It should come as no surprise that sometimes I buy a book because of its design. I'm not really a reader of horror, at least that published since the era of Machen/Dunsany/Lovecraft/James, so normally a book about a haunted Ikea-style store would have passed me by. But when the book is designed to emulate an actual Ikea catalogue? That's a different story.
Horrorstör, Grady Hendrix's first novel, is published by Quirk Books, and they've really gone to town on this one. Illustrated by Michael Rogalski and designed by Andie Reid, with cover photography by Christine Ferrara, the attention to detail is superb, with order forms, house ads, increasingly disturbing product showcases and more. The whole thing is even printed in the dark blue ink of an assemble-it-yourself instruction leaflet. Click any image below for embiggening...
Entertainingly, this very morning I was looking at a catalog of books coming out next year, and one of them--a home design guide--looks weirdly like Horrorstör, but with an airbrushed person added...
