Joe Hill Books in Order

At an elite college in Maine, bookish Arthur Oakes and his friends steal a skin-bound grimoire for a black-market dealer and accidentally summon King Sorrow, a dragon-like entity that demands a human sacrifice every Easter. Their bargain binds them to decades of guilt, terror, and impossible choices.

Ruined journalist Dennis Lange thinks a cursed-tree legend might be his way back into the spotlight. Pulling an old jackknife from a sycamore’s trunk wakes the hungry thing that was pinned there, and soon the tree’s long memory starts demanding fresh blood.

Twenty-three-year-old Martin Lorensen has improbably survived two mass-casualty disasters. When federal agents sit him down to ask how, he finally tells the truth: there’s a method behind his escapes, and the thing helping him cheat death may not be human.

Willy and Marianne flee city grief for a farmhouse in Maine after a devastating miscarriage. When Willy starts pushing home groceries in a creaky old baby carriage and hears a phantom infant cooing from inside, the couple’s longing curdles into something much darker.

The Golden Age gathers the historical Locke & Key tales—from colonial-era adventures to World War I and the Sandman crossover—into one sequence. Together they sketch the long, bloody history of Keyhouse and the many Lockes who’ve paid for its magic.

Tied to the film version of The Black Phone, this collection gathers that story with other standouts from 20th Century Ghosts. It’s an accessible entry point for readers who want more of the eerie, intimate tales behind the movie.

Set in Boulder, Colorado, Rain follows Honeysuckle Speck on the day razor-sharp crystal nails fall from a clear sky, shredding anyone caught outdoors. As the storm spreads, she sets out on foot through a ruined landscape to reach the family she’s just joined.

This anthology gathers eighteen modern ghost stories from a range of writers, including Joe Hill. It’s a grab bag of haunted houses, restless spirits, and quiet, lingering chills for readers who like their horror in many different flavors.

The conclusion of the Hell & Gone crossover finds the Lockes pushing deeper into the underworld with their magic keys, bargaining with Lucifer and other powers. It ties the mythologies of Keyhouse and the Sandman together around one family’s desperate gamble.

Decades after the research vessel Derleth vanished in a freak storm, its automated distress signal suddenly reactivates in the Arctic. A salvage crew and a marine biologist are sent to investigate, only to find the crew disturbingly alive and something alien stirring beneath the ice.

When a young Locke seeks a way to rescue a loved one from Hell, she journeys through the Dreaming and into the wider Sandman universe. Crossing paths with its strange denizens, she discovers that every door has a price.

This prologue collects earlier Locke & Key stories that set the stage for the crossover with the Sandman Universe. It lays out the history of Keyhouse and the occult forces that will eventually lead a Locke into the realm of Dream.

The final chapter of …In Pale Battalions Go… closes the loop between the Locke family’s wartime tragedy and later events in The Golden Age. One young man’s attempt to change history instead helps set darker destinies in motion.

In part two, the use of the keys on the Western Front has terrible consequences for the soldiers around him and attracts the attention of inhuman forces. Back at Keyhouse, his family begins to sense the cost of his adventure.

Set in the run-up to World War I, this first issue follows a young Locke who steals enchanted keys from his family home to bring to the battlefield. The decision draws him into a conflict that magic can’t easily fix.

Disgraced ex-cop and bitter stand-up comic Syd “Shit-Talk” Homes jokes about killing a rival who steals his material—then the man turns up dead. Hunted by the police and other comics, Syd must solve the murder before he takes the fall.

On storm-lashed Brody Island in 1983, college student June Branch grabs an antique Viking axe to defend herself from escaped convicts. She discovers it can lop off heads that keep talking, and sets out with a basketful of them to rescue her kidnapped boyfriend and uncover a local conspiracy.

Off World launches the Finis Vitae saga, following a mission that carries humanity far from Earth into hostile territory. Cut off from home, the crew must balance survival, loyalty, and the unsettling discoveries waiting on a distant world.

This one-shot revisits Keyhouse in two shorter tales, including a story where the family uses the Animal Key to give their dog a day as a human boy. It’s a lighter, bittersweet side trip in the larger Locke & Key saga.

