I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review, and this is the book review podcast.

This week, we're staying on October vibes and presenting you with a couple of conversations from years past with great horror writers.

First, from 2024, Joe Hill, who has just released his first novel in almost a decade,

King's Sorrow, came on the pod, great conversation. He offered a bunch of fantastic,

scary book recommendations. And then after the break, Victor LaValle, author of 2023's Lone Women, talks about the book

he's read the most in his life, a book I have read many times, the great Shirley Jackson's

The Haunting of Hillhouse.

I hope you enjoy both of these conversations.

I absolutely did.

And I doubly hope that you look forward to next week's episode of the podcast in which M.J. Franklin, as he does, every month, hosts a book club discussion, this one about this year's The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. But first, let's turn to Joe Hill.

Joe Hill, author, novelist, short story writer, has worked in the graphic novel space.

The first time I read you, before interviewing you, I feel like years ago for Time Magazine for Horns, this was a very long time ago, was 20th century ghost, which is a short story collection. And I don't know if I

said this at the time, but it has stuck with me. I was listening to it. I was listening to

the audiobook version of 20th century ghost. And the first story in 20th century ghost is a story

called Best New Horror, if I'm recalling correctly. And the first story in 20th century ghost is a story called best new horror,

if I'm recalling correctly. And it was so tense that I was genuinely sweating on a New York

city subway platform. And I wasn't sweating because it was summertime and it gets to be 97

degrees on these platforms. I think it was a different time of year. It was just,

it was very tense, very tense. And then several stories later, there's a story called pop art,

which was one of the more moving pieces of short fiction I've read in a horror collection ever,

maybe. It was a great delight to see the range there. That's very kind.

I remember that we spoke in a restaurant in Boston around 2010 for horns. And shortly afterwards,

...