Full Throttle by Joe Hill

From the publisher: "Replete with shocking chillers, including two previously unpublished stories written expressly for this volume (“Mums” and “Late Returns”) and another appearing in print for the first time (“Dark Carousel”), Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best."

Full Throttle is a collection of short stories by Joe Hill, including two co-written with his father Stephen King. Some of these stories have appeared previously in magazines or other anthologies, but others are printed here for the first time. As might be expected from the son of the master of horror, most of these stories are at least some variety of creepy, although not all are truly horror stories.

The collection is bookended by an introduction and afterword from the author, in which he talks about his influences, his experiences writing in his father's shadow, and also about their collaborations. These alone might make the book worth reading for any fans of King, and those fans will also find plenty to enjoy in the stories themselves.

The thirteen stories contained within vary in tone and quality. Most are horror, and many contain supernatural elements of one kind or another. Two stories, "Throttle" and "In the Tall Grass," were co-written with Stephen King, and both are unsurprisingly among the more disturbing tales in this collection. "In the Tall Grass" is also the inspiration for the Netflix movie of the same name.

Highlights for me included "All I Care About Is You," in which a teen girl rents a coin-operated android to be her friend for a couple hours and try to experience the perfect birthday she can't afford, and "The Devil on the Staircase," in which one man's jealousies and inherent biases lead him down a very dark path.

However, my absolute favorite story in this collection is "Late Returns." It's about a man who finds himself driving a library bookmobile and finds that some of his customers come from different points in time. The story explores fun little time paradox questions and is a love letter to people who want to squeeze in one more read in the little time they have.

The audio version of this title is narrated by a pretty varied cast, including Kate Mulgrew, Wil Wheaton, Neil Gaiman, and Zachary Quinto, among others. Hill reads the introduction and afterword himself. One story, "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead," is not included in the audio version because it's written as a series of tweets and it was felt that it did not translate properly to the audio format. Instead, the audio CD version contains a CD-ROM that has the story in PDF format.

Overall, Full Throttle is a fun collection of supernatural and spooky stories that should appeal to any fans of the author's or his father's works, and probably to horror fans in general. Full Throttle is available for checkout at Galesburg Public Library in print and audio CD, as an eBook through the library's ADML and eRead Illinois collections, and as an eAudiobook through eRead Illinois.