Crossover Cover: Basketful of Heads

 

In September 1983, four inmates from Shawshank Prison on a work detail escape. Shawshank Prison is from “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and other works by write Joe Hill’s father Stephen King.

This crossover is one of hundreds included in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Cover: Heart-Shaped Box

Things take a paranormal turn for the worse when aging rocker Judas Coyne purchases a ghost online; other items among his collection of the strange and macabre include books by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dexter Ward. Ward is the main character of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, linking Joe Hill’s interconnected works to the Cthulhu Mythos, and thus the CU.

Crossover Cover: Doctor Sleep

Dan Torrance, now middle-aged, helps a young girl named Abra Stone, who has the shining, battle a group of psychic vampires called the True Knot. Dan remembers Dick Hallorann mentioning a man named Charlie Manx, who steals children. There are references to Castle Rock, Gates Falls, and Inside View. The True Knot have sheltered in places like Jerusalem’s Lot and Sidewinder. The True Knot use a computer program called Whirl 360 to locate Abra’s neighborhood. The battle with the True Knot comes to a head outside Sidewinder, Colorado, where the Overlook Hotel once stood. Dan Torrance; “the shining”; Dick Hallorann; Sidewinder, Colorado; and the Overlook Hotel are all from King’s novel The Shining. Charlie Manx is from Joe Hill’s novel NOS4A2. Castle Rock and Jerusalem’s Lot are recurring settings in King’s work. Gates Falls is the setting of King’s story “Graveyard Shift.” The tabloid Inside View appears or is mentioned in a number of King’s works, such as The Dead Zone, Insomnia, and Bag of Bones. Whirl 360 is from Linwood Barclay’s novel Trust Your Eyes.

Crossover Cover: Mr. Mercedes

In this book, a roadie for the boy band 'Round Here (first mentioned in King's novel Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining) wears a Judas Coyne T-shirt. Aging rocker Coyne was the protagonist of King's son Joe Hill's novel Heart-Shaped Box. In that book, it is mentioned that Coyne owns books by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dexter Ward, who is of course from Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.