{"product_id":"horrorstor-isbn-9781594745263","title":"Horrorstor","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires \u003c\/i\u003ecomes a hilarious and terrifying haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting: a furniture superstore.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomething strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTo unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.“\u003ci\u003eHorrorstör\u003c\/i\u003e delivers a crisp terror-tale...[and] Hendrix strikes a nice balance between comedy and horror.”—\u003ci\u003eTheWashington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Disarming.”\u003ci\u003e—The Wall Street Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Wildly inventive...Hendrix delivers both a palm-sweating horror story and a laugh-out-loud satire of retail.”—\u003ci\u003eEsquire \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Highly giftable.”—\u003ci\u003eBuzzfeed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hendrix conjures up some wonderfully gruesome imagery.”—\u003ci\u003eNerdist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An inventive, hilarious haunted house tale.”—\u003ci\u003eBustle\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hendrix’s one-of-a-kind novel is an innovative hybrid of ghost story and satire, at once clever, gruesome, and hilarious.”—\u003ci\u003eAmazon Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“If you’ve ever been frustrated trying to put together furniture from IKEA, you’ll get a laugh out of Hendrix’s spoof mystery.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hendrix is an engaging writer.”—\u003ci\u003eSanta Fe New Mexican\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A clever little horror story...[and] a treat for fans of \u003ci\u003eThe Evil Dead\u003c\/i\u003e or \u003ci\u003eZombieland\u003c\/i\u003e, complete with affordable solutions for better living.”\u003ci\u003e—Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fun horror novel.”—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A very clever ghost story.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The book’s packaging as a catalog—complete with illustrations of increasingly sinister-looking furniture with faux Scandinavian names—gives it a charmingly oddball allure.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMore praise for Grady Hendrix:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“National treasure Grady Hendrix follows his classic account of a haunted IKEA-like furniture showroom, \u003ci\u003eHorrorstor\u003c\/i\u003e (2014), with a nostalgia-soaked ghost story, \u003ci\u003eMy Best Friend’s Exorcism\u003c\/i\u003e.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003eMy Best Friend’s Exorcism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Pure, demented delight.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003ePaperbacks from Hell\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Terrific... Sharply written... [\u003ci\u003eMy Best Friend’s Exorcism\u003c\/i\u003e] makes a convincing case for [Hendrix’s] powers as a sharp observer of human behavior.”—\u003ci\u003eThe A.V. Club\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003eMy Best Friend’s Exorcism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hendrix’s darkest novel yet will leave readers begging for an encore.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review, on \u003ci\u003eWe Sold Our Souls\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A true appreciation of the genre.”—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003ePaperbacks from Hell\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Campy. Heartfelt. Horrifying.”—\u003ci\u003eMinnesota Public Radio\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003eMy Best Friend’s Exorcism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Clever, heartfelt, and get-under-your-skin unnerving.”—\u003ci\u003eFangoria\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003eMy Best Friend’s Exorcism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A good, creepy, music-tinged thriller.”—\u003ci\u003eCNET\u003c\/i\u003e, on \u003ci\u003eWe Sold Our Souls\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eGrady Hendrix \u003c\/b\u003eis a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e best-selling novelist and screenwriter who owns too many paperbacks and not enough shelves. He’s the author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Sell a Haunted House\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires\u003c\/i\u003e, and many more, including \u003ci\u003ePaperbacks from Hell\u003c\/i\u003e, a history of the horror paperback boom of the seventies and eighties that won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction. (All the paperbacks are for “research” and he needs them.) His books have sold over three million copies and have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City and will die there, too, probably crushed to death beneath piles of those paperbacks.It was dawn, and the zombies were stumbling through the parking lot, streaming toward the massive beige box at the far end. Later they’d be resurrected by megadoses of Starbucks, but for now they were the barely living dead. Their causes of death differed: hangovers, nightmares, strung out from epic online gaming sessions, circadian rhythms broken by late-night TV, children who couldn’t stop crying, neighbors partying till 4 a.m., broken hearts, unpaid bills, roads not taken, sick dogs, deployed daughters, ailing parents, midnight ice cream binges.\u003cbr\u003e     But every morning, five days a week (seven during the holidays), they dragged themselves here, to the one thing in their lives that never changed, the one thing they could count on come rain, or shine, or dead pets, or divorce: work.