Forget the
lean, mean King of Misery, Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne. This is
the other King-the Grand Vizier of Verbosity who gave us It, The
Tommyknockers and Needful Things. There's much of everything in these
800 pages, including the worthy. Notable is a rare septuagenarian hero,
recently widowed Ralph Roberts, whose broodings on old age immerse
readers into the aging psyche almost as clearly as other King heroes
have revealed the minds of children. Then there's the slam-bang final
300 pages, in themselves a novel's worth of excitement as Ralph battles
demonic entities to prevent a holocaust in his small town of Derry,
Maine (site of It). The problem is that the finale is preceded by more
than a novel's worth of casual, even tedious buildup: Ralph's growing
insomnia; his new ability to see auras around all living things; his
dismay as Derry's citizens divide violently over the impending visit of
a radical pro-lifer; his slow realization that celestial forces have
marked Derry as a battleground between good and evil. King remains
popular fiction's most reliable mirror of cultural trends, in particular
our continuing love affair with horror (Barker and Koontz are palpable
influences here). If this novel were liposuctioned, it would rank among
King's best; as is, it's another roly-poly volume from a skilled writer
who presumes his readers' appetite for words is more gourmand than
gourmet. 1,500,000 first printing; $1 million ad/promo; paperback rights
to Signet; simultaneous audio release from Penguin Highbridge; BOMC
selection.
Relentlessly paced and brilliantly orchestrated, this cat-and-mouse game
of a novel is one of King's most engrossing and topical horror stories.
At the center of the action is heroine Rose McClendon, a battered wife
who starts life anew by leaving her police officer husband, a
consummately cruel man depicted by King as a paragon of evil. Crowded
with character and incident, the novel builds to a nearly apocalyptic
conclusion that combines the best of King's long novels?the breadth of
vision of The Stand, for example?with the focused plot and careful
psychological portraiture of Dolores Claiborne. The story of Rose's
joyous growth from tortured wife (her persecution gruesomely but
realistically portrayed) to independent woman alternates with the
terrifying details of her husband's deliberate pursuit to create
unflagging tension. The book is a phantasmagorical roller-coaster ride,
peopled by a broad array of indelibly characterized men and women and
fueled by an air of danger that is immediate and overwhelming. 1.75
million first printing; BOMC main selection; simultaneous Penguin Audio;
paperback sale to Signet.
Hearts in
Atlantis, King's newest fiction, is composed of five interconnected,
sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is
deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.
In Part One, "Low Men in Yellow Coats", eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield
discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood. He also
discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the
terror.
In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game,
discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective
heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly
disguised cry of the beast.
In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam", two men who grew up with
Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the
post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow—and as
haunted—as their own lives.
And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling", this book's denouement,
Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of
redemption, and his heart's desire may await him.
Stephen King's new book will take some readers to a place they have
never been...and others to a place they have never been able to
completely leave.
On a brisk
autumn day, a twelve-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray
Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called
the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: his father is gone,
his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack
everything is about to change. For he has been chosen to make a journey
back across America--and into another realm.
One of the most influential and heralded works of fantasy ever written,
The Talisman is an extraordinary novel of loyalty, awakening, terror,
and mystery. Jack Sawyer, on a desperate quest to save his mother's
life, must search for a prize across an epic landscape of innocents and
monsters, of incredible dangers and even more incredible truths. The
prize is essential, but the journey means even more. Let the quest
begin. . .
Today's
literature is plagued by sequelitis; plagued because many of the
offspring are abominations. But here's a marvelous exception. Seventeen
years after King and Straub's first collaboration, The Talisman, comes
an immensely satisfying follow-up, a brilliant and challenging dark
fantasy that fans of both authors are going to love. Page by page, the
novel reads as equal parts King and Straub, with the Maine master's
exuberance and penchant for excess restrained by Straub's generally more
elegant (though no more potent) approach. But the book, far more than
its predecessor, is set explicitly in the King universe, with particular
ties to the Dark Tower series. Its primary hero is The Talisman's Jack
Sawyer, now retired from the LAPD and living with no memory of his
otherwordly Talisman exploits, alone in French Landing, Wisconsin a town
surveyed by the authors in an unusual third-person plural narration that
buoys the book throughout. Terror stalks French Landing in the form of
the Fisherman, who's been snatching, killing and eating the town's
children. We know that the Fisherman is a resident of the town's elderly
care facility, but Jack doesn't; when yet another child, Ty Marshall, is
taken, Jack enters the hunt for the killer and the boy. He's joined by
an array of locals, notably a gang of philosopher bikers and blind Henry
Leyden, a 50-something cool cat whom every reader will adore. Jack is
going to need all their help, and more, because The Fisherman is
controlled by a malignant entity from End-World, where the Crimson King
aims to unravel the fabric of all the universes. It's to blighted
End-World, via the portal of the Black House a creepy local house
painted black that Jack and others travel to rescue Ty, in the novel's
frantic conclusion.The book abounds with literary allusions, many to the
King-verse, and readers not familiar with King's work and particularly
with The Talisman may feel disoriented, especially at first. But there's
so much here to revel in, from expertly excuted sequences of terror, awe
or passion the novel is a deep reservoir of genuine emotion to some of
the most wonderful characters to spring from a page in years, to a story
whose energy is so high and craft so accomplished that most readers will
wish it ran twice its great length. What is probably the most
anticipated novel of the year turns out to be its most memorable to
date, a high point in both the King and Straub canons. This will be a
monster bestseller, and deservedly so. 2 million first printing.
