Bookshelf: stephen

2. Spark Notes on the book

4. Read the text online here

5. Goodreads page for the book

Friday, July 13, 2012

The Wind Through the Keyhole - The Dark Tower #4.5 (Stephen King)

The Wind Through the Keyhole - The Dark Tower #4.5

Stephen King

Blurb: For readers new to Stephen King's epic seven-volume fantasy masterpiece The Dark Tower, The Wind Through the Keyhole is both a stand-alone novel and a wonderful introduction to the series. It is an enchanting Russian doll of a novel, a story within a story within a story, which features both the younger and older Roland Deschain - Mid-World's last gunslinger - on his quest to find the Dark Tower.

For the legions of fans it is a gift of deeper insight and a chance to discover what happened to Roland and his ka-tet between the time they leave the Emerald City and arrive on the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis.

We join Roland and his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. As they shelter from the screaming wind and the snapping trees, Roland tells them not just one strange tale, but two - and in doing so sheds fascinating light on his own troubled past.

In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother's death, Roland is sent by his father to a ranch to investigate a recent slaughter. Here Roland discovers a bloody churn of bootprints, clawed animal tracks, terrible carnage - evidence that the 'skin-man', a shape shifter, is at work. There is only one surviving witness; a brave but terrified boy called Bill Streeter.

Roland, himself only a teenager, calms the boy by reciting a story from Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, 'The Wind Through the Keyhole'. 'A person's never too old for stories,' he says to Bill. 'Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.'

And stories like these, they live for us.

ISBN: 9781444731712 (Paperback)

Year: 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Pages: 335 (Fiction)

Links

1. Goodreads page

4. Review of the book

5. Another review

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Insomnia (Stephen King)

Insomnia

