Overview
HOTLINE is a collection of six of acclaimed author Benjamin Percy's (The End Times, written with Stephen King) novelettes, each of which showcases his superb storytelling chops.
The main character in the titular novella, Hotline,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.
Trail Cam is told in the form of an interview between a police detective and a man being questioned for his wife's disappearance, and is interwoven with chilling descriptions of the footage caught by cameras hidden on the man's property.
Wereworld explores what would happen if one night each month, when the moon is full, the world went wild. The reason: A rapidly spreading contagion has caused those who've contracted it to commit gruesome acts of violence on this monthly night of terror. Meanwhile, the uninfected live in fear that one of the diseased could be living among them.
In Bystanders, a woman receives a video on her phone that shows the impossible—a vision of her own death—and when she investigates further, she learns she is one of several people who are receiving darkly prophetic messages before getting picked off one by one.
Hag is set in a strange place called Gulf Island, where in the summer it's a getaway for vacationers, but during the off-season it's a place of sodden mini golf courses, rusty beachside swings, and clench-jawed locals who are hiding something. When a reporter goes to investigate a grisly murder, things on the island take a frightening turn.
In North Border, set in northern Minnesota, a Border Patrol Agent finds himself torn between the conflicting forces of a local drug cartel and his fellow agents. Everyone seems to want to use him, and when his family is kidnapped, he'll have to become the monster to fight the monsters all around him in this story of geographic, cultural, and political division.
Author Bio
Benjamin Percy is the author of seven novels, the most recent among them The Sky Vault (William Morrow, 2023).. He is also the author of The Unfamiliar Garden (Mariner Books/William Morrow, 2022), The Ninth Metal (Mariner Books, 2021), The Dead Lands (Grand Central/Hachette, 2015), Red Moon (Grand Central/Hachette, 2013) and The Wilding (Graywolf Press, 2010), as well as three books of short stories, Suicide Woods (Graywolf Press, 2019), Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf Press, 2007) and The Language of Elk (Grand Central/Hachette, 2012; Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006).
His craft book — Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction — was published by Graywolf Press in 2016 and is now widely taught in creative writing classrooms.
He broke in to comics in 2014, with a two-issue Batman story arc for Detective Comics. He is known for his celebrated runs on Nightwing, Green Arrow, Teen Titans, and James Bond. He He currently writes Wolverine, X-Force, and Ghost Rider for Marvel Comics. He also writes Devil's Highway and Year Zero for AWA Studios.
His fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, GQ, Time, Men's Journal, Outside, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and Tin House.
He co-wrote the feature film, Summering, with director James Ponsoldt. Produced by Bleeker Street and Sony's Stage 3, it made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival and will go into wide-release this summer.
He is also currently working with Ponsoldt at Paramount Plus, where they are adapting Urban Cowboy into a series.
He wrote two, ten-episode seasons of the audio drama “Wolverine,” which are presently streaming now on all podcast apps. “The Long Night” was listed as one of the top 15 podcasts of the year by Apple and won the iHeart Radio Award for best scripted podcast in 2018. His latest podcast is Wastelanders: Old Man Starlord (produced by Marvel and SiriusXM/Pandora), a post-apocalyptic take on the Guardians of the Galaxy that stars Timothy Busfield, Chris Elliot, Vanessa Williams, and Danny Glover.
His honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whiting Writers' Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the Plimpton Prize, a McKnight fellowship, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics. And his story “Refresh, Refresh” was included in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories.
He is a member of the WGA screenwriters' guild and has sold scripts to Paramount, FOX, Sony, and Starz. He currently has several film and TV projects in development.
He is a regular on the lecture circuit and has taught extensively, including at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Breadloaf Writers' Conference, the Tin House Writers' Workshop, Aspen Summer Words, and the Paris Writing Workshop.
