashtalk:

What would you do if you found a secret door that once you passed through it you turned into a ghost and were able to spy on the rest of your family? What if you heard a voice coming from the bottom of a well?

Summary:

When their father is brutally murdered the Locke family moves in with their uncle at Keyhouse.  Tyler, the older brother, is sullen and brooding. Kinsey, the middle child, is trying to assimilate.  Nina, their mother, is slowly trying to drink her pain and loss away.  Bode, the youngest, is having more adventures than Tyler and Kinsey combined.  Bode has discovered a spirit at the bottom of the well, who he visits with and talks to.  He’s also found a secret door at Keyhouse that when he goes through it he becomes a ghost and can float around the house and spy on his family. 

Bode’s friendship with the spirit in the well turns dangerous when the well becomes a link to the prison cell that holds his father’s killer.  When Sam comes through the portal and tortures Bode’s family again, someone must rescue the family.  In the process, one of the special keys at Keyhouse is located and it’s used to open a special door that allows the owner to change their appearance; so little does the family know that their new found pal Zach is really Echo, the ghost from the well. 

Genre/Subgenre: Graphic Novel/Horror

Evaluation: 3-stars.

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Heart-shaped Box: A Novel
by Joe Hill
$14.99
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; 1 Reprint edition (December 22, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0061944890
ISBN-13: 978-0061944895

Annotation/Flashtalk:

Sometimes your past comes back to haunt you; sometimes thier stepfather do. And, sometimes, the best way to hurt you, is to hurt the ones you love instead. Find out who is tormenting Judas Coyne and why in "Heart-shaped Box" by Joe Hill.

Summary:

Judas Coyne is an aging rocker; aside from music, his two favorite passions are groupies and collecting the macabre. His collection of the macabre includes drawings by John Wayne Gacy, a 16th century skull, a three-hundred-year-old signed witch’s confession, Alistair Crowley’s chessboard, and a real snuff film (which even makes him uncomfortable, but he cannot, for some reason get rid of).

He collects groupies too, never making a real connection. No sense in bothering to learn their names; he simply called them by the state where he picked them up, “Georgia” and “Florida” were his latest. When the relationship gets to a point where they want too much from him, Judas sends them packing.

One day Judas receives an invitation to bid on something so special, even he can’t pass it up:

"Buy my stepfather’s ghost…Do not think this is a stunt or a practical joke…The winning bidder will have something solid to show for their investment. I will send you his Sunday suit. I believe if his spirit is attached to anything, it has to be that."

When the UPS man delivers the suit in the heart-shaped box…a suit was not all that came; indeed, the ghost of Craddock McDermott had come along too. However, it wasn’t until Judas was up late one night that he realized that he got all he purchased and more. There, in his Shaker rocking chair, sat the ghost of McDermott wearing the Sunday suit and in place of his eyes were dark black scribbles.

Judas sets off on a trip with Georgia and his two dogs Angus and Bon to find the suit’s owner and get her to take back the ghost and the suit.

Genre/Subgenre: Horror/Paranormal

Evaluation: 3-stars.