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Stephen King Message Board 4/10/2012 4:58:18 PM
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Author King's Book Reviews

11-22-63
A high school English teacher discovers a portal to the past through which he can go back in time to change history. 11/22/63 is about a teacher from Maine who travels back in time with the intention of stopping the assassination of President Kennedy. Jake Epping is an English teacher at a high school in a small town in Maine. He discovers a portal back in time through, Al, the owner of a local diner he frequents. Al found this time travel portal in a ba...
Bag of Bones
The hero of this story is Mike Noonan, a novelist. Noonan begins by describing the death of his wife four years ago, and his subsequent grief and the resulting writer's block. Up until just after his wife's death, Noonan had been publishing a book a year. But he'd written four other manuscripts in the meantime and put them in a safe-deposit box. One at a time, these are the manuscripts that he has been sending to his publisher since his writer's block be...
Black House
Stephen King and Peter Straub are back with the long awaited sequel to The Talisman. Retired detective Jack Sawyer must revisit his long forgotten past to rescue a small boy who has been kidnapped by an agent of the Crimson King, and solve the child murders plaquing the town of French Landing. In classic King/Straub style, Black House is filled with past and present, interwoven with fantasy and reality....
Carrie
Carrie introduced a distinctive new voice in American fiction Stephen King. The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time ...

King booklist

Cell
In King's book "Cell", the main character (a comic book illustrator who is unhappily estranged from his wife and misses his young son) has just signed a great deal and decides to celebrate by buying a few treats for himself and his son. While stopping for an ice cream, he observes two teenage girls suddenly "lose it" and begin attacking each other and random passers-by. What begins as a confusing mess turns into a long, BORING plot of people being ...
Christine
A car named Christine is bought by Arnie Cunningham. The car takes control of his mind. Christine starts to kill people and there's nothing Arnie can do about it....
Cujo (Science Fiction)
A dog named Cujo gets rabies from bats and starts to attack the residents of Castle Rock,Maine. A little boy watches his door open and sees Cujo. He realizes this dog has become evil. ...
Cujo (Thriller/Action)
Donna Trenton finds herself trapped in her car with her son Tad by a rabid Saint Bernard who is intent on seeing them dead, while the summer sun slowly brings them to the brink of dehydration. Donna Trenton, wife to Vic and mother of four-year old Tad knows that having an affair will destroy her marriage and family, but she cannot let go of the need for more passion in her life. Being forced to move to Castle Rock. Maine, Donna has found her home life un...
Desperation
Theres a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It's know as Desperation, Nevada. It's not a very nice place to live. Desperation is a story about a couple in love, a writer on a roadtrip and the man the man looking after him, a family headed for las vegas, a hitchhiker and the cop that brings them all together to the little mining town of Desperation, Nevada. These people will all be brought into Desperation by the cop...
Doctor Sleep
I really enjoyed that this book was not simply a horror-thriller, but a story between good and evil. The protagonists, Abra Stone and Dan Torrence fight evil in all forms: mentally through the psychological trauma of The Shining and its esoteric quality, physically by aging with a talent that is unpredictable in nature, and spiritually by the True Knot - a group of supernatural, vampire-like humans that feed on children who shine. Abra and Dan are the...