\u003cbr\u003e     Orsk was the all-American furniture superstore in Scandinavian drag, offering well-designed lifestyles at below-Ikea prices, and its forward-thinking slogan promised “a better life for the everyone.” Especially for Orsk shareholders, who trekked to company headquarters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, every year to hear how their chain of Ikea knockoff stores was earning big returns. Orsk promised customers “the everything they needed” in the every phase of their lives, from Balsak cradles to Gutevol rocking chairs. The only thing it didn’t offer was coffins. Yet.\u003cbr\u003e     Orsk was an enormous heart pumping 318 partners—228 full-time, 90 part-time—through its ventricles in a ceaseless circular flow. Every morning, floor partners poured in to swipe their IDs, power up their computers, and help customers size the perfect Knäbble cabinets, find the most comfortable Müskk beds, and source exactly the right Lågniå water glasses. Every afternoon, replenishment partners flowed in and restocked the Self-Service Warehouse, pulled the picks, refilled the impulse bins, and hauled pallets onto the Market Floor. It was a perfect system, precision-engineered to offer optimal retail functionality in all 112 Orsk locations across North America and in its thirty-eight locations around the world.\u003cbr\u003e     But on the first Thursday of June at 7:30 a.m., at Orsk Location #00108 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, this well-calibrated system came grinding to a halt.\u003cbr\u003e     The trouble started when the card reader next to the employee entrance gave up the ghost. Store partners arrived and piled up against the door in a confused chaotic crowd, helplessly waving their IDs over the scanner until Basil, the deputy store manager, appeared and directed them all to go around the side of the building to the customer entrance.\u003cbr\u003e     Customers entered Orsk through a towering two-story glass atrium and ascended an escalator to the second floor, where they began a walk of the labyrinthine Showroom floor designed to expose them to the Orsk lifestyle in the optimal manner, as determined by an army of interior designers, architects, and retail consultants. Only here was yet another problem: the escalator was running down instead of up. Floor partners shoved their way into the atrium and came to a baffled halt, unsure what to do next. IT partners jammed up behind them, followed by a swarm of post-sales partners, HR partners, and cart partners. Soon they were all packed in butt to gut and spilling out the double doors.\u003cbr\u003e      Amy spotted the human traffic jam from across the parking lot as she power-walked toward the crowd, a soggy cup of coffee leaking in one hand.\u003cbr\u003e      “Not now,” she thought. “Not today.”\u003cbr\u003e      She’d bought the coffee cup at the Speedway three weeks ago because it promised unlimited free refills and Amy needed to stretch her $1.49 as far as it would go. This was as far as it went. As she stared in dismay at the mass of partners, the bottom of her cup finally gave up and let go, dumping coffee all over her sneakers. Amy didn’t even notice. She knew that a crowd meant a problem, and a problem meant a manager, and this early in the day a manager meant Basil. She could not let Basil see her. Today she had to be Basil Invisible.\u003cbr\u003e     Matt lurked on the edge of the semicircle, dressed in his usual black hoodie. He was glumly eating an Egg McMuffin and squinting painfully in the morning sun.\u003cbr\u003e     “What happened?” Amy asked.\u003cbr\u003e     “They can’t open the prison, so we can’t do our time,” he said, picking crumbs from his enormous hipster beard.\u003cbr\u003e     “What about the employee entrance?”\u003cbr\u003e     “Busted.”\u003cbr\u003e     “So how do we clock in?”\u003cbr\u003e     “Don’t be in such a hurry,” Matt said, trying to suck a strand of cheese off the mass of hair surrounding his mouth. “There’s nothing waiting inside but retail slavery, endless exploitation, and personal subjugation to the whims of our corporate overlords.”\u003cbr\u003e     If Amy squinted, she could dimly see Basil’s tall, gawky silhouette through the front windows, trying to direct the human traffic jam by waving his spaghetti-noodle arms in the air. Getting even this close to him sent a cold bolt of fear through her stomach, but his back was turned. Maybe she had a chance.\u003cbr\u003e     “Good thoughts, Matt,” she said.\u003cbr\u003e     Seizing her moment, Amy ninjaed her way through the crowd, ducking behind backs, stepping on toes, and slipping into open spaces. She entered the atrium and was immediately enveloped in the soothing embrace of Orsk—where it was always the perfect temperature, where the rooms were always perfectly lit, where the piped-in music was always the perfect volume, where it was always perfectly calm. But this morning the air had an edge to it, the faint scent of something rancid.\u003cbr\u003e     “I didn’t think this escalator could run in reverse,” Basil was saying to an operations partner who was pounding on the emergency stop button to no effect. “Is this even mechanically possible?”\u003cbr\u003e     Amy didn’t stick around to find out. Her sole objective for the day—and for the next several days—was to avoid Basil at all costs. As long as he didn’t see her, she reasoned, he couldn’t fire her.","brand":"Quirk Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305409892581,"sku":"NP9781594745263","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781594745263.jpg?v=1767729230","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/horrorstor-isbn-9781594745263","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}