With his post-apocalyptic newsletter The End Times getting republished as a proper novel, it’s only fair that author Benjamin Percy’s other work gets the glossy special treatment. Publisher Bad Hand Books is releasing a new collection of Percy’s novella, titled Hotline, and FANGORIA has an exclusive first look at its gruesome cover.
Featuring art by Samuel Araya, Hotline leaps off shelves with its bright, blood-red cover featuring a mysterious figure on the phone, who surely only has terrifying things to say. The story’s synopsis is as follows:
Nolan works nights as a counselor for a suicide hotline and falls in love with a frequent caller. At the same time, a rash of murders breaks out across the region. Night after night, Nolan answers calls from strangers who are thinking about ending things. He listens, sympathizes, prods, reassures, coaxes, doing everything he can to help them. But sometimes he loses them—and when that happens, he finds them…and he feeds.
Everything changes when a caller named Eva reaches out. They share stories. Of heart and humor, sadness and horror. As weeks pass and things grow more and more personal between them, Nolan finds himself breaking the rules he’s built his life around, drawn into Eva’s orbit in ways that feel increasingly dangerous… because he suspects she is a vampire too, and with a bloodier moral compass than his own.
The collection also includes five other stories: Trail Cam, Werewolf, Bystanders, Hag, and North Border, featuring everything from found-footage style stories to seaside tales that bring up thoughts of Widow’s Bay. The new book is Percy’s second collaboration with Bad Hand, who are publishing The End Times, which he co-wrote with Stephen King, early next year.
Signed copies of Hotline are available to pre-order now on Bad Hand Books’ website.