Stephen King list of books

Dolores Claiborne
On a hot July day in 1963,while a total eclipse of the sun darkened the skies over the central portion of the state of Maine, Dolores Claiborne's drunkard, abusive husband mysteriously plunged into a well and was killed. The authorities and everyone else on Little Tall Island thought Dolores had killed the man but no charges were ever brought. Then, thirty years later, Dolores is once again suspected of involvement in the death of a rich woman for whom s...
Dream Catcher
Scribner, Mar 2001, 28.00, 624 pp. ISBN: 0-7432-1138-3 Though at times the world seems more like a place filled with terrible marmalade, unselfish acts occur to remind everyone that good exists. Take the town of Derry where high school bullies regularly pick on Duddits, humiliating him in nasty ways like stripping him of his clothes and making him sit on or eat dog excrement. Four younger lads (Harry, Beaver, Jonesy, and Pete) rescue the Do...
Dreamcatcher
Jonesy, Henry, Pete, and Beaver are four normal boys growing up together in Derry, Maine. While walking home from school one day they save another boy, named "Duddits" from a gang of bullies. Duddits is mentally handicaped but has mental powers, like mindreading and he "sees the line", a compass of sorts to keep him from getting lost. A girl from Duddit's school goes missing and the boys try to find her. Duddit's helps by sharing his special gift wit...
Everything's Eventual
Scribner, Mar 2002, 28.00, 464 pp. ISBN: 0743235150 Even though its seems unreal, Stephen King has not written a short story collection in almost a decade (see NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES). However, the flexible grandmaster returns to the form with this fourteen-story book while showing (as he continually does with novels), he can still spin quite a superb short tale. Each tale is dark and demonstrates Mr. King's writing abilities whil...
Firestarter
Andrew and Victoria met when they volunteered for a medical study and the study gave them each psychic abilities, which resulted in their daughter being able to produce fire. A little girl and her dad are running from a powerful group who want to poke, prod, test and eventually kill them. Vicki and Andy McGee were like many other broke college students and when they heard about a quick way to earn some cash, they were in line for that medical test. It se...
From A Buick 8
This novel gives readers a glance inside the lives of a group of not so ordinary police officers, who have kept a very large secret hidden away in the back of Shed D. This story is about a mysterious Buick that has possibly eaten people and occasionally teleports strange creatures from another dimension or plane of existence. ...

Stephen King novels

Insomnia
In this thriller, Stephen King's seventy-year-old protagonist, retired salesman Ralf Roberts, discovers that strange beings have descended upon his hometown, Derry, Maine, when a friend and neighbor begins to behave in an uncharacteristically violent and abusive manner. Before long, the lives of Ralph's friend Bill McGovern; his lover, Lois Chasse; Ralf's own--and those of hundreds of other Derry citizens--hang in the balance. The waking nightmare won'...
It (Science Fiction)
When Will Denborough and his old school buddies receive a phone call each, they are flung back into a world of terror they had long numbed their minds to. On returning to their home town, Derry, they find the old evil has returned again - they hadn't killed it after all! The story flips between the adolescents they were and their battle, and the cynical adults they have become trying to defeat a foe....
It (Thriller/Action)
Kids in a small town called Derry are killed by "It". George, Bills brother, is one of these victims. Bill wants revenge. He and his other freinds try to kill it by going into the sewers. They think they killed it. They were wrong. Thirty years later they all find themselves back in Derry to fight It again....
Joyland
A college student takes a summer job, only to discover a mystery. Devin Jones, a college student from Maine, takes a job at the Joyland amusement park in order to escape the greatest heartbreak (so far) of his life. At the amusement park, Devin meets a cast of characters as unique as they are strange - Madame Fortuna, the park's resident fortuneteller, ride operator Lane Hardy, jack-of-all-trades Fred Dean, and the park's aging owner, Bradley Easterbrook...
Langoliers
Group of people on an airplane find themselves alone in a strange place on earth. They are trying to understand where they are and later find out that they went back in time. Ugly monsters, the Langoliers attack them in their way to "eat" the past. The people find their way back through the hole in the time matter and appear in the present. ...
Lisey's Story
"Lisey's Story," is a romance, celebrating the enduring love between Scott Landon, a wealthy and celebrated author (much like King himself) and his wife of 25 years, Lisey. When the story begins, Lisey is a middle-aged widow, unable to clean out her late husband's office because she's still in mourning over Scott's untimely death two years earlier. Then two almost simultaneous events occur: First her sister Amanda becomes so depressed she must be ho...

