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    Last Breath
    Last Breath
    Last Breath
    Ebook30 pages31 minutes

    Last Breath

    By Joe Hill

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    About this ebook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of NOS4A2 and Horns comes this e-short story—from Joe Hill’s award-winning collection 20th Century Ghosts.

    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. . . .

    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. . . .

    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. . . .

    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. . . .

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 3, 2009
    ISBN9780061844058
    Author

    Joe Hill

    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), In the Tall Grass (Netflix), and The Black Phone (Blumhouse).

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    Reviews for Last Breath

    4/5

    21 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Two fantastic stories. Haunting and without solid endings, leaving the reader something to think about. I love this guy.

      Totally worth the read.

      I didn't know that this was only two short stories when I started it. They're a part of a larger collection by Hill called '20th Century Ghosts' which I fully intend to read. I'll replace that with this if I read it this year.
    • 3/5
      Second book in the young adult christian mystery The Rayne Tour. Sixteen year old Shaley O'Connor is on tour with her mother, Rayne's, popular band. She is struggling to make sense of 2 murders and her recent kidknapping. The man responsible shares his last words with Shaley, last words that if they are true means that the danger is far from over. With Shaley's mom in the hospital, after being attacked by a papparazzo, she is more determined than ever to discover the truth. In her quest she learns of the long buried secrets from her mother and father's past. A father that she has never known. Has that past finally caught up to them? The possiblity that Shaley's father maybe coming for her, she turns to God for help. Is her father the bad man that he now seems to be or the good self sacrificing man that feel in love with her mother in the past. Shaley must dicover the truth. Can she forgive him?

    Book preview

    Last Breath - Joe Hill

    Last Breath

    A Story from the Collection

    20th Century Ghosts

    Joe Hill

    To Leanora:

    WE ARE MY FAVORITE STORY

    Contents

    Begin Reading Last Breath

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    Other Books by Joe Hill

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    LAST BREATH

    A family walked in for a look around, a little before noon, a man, a woman, and their son. They were the first visitors of the day—for all Alinger knew they would be the only visitors of the day, the museum was never busy—and he was free to give them the tour.

    He met them in the coatroom. The woman still stood with one foot out on the front steps, hesitant to come in any further. She was staring over her son’s head at her husband, giving him a doubting, uneasy look. The husband frowned back at her. His hands were on the lapels of his shearling overcoat, but he seemed undecided whether to take it off or not. Alinger had seen it a hundred times before. Once people were inside and had looked beyond the foyer into the funeral home gloom of the parlor, they had second thoughts, wondered if they had come to the right place, began to entertain ideas of backing out. Only the little boy seemed at ease, was already stripping off his jacket and hanging it over one of

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