NOS4A2

by Joe Hill

Overview

Now an AMC original series. 

NOS4A2 is a spine-tingling novel of supernatural suspense from master of horror Joe Hill, the New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns.

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.

Exclusive to the print editions of NOS4A2 are more than 15 illustrations by award-winning Locke & Key artist Gabriel Rodríguez.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062200587
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/15/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	720
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Joe Hill is the New York Times bestselling author of Horns and Heart-Shaped Box, and the prize-winning story collection 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the Eisner Award-winning writer of an ongoing comic book series, Locke & Key. Follow him on Twitter @joe_hill.

Editorial Reviews

"[An] inventive collection . . . brave and astute."

(Editor's Choice) - New York Times Book Review

"[A] lovely, earnest collection of short fiction."

Village Voice

"[A] new take on the fantasy-horror genre...Highly recommended."

The Sun Herald (Sydney))

"Quite simply the best horror writer of our generation, Joe Hill’s masterful storytelling is on full display in NOS4A2. It is by turns terrifying and hilarious, horrifying and full of heart, and relentlessly compelling."

Michael Koryta

"[A] new take on the fantasy-horror genre...Highly recommended."

The Sun Herald (Sydney)

[An] inventive collection . . . brave and astute.

New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)

[A] new take on the fantasy-horror genre...Highly recommended.

The Sun Herald (Sydney

…horror fiction at its most ambitious…A road novel, a horror novel and—most centrally—a novel of character, NOS4A2 is a substantial accomplishment, and it marks Hill…as a major force—perhaps the major force—among the younger generation of horror writers. Like the best of its dark breed, it offers visceral narrative pleasures while never losing sight of the human element that lies just below the extravagantly imagined surface. The result is a frightening, ultimately moving novel that speaks directly to the plight of abducted children. At the same time, it presents a deeply empathetic portrait of a damaged woman struggling to recover her lost, best self.

The Washington Post - Bill Sheehan

…throat-grabbing…Mr. Hill envisions an epic battle between real and imaginary worlds, makes this fight credible and creates a heroine who can recklessly crash from one realm to the other…NOS4A2 is full of chills and cliffhangers, but it never turns needlessly grotesque.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

A good-natured romp in the garden of good and evil--or, as rising horror/fantasy maven Hill (Heart-Shaped Box, 2007, etc.) has it, Christmasland. If you remember Stephen King's It or, heck, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," you'll remember that there are few setups creepier than a dude with shiny toys luring children to their doom. It gets creepier still when Santa Claus has "gaping jaws," and a supernatural harpy comes equipped with ornaments that "dangled from her pierced breasts"--why, it's enough to put a person off Christmas forever. The author of all this mayhem (and Hill is so skillful that we don't know till the very end whether he'll get away with it) is a mysterious but charming hellion named Charles Talent Manx, who likes nothing better than to take the local youth for a one-way spin in a Rolls-Royce Wraith bearing the easily deciphered license plate that is the novel's title. Can anyone stop his infernal joy riding? Maybe, just maybe, and it makes perfect sense that it's a steampunk-ish young woman who patrols the Massachusetts landscape on a Raleigh bike. Though there are King-ian shades--the underworld setup, the possessed car, the cool chick--Hill's story is quite original, and, for horror fans of a certain ironic bent, it's an unqualified delight, well-written and, within limits, believable. It's also quite gruesome in spots ("The Gasmask Man was in two pieces, connected by a single fatty string of gut") and altogether quite scary, all of which adds up to a successful exercise in spookiness. Bonus points for being smart and having a young woman as a heroine who doesn't need saving herself. Fun for all ages, though maybe with a PG warning.

Kirkus Reviews