From the Publisher
"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ."
writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting
confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black
quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that
stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off
the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a
gruesome train of murder and madness.
In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the
stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a
shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for
dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with
another stranger: the one inside herself.
"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the
nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil
not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich
recompense for a lifetime of resentment.
When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his
business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage.
Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers
the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery,
rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good
marriage.
Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight,
which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank
Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars
proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.
About the Author
Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, he became a teacher. His spare time was spent writing short stories and novels. King's first novel would never have been published if not for his wife. She removed the first few chapters from the garbage after King had thrown them away in frustration. Three months later, he received a $2,500 advance from Doubleday Publishing for the book that went on to sell a modest 13,000 hardcover copies. That book, Carrie, was about a girl with telekinetic powers who is tormented by bullies at school. She uses her power, in turn, to torment and eventually destroy her mean-spirited classmates. When United Artists released the film version in 1976, it was a critical and commercial success. The paperback version of the book, released after the movie, went on to sell more than two-and-a-half million copies. Many of King's other horror novels have been adapted into movies, including The Shining, Firestarter, Pet Semetary, Cujo, Misery, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers. Under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, King has written the books The Running Man, The Regulators, Thinner, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and Rage. King is one of the world's most successful writers, with more than 100 million copies of his works in print. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages, and he writes new books at a rate of about one per year. In 2003, he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
About the Book
Following on the heels of his stunning #1 bestseller "Under the Dome," Stephen King delivers a new collection of four original never-before-published stories, all linked by the common theme of retribution.
