Heart-Shaped Box

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Vincent Chong (this pertains to the Subterranean Press edition only)

Here’s the description, straight from the author’s site:

Rock star Judas Coyne is a collector of the bizarre and the grotesque. He has a used hangman’s noose, a cookbook for cannibals, a snuff movie. So naturally when he learns there’s a ghost for sale on the internet, Jude doesn’t think twice. Some impulses require no consideration.

But this ghost is different from the spirits that have haunted Jude most of his life: the abusive father he fled as a boy, the bandmates he betrayed, the lover he abandoned and who killed herself. This ghost isn’t just in his head; it’s real. Delivered to his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box, the latest addition to Jude’s collection means to chase him to the limits of sanity -- and beyond.

If ever there was a case of caveat emptor, this is it. . . .

In addition to being a supernatural thriller, I also think it’s a story on a classic American theme -- the possibility of reinvention, of casting off the person you used to be, and creating a new and more satisfying identity for yourself. Because before he was Judas Coyne, my hero was Justin Cowzynski, a lonely, desperate country kid, a person so unhappy he finally could not stand to be himself anymore, and so had to become someone else. The book is at least in part an investigation into whether or not anyone ever really walks away from their past clean. Furthermore, it also features a nicely pornographic sprinkling of goth sex, and several scenes of violent dog-on-man combat.

1st US trade hardcover published by William Morrow                      

Following five states published by Subterranean Press

First Printing Regular Limited:

• 300 sewn hardcover copies
• bound in full cloth
• signed by the author
• numbered 201-500

First Printing Deluxe Limited:

• 200 sewn hardcover copies
• bound in a different cloth
• the deleted first chapter, printed as an appendix
• an exclusive afterword by the author
• two two-color illustrations
• an exclusive review of Hammered for Life: 15 SuperRock Hits
• signed by the author
• numbered 1-200

Second Printing Regular Limited

Second Printing Deluxe Limited

Lettered:

• 15 leatherbound copies, lettered A-O - NOTE This is a PC copy
• all of the extras in the Deluxe Limited
• housed in a custom "vault" traycase