Full Throttle gathers thirteen tales that range from haunted highways and cursed carnivals to quiet, uncanny heartbreaks. Featuring collaborations with Stephen King and several stories adapted for screen, it showcases Joe Hill’s nastiest, strangest short fiction.

Strangers on a routine flight to Boston watch the news spiral toward global war, trapped together in a shrinking patch of sky. As the world comes apart below them, each passenger must decide what fear and mercy look like at 30,000 feet.

In this Harry Strong case, the PI is drawn to Julia Weston, a beautiful, manipulative woman with a trail of dead men behind her. Protecting her—or investigating her—means wading into a world of obsession, kink, and very real violence.

Four teenagers take a joyride on a small-town carousel and treat the old attraction with cruel disrespect. That night, the carved horses and animals come hunting them along the boardwalk, and the ride they mocked turns into a relentless pursuit.

Collecting the four-issue comic adaptation of Hill’s unproduced TV reboot, this edition of Tales from the Darkside turns those scripts into vivid, unsettling visuals. Each chapter twists a different corner of everyday life into something bent and malign.

Strange Weather brings together four short novels: a memory-stealing Polaroid camera, a mass shooting and media circus, a man stranded on a living cloud, and a deadly rain of crystal shards. Each novella tackles a different kind of modern nightmare.

In this standalone story, members of an earlier Locke generation inherit a detailed dollhouse version of Keyhouse that can affect the real mansion. When something nasty crawls into the miniature, the children must stop it before it grows large.

Heaven and Earth collects three Locke & Key stories, including the much-loved “Open the Moon,” in which a father uses the keys to give his dying son one last impossible adventure. It’s a more intimate, bittersweet companion to the main series.

A spore called Dragonscale tattoos its victims with gold-and-black patterns before they spontaneously combust. As society collapses, pregnant nurse Harper Grayson flees to a hidden camp led by a mysterious man who can control the fire burning inside him.

The final issue ties the standalone tales together, revealing how each brush with the Darkside fits into a larger pattern. What looked like separate hauntings turns out to be part of a single, slowly unfolding invasion.

In the third installment, technology itself becomes the doorway, as a grieving parent experiments with a device that can rewrite painful memories. The more he tampers with the past, the more the Darkside leaks into the present.

Issue two shifts to a new nightmare, following a young woman whose chronic insomnia and strange sleep studies blur the line between waking life and a more sinister realm. The Darkside seems less like a place and more like an infection.

The first issue of the Tales from the Darkside comic introduces Hill’s updated vision of the classic anthology: a lifeguard plagued by time-warping blackouts discovers that the universe may be resetting around the worst moment of his life.

This volume presents Joe Hill’s scripts for a modern take on Tales from the Darkside, blending stand-alone horror stories with a hidden overarching mystery. It reads like a season of a TV show that exists only on the page.

A routine investigation explodes into chaos when a minor job leaves Harry Strong surrounded by corpses and lies. He has to thread his way through jealous lovers, professional killers, and his own violent streak to find out who set him up.

This full-cast audio adaptation brings the entire original Locke & Key saga to life with voices, sound design, and music. It follows the Lockes from their arrival at Keyhouse through every key, revelation, and showdown with the demon in the well.

Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland expands the world of NOS4A2, following Charles Manx and the eerie passengers of his Rolls-Royce Wraith. The comic explores how his twisted holiday playground came to be and what it costs the children who never leave.

On a late-night British train, ruthless American executive Saunders notices that his fellow passengers look oddly lupine. When the train reaches Wolverton Station, he discovers what happens in a town where the wolves ride the rails and humans are on the menu.

Asked to look into a death among the guests at an exclusive gathering, Harry Strong finds himself in a classic whodunit full of doubles, affairs, and buried scandals. Each new body makes it harder to tell who’s hunting whom—or why.

In this entry, Harry Strong juggles low-rent cases, bad habits, and the fallout from earlier investigations when a new client’s secrets turn lethal. The more he digs, the more he realizes the real threat may be tied to his own murky past.

