Haunted House-shopping. Buyers (and readers) Beware!

I'm not sure what's scarier: the fast-paced frights that make you whip through the pages of HORRORSTOR, or the thought of what actually drives an imagination as wildly unfettered as that of Grady Hendrix, the author of this cleverly terrifying tale of a haunted IKEA (here called ORSK).

Hendrix grew up in mild-mannered Mount Pleasant; he graduated from the upstanding Porter Gaud. To his family and close friends, he answers to the nickname "Sunshine," but don't be fooled. Hendrix can conjure dark, wicked weirdness with the best of them and lace it with torching social commentary while he's at it. He's witty, articulate, hilarious, polite, smart and a smart-ass, and in person appears normal, but he'll be the first to tell you that appearances can be deceiving. Take this book, for example, which is brilliantly designed to appear as if an ORSK furniture catalog, but is, in fact, a gripping and funny horror story. Stephen King with pillow aisles and Swedish-inspired sofas.

I could tell you about the scene that involves a character gagging and choking on a "thick glutinous mass" of snot, which then becomes a milky white glob hovering in mid-air before being snarfed up another character's nostril, but I think I'll just tell you to head on over to Blue Bicycle Books on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. to meet this Mt. Pleasant native whom the New Yorker once wrote a profile about, called "Gross and Grosser." 

Scary thing is, he's a really nice guy. Might even sign your book.