Stephen King information

Misery
An author by the name of Paul Sheldon ends up having a terrible car accident on the highway. He awakes to find himself in a bed that is not his own, nor a hospital bed. Instead, an ex-nurse named Annie Wilkes is standing over him, telling him she is his number one fan. But he later finds out it isn't fortunate to have been found by her. Enraged that Paul killed his main character in his series "Misery", she insists that he write a book, just for her, of...
Mr. Mercedes
A retired detective contemplating suicide finds new life when a craft mass murderer who eluded police reaches out to gloat. K. William Hodges is a retired detective who is attempting to find a reason to live without the thrill of his old job when he is forced to close a case that during his career, he and his partner were unable to solve. One day while suffering the soporific effects of afternoon daytime television and an increasingly unhealthy diet, Hod...
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
In his third collection of short stories Stephen King treats us to a variety of tales--one about a man's quest for revenge against a Mafia kingpin who killed his wife, one about a man who sees a giant finger growing in his bathroom and is eventually driven to madness by his desire to eradicate it, and even a chilling tale about the end of the world. In addition to the fine short stories there is a complete one act play and a rather long piece of non-fic...
On Writing
The first half of King's book is not about writing. The reader is opened up to a new side of Stephen King--the child he once was, the life he lived growing up, the person he has become over the years. King relates how he began writing as a child, making his own novel version of a horror film he saw, and selling copies of the book at school (which he got in trouble for). But he kept on trying to make his writing pay off. For several years he wrote...
Pet Sematary
Louis Creed and his family move into a quiet new village, away from the dangers of the big city. In this village is a cemetary in which children for generations had buried their deceased pets. Following the death of the Creed family cat, Jud Crandall, Louis' new neighbour takes Louis upto the pet cemetary (throughout the book spelt "Sematary") to bury the cat. He is about to inform his family about the death of the cat, when the cat returns home from...
Rose Madder
This horror story is all about a cop-husband, Norman, who is a REAL MONSTER to his wife, and then to others. Rosie has tolerated his abuse for 14 years, and she has had it. She needs to escape and she does just that, taking Norman's ATM card with her, and fetching the nearest taxi. She draws money out of his account to pull her through, (a few hundred dollars), and trashes the ATM card after. She ends up 750 miles away from home in a resort for battered ...
Rose Red
A college psychology professor who specilizes in the parapsychological fields gathers a group of various psychics to do a 3 day study of a legendary local house named Rose Red. The house attacks the psychics and kills 5 of them. The ones who escape alive all gather to see the fate of the house....
Salem's Lot (Science Fiction)
In the small town of Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, strange things have occurred for many years, many of them connected to the Marsten House. When Ben Mears returns to his childhood home after becoming a successful writer, he finds that many things have not changed. The old Marsten House is still there as the local haunted house, and the residents of the town are as intrusive and mean-spirited as ever. Ben meets Susan, someone he comes to care about almo...
Salem's Lot (Thriller/Action)
Salem's Lot describes the destruction of a small New England town by Barlow, Vampire King. Barlow's only opponents are Ben Mears, a local writer, Mark Petrie, a teenage boy, and four of their friends. Led by Ben, these six people gradually become aware that the townspeople are being turned into the undead. Although Ben and Mark ultimately kill the King Vampire, this victory comes at great personal cost. All their friends die along the way, including ...
Shawshank Redemption
Imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, Andy Dufresne spends a quarter of a century confined to the less than accommodating quarters of Shawshank Prison. He cannot prove his innocence because no one will listen, so he spends that time constructively. With the aid of a small rock hammer and a pin-up picture of the actress, Rita Hayworth, Andy Dufresne attempts to do something which has been done seldom if ever--escape from Shawshank!...
The Colorado Kid