Two kids exploring the foggy shore of a Vermont lake stumble across the corpse of a massive, long-necked creature straight out of local legend. As adults circle and a storm rolls in, they must decide what proof and wonder are worth.

Alpha & Omega brings the core Locke & Key saga to its climax, pitting the Lockes against the demon behind the Black Door once and for all. It’s a bloody, emotional finale about sacrifice, family, and what stays locked away.

Told entirely as a teenager’s tweets during a family road trip, this story follows a stop at a shabby traveling circus that turns out to feature real zombies. As the show collapses into carnage, her running commentary becomes a record of survival.

Set during the Vietnam War, The Cape 1969 follows Eric’s father, Captain Chase, after his medevac helicopter is shot down behind enemy lines. As he fights to keep his crew alive in the jungle, something ancient and uncanny stirs around them.

Victoria McQueen can find lost things by riding through a magical covered bridge; Charles Manx drives kidnapped children to his nightmare playground, Christmasland, in a Rolls-Royce with the plate NOS4A2. When Manx targets Vic’s son, her strange gift becomes his only hope.

Haunted ex-cop Harry Strong now works as a private investigator, barely holding his life together. When a titled client hires him to identify a severed foot found on her estate, the case drags Harry into a sadistic underworld that knows exactly how to exploit his weaknesses.

The final issue brings Mallory face to face with the stalker who has been shadowing her since Iraq. What unfolds is less a simple revenge story than a reckoning with guilt, responsibility, and the injuries no one can see.

As more thumbprints and cryptic messages appear, Mallory is forced to admit someone knows exactly what happened in the prison cages. Issue two tightens the net, cutting between her present-day paranoia and the brutal choices she made in the desert.

Mallory Grennan, an army veteran who served at Abu Ghraib, tends bar in a small New York town and tries not to think about what she did overseas. Then a plain envelope arrives containing only a black thumbprint, and her past starts to push back.

This limited collection gathers four fantastical stories—one by Joe Hill alongside pieces by Brian W. Aldiss, Joanne Harris, and Richard Christian Matheson. Hill’s contribution, Pop Art, offers a strange, tender friendship that fits neatly beside the other off-kilter tales.

Clockworks dives into Keyhouse’s past, revealing how an earlier generation of Lockes first opened a door into another realm and forged the keys. As Tyler and Kinsey explore time itself, they finally learn the truth about the demon stalking their family.

Harry Strong takes what seems like straightforward work: protecting a wealthy client from a vague threat. When his principal ends up dead, he’s left chasing lies, hired muscle, and his own bad instincts in a case where everyone is using everyone else.

A biker gang known as the Tribe flees a botched crime across the Nevada desert, only to be stalked by an unseen trucker who turns the highway into a killing ground. The story plays like a souped-up homage to Duel with a father–son twist.

Road Rage pairs graphic adaptations of Richard Matheson’s Duel and the father-and-son sequel Throttle by Stephen King and Joe Hill. Two different stories of lone drivers terrorized on the highway become a single, high-octane tribute to vehicular horror.

Stopping beside an endless field of shoulder-high grass, siblings Cal and Becky hear a child crying for help inside. When they push in to rescue him, they find themselves lost in a shifting maze where time, distance, and even family ties stop making sense.

Set during the Depression, Locke & Key: Grindhouse follows a gang of Canadian bank robbers who choose Keyhouse as their hideout after a bloody job. They quickly discover that the mansion and its keys have far nastier surprises than any lawman.

Presented as an in-universe guidebook, this special issue catalogs the many keys of Keyhouse and their powers, with an added short story about a boy and his father using the Moon Key. It’s part handbook, part love letter to the series’ mythology.

Keys to the Kingdom mixes some of the series’ wildest visual experimentation with big plot turns, as new keys surface and alliances in Lovecraft shift. Tyler begins to understand who their enemy really is, even as the cost of confronting him rises.

Crown of Shadows sees the villain wielding the Shadow Key and an army of living darkness against Keyhouse. While the adults struggle with grief and addiction, the Locke children fight back with the very magic that has already cost them so much.

