Horrorstör

Retail stores that peddle lifestyle philosophies to customers and employees get a comic drubbing in this diverting horror lampoon. When three employees of the Cleveland Orsk—a “fake IKEA act” of a furniture superstore—pull an overnight shift to find out who has been trashing store stock after hours, they are horrified to discover that the building is haunted by ghosts from a prison that stood there a century before, and that the maniacal warden intends to inflict his “rehabilitative” punishments on the store’s staff. Hendrix gleefully skewers Orsk and its real-life ilk by comparing the “scripted disorientation” of the store’s layout to that of the penitentiary, and the “numbing grind of repetitive labor” that the prisoners perform to the work of store employees. The plotting is minimal, but the book’s packaging as a catalog—complete with illustrations of increasingly sinister-looking furniture with faux Scandinavian names—gives it a charmingly oddball allure. (Sept.)