The novel opens as the news staff of The Weekly Islander pays for lunch at a restaurant. The editor Dave Bowie and founder Vinge Teague test young intern Stephanie McCann's powers of deduction regarding their tipping procedure. The friendly assessment becomes more intense as the elderly island natives and Stephanie return to the office, and she asks if the veteran reporters have "ever come across a real unexplained mystery". The third-person na...
The Dark Half
Thad decides to eliminate his pen name (George Stark) but George won't allow it. George comes to life and begins to kill people close to Thad. Thad and George have the same DNA, they are virtually the same person, and Thad is accused of the murders. The struggle is on!...
The Dark Tower
Scribner, Sep 2004, 35.00 ISBN: 1880418622 In spite of shifting time and place, Roland the Last Gunfighter knows he is nearing his destination and thus the final confrontation of his quest. The center of the time-place continuum, THE DARK TOWER, beckons just beyond the horizon. However, as he has learned through his dangerous journey time is not linear and his path still has detours and setbacks as Roland and his ka-tet battle vampires in New Y...
The Dark Tower Part V: The Wolves of the Calla
About every thirty years or so, in the sleepy group of towns called "The Calla", something horrible happens--the wolves come. This is what Roland and his band of followers, or, "Ka-tet", must face in Stephen King's new sci-fi, horror, mystery, fantasy addition to the widely read and praised, "Dark Tower" series, "The Wolves of the Calla". In the Dark Tower series, the reader is thrust into a post-apocalyptic world where Roland, the last of a long-lin...
The Dead Zone
Johnny Smith is a popular high school teacher. After a terrible car accident he is left in a coma. He awakes 41/2 years later with the ability to see past and future things about people that he has physical contact with. His main fear through these visions are centered on a local politician and his illegal activities....
The Diary of Ellen Rimbaur: My Life At Rose Red
The shattering of a young girls life by an eccentric man. A house with a mind of it's own....
The Drawing of the Three
The Drawing of the Three Viking, Jul 2003, 35.00, 406 pp. ISBN: 0670032557 The “confrontation' with the Man in Black finally occurred (see THE GUNSLINGER), but left Roland unfulfilled. Roland is on a beach assaulted by a sea monstrosity ripping off two fingers and a toe. After killing this creature, he begins the second part of his journey to the Dark Tower. Roland enters a door on the beach labeled “The Prisoner” and realizes he sees an eerie...
The Eyes of the Dragon
The main character in this story is Peter, a good prince destined to become king until a scandalous plot shows him guilty of murder. His mother, the queen, was a beautiful, wise queen. She taught him his manners, and the difference between kings and other men. She died in child birth, killed by the midwife who was obliged to do it as she was in debt for the life of her son. The king, Roland, was an ugly figure. He was often sad, and confused, compelling...
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a departure for Stephen King from his usual "creepy monster in the haunted house" driven works of horror and suspense. Here he introduces nine-year old Tricia who is struggling to make sense of the breakup of her parent's marriage. The fractured family of mom, brother and Tricia are on a weekend day-hike in the woods along a popular stretch of the Appalachian Trail near the Maine and New Hampshire border. As mom and br...
The Green Mile
A prisoner has special powers. He can cure anything. He cures a mouse, and he cures many other things and he is a prisoner, because he is believed to have killed two girls, which actually he did not do at all. ...
The Gunslinger
Roland Deshayn, or Roland of Gillead is walking the desert chasing the "Man in Black". The "Man in Black" or Walter is an evil mage. They are in a place/time that has "Moved On", which seems to mean that a great war against Gillead has destroyed a very modern planet, leaving only desert wastelands and very few survivors. Roland meets one survivor, an old man with a talking pet raven, and sits to eat with him before resuming the chase. During the...
The Long Walk (Science Fiction)
100 young boys (under 18) walk for as long as they can. The Walk starts in Maine, and usually ends somewhere around Maryland. The twist is that if they walk under 4 MPH and are warned 3 times, or try to go into the crowd, they are shot on sight by patrolling soldiers. The last man alive wins the grand prize, which is whatever he wants for the rest of his life. The main character, Ray Garraty, is the hometown favorite, and the story mostly deals wit...
The Long Walk (Thriller/Action)