After being blamed for his girlfriend’s murder, Ig Perrish wakes up with devilish horns that make people spill their ugliest secrets. He turns this unwanted power toward finding the real killer and confronting what really happened to the woman he loved.

In the second Locke & Key arc, the Lockes discover the Head Key, which literally opens a person’s skull to reveal their memories and fears. Playing with what’s inside their heads is intoxicating—and exactly what the demon hiding among them wants.

After their father’s murder, the Locke children move with their mother to Keyhouse, a rambling New England mansion full of impossible doors. Youngest brother Bode begins finding keys that unlock powers—and a hungry presence in the well that wants them all.

On a distant colony world, a group of gifted children are trained to tend a dangerous power source that could wipe out a third of the planet. When loyalties fray, one mission to service the reactor turns into a question of sacrifice and rebellion.

Waking from a nightmare, a misfit teenager discovers he is turning into something monstrous and insectlike. As the transformation accelerates, he shambles toward town, driven by a buzzing hunger and years of resentment.

During the Great Depression, a drifting laborer jumps from a freight train and shares a simple breakfast with a recently widowed woman. The encounter is small, quiet, and life-changing in ways neither of them expects.

As a boy, Eric Chan swears he once flew while wearing his favorite superhero cape. Years later, bitter and going nowhere, he discovers the cape really does let him soar—and chooses to use that power for revenge instead of heroism.

Teenager Finney is abducted by a sadistic killer and locked in a basement with a disconnected black rotary phone. At night it rings anyway, carrying the voices of the murderer’s previous victims, determined that Finney won’t die the way they did.

Pop Art is the bittersweet story of a lonely boy and his best friend, Arthur—who happens to be inflatable. Bullies, sharp objects, and the simple fragility of friendship threaten their bond in one of Hill’s most tender, offbeat tales.

A family’s weekend trip to a remote country house turns unnervingly theatrical when the parents insist on wearing ornate masks and speaking in riddles. Their teenage son is drawn into a surreal game that may rewrite who he is and what his childhood meant.

At a peculiar roadside museum, visitors pay to hear the last breath of the dead, captured in glass jars. A family stops in out of curiosity, only to learn how irresistible—and costly—it can be to listen one more time.

This collected edition presents the full Thumbprint miniseries in one volume, charting Mallory Grennan’s confrontation with the anonymous tormentor who knows what she did at Abu Ghraib. It’s a sharp little thriller about secrets that refuse to stay buried.

A burned-out office worker stuck in a dead-end job witnesses a brutal crime in a desolate stretch of highway known as the Rundown. Stepping in forces him to choose between his own safety and a stranger’s desperate need for help.

Retired metal star Judas Coyne collects morbid curios, but buying a dead man’s suit online brings him a ghost that won’t be boxed up. Hounded across the South with his girlfriend, he must face a vengeful spirit and his own worst mistakes.

In just a few pages, Dead-Wood imagines the ghosts not of people, but of trees—dead forests still standing in another dimension, whispering through our world whenever the wind passes through their living cousins.

On the set of a low-budget zombie movie, failed comedian Bobby Conroy runs into the high-school girlfriend he never got over. Surrounded by fake gore and shambling extras, the two of them pick through what might still be alive between them.

A young boy with an anxious mind spends a day at the ballpark with his distant, driven father. As small mishaps pile up, he starts to understand the quiet ways love and fear shape the man raising him.

Two immigrant brothers in early-twentieth-century America live under the iron rule of their father, a stern doctor named Abraham. Snooping in his forbidden study, they uncover proof that he once hunted vampires—and that his past may be more dangerous than they imagined.

Teenager Nolan watches his brilliant, autistic younger brother build elaborate cardboard forts that children can crawl into but sometimes don’t come back from. When a neighborhood bully disappears, Nolan must decide how much of the truth he’s willing to live with.

20th Century Ghosts collects early stories that move from haunted movie theaters and inflatable best friends to serial-killer editors and doomed magicians. Together they explore how ordinary people live with grief, obsession, and the uncanny just outside the frame.