Joe Hill Set for Writers on a New England Stage, 5/16

The Music Hall's Writers on a New England Stage series presents award-winning, New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill with his latest work of fiction, THE FIREMAN. From the author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box comes a chilling novel about a worldwide pandemic of spontaneous combustion that threatens to reduce civilization to ashes and a band of improbable heroes who battle to save it, led by one powerful and enigmatic man known as the Fireman.

The 7pm event includes an author presentation followed by an onstage interview with Virginia Prescott, host of New Hampshire Public Radio's "Word of Mouth". It will be held at The Music Hall's Historic Theater at 28 Chestnut Street, in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In Hill's superb supernatural thriller, the world is falling apart in a maelstrom of flame and fury. A spore dubbed Dragonscale infects people, draws patterns on their skin, and eventually makes them spontaneously combust-and it's rapidly spreading. In the midst of this global pandemic, a mysterious, iron-bar wielding figure called The Fireman, who has taught himself to control the fire threatening to escape his body, wanders the streets trying to save afflicted people.

Said Patricia Lynch, Executive Producer of Writers on a New England Stage and Executive Director of the Historic Theater and arts center: "We've welcomed Joe Hill to The Music Hall many times before--as an event-goer, as a Seacoast resident, and as an author who is a friend and fan to many others, including his father, Mainer Stephen King, who came to Writers on a New England Stage himself in 2009. Now Joe takes the stage with THE FIREMAN, which is certain to be another bestseller. It's a great honor and a community celebration....even though his thrilling book has the Dragonscale plague sweeping right into Portsmouth!"

ABOUT THE BOOK

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies-before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she's discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob's dismay, Harper wants to live-at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads-armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn't as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter's jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman's secrets before her life-and that of her unborn child-goes up in smoke.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOE HILL is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, and NOS4A2. He is also the Eisner Award-winning writer of a six-volume comic book series, Locke & Key.

TICKETS

The ticket package for Writers on a New England Stage: Joe Hill on Monday, May 16 at 7:00pm is $13.25 ($11.25 for members).

Book: THE FIREMAN buy a book voucher in advance ($28.99, hardcover) and you'll be welcomed backstage to meet the author and get your book signed. Packages can be purchased through The Music Hall Box Office, located at 28 Chestnut Street, Portsmouth, or over the phone at 603.436.2400.

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