This story is about a boy named Ray Garraty who is 16 and has joined together with 99 other long walkers. They walk for days, and if they fall under speed and get 3 warnings they're shot on the spot making this a walk for survival. There can be only 1 winner, so this is a walk for one's honour and one's life. The winner is granted everything their heart desires....
The Running Man
In a decadent, overpolluted future, the most popular game show is The Running Man, where a volunteer is hunted by bounty hunters, police, and viewers. When found, they are killed. An unemployed factory worker volunteers so he get money for his dying daughter....
The Shining (Science Fiction)
Danny moves with his parents to the Overlook Hotel to be caretakers for the winter. He learns he has a special power called the shinning in which he can see, hear and feel things others can not. He discovers that the hotel is haunted and is slowly possessing his father, driving him mad. When his father sucumbs to the madness of the Hotel it is up to Danny to call for help and save his mother through his new found gifts. ...
The Shining (Thriller/Action)
After his father takes a job as caretaker of a secluded hotel/resort for one winter season, the main character must fight for his life when the grim history of the hotel is revived due to his "shine." The battle is further complicated when the presence "attacks" his parents, driving his fahter to madness and his mother to a near-death state. ...
The Stand
It's about 1985, and a deadly plague has struck the world, killing off a lot of the population. But for the survivors, it's not over yet. For there is a evil that is present. And it will all come down to a battle between the good and the evil. A final stand. ...
The Talisman
"Travelling Jack" is 12 and his mother is dying - Untill he meets Speedy Parker, an old black fairground hawker, who teaches him how to change their lives for ever. Jack finds himself in the Territories, a wonderous yet terrifying place, so like home yet with creatures so IMPOSSIBLE! Jack must journey from one coast of the USA to another (though distance is covered more quickly in the Territories there are stranger dangers all around), and he must brin...
The Tommyknockers
When Bobbi Anderson finds a strange metal disc in the ground, she starts to notice she can think clearer and has been given certain supernatural abilities. Especially when it comes to building and creating things. As she begins to excavate this massive disc made of an unearthly metal, stranger things begin to happen; kids begin to disappear, people commit suicide, and the town seems as if it's under a spell. Before long these somethings, which are nev...
The Waste Lands
Viking, 2003, 35.00, 402 pp. ISBN: 0670032565 After recuperating from the final door confrontation (see THE DRAWING OF THE THREE), Roland trains Eddie and Susannah on how to survive as gunslingers. All goes well until a seventy 70-foot-tall bear attacks Eddie. Susannah and Roland team up to kill the bear, who actually is one of the twelve guardians of the beams. The gunslingers follow the bear's trail, which takes them to a portal that enabl...
Thinner (Science Fiction)
Billy Halleck was satisfied with his normal, routine life. He enjoyed his family, his job as an attorney, but he was not so happy with his weight. All of that changed the day he accidently killed someone with his car. Since that day, he has lost weight. His colleagues have changed as well but not in the same ways. They have suffered body mutations. Halleck puts the pieces of the puzzle together but wonders if he is a little too late. He has been c...
Thinner (Thriller/Action)
William Halleck a lawyer with a happy family needs to lose some weight, or he's headed into heart-attack field. One day he runs over a gypsie's daughter, and kills her. He is cursed by the girl's father. "Thinner," he says to William. And from then on, William rapidly loses more and more weight to the point of emaciation. William may die, unless someone can do something to remove the curse. And that may take the gypsies. ...
Wizard and Glass
Viking, 2003, 40.00, 668 pp. ISBN: 0670032573 Blaine the killing machine drives the train at speeds that ultimately means death to the passengers unless Roland and his companions, (Jake, Eddie, Susannah, and Oy) can find a way to defeat the seemingly invincible computer that thrives on riddles and battles of wits. Roland and cohorts appear to have done the impossible in a verbal gunfight with Blaine. Following that High Noon debate, Roland ex...
Wolves of the Calla
Scribner, Nov 2003, 35.00, 736 pp. ISBN: 1880418568 The original gunslinger Roland Deschain and his companions (Eddie Dean, Susannah Holmes, Jake Chambers) along with their pet Bumblers Oy detour from the quest of averting the eradication of the Dark Tower. Though they have no time to leave the Beam's path if they are to prevent Chaos from ruling the worlds, Roland follows his Ka anyway. The group are in the farming community Calla Bryn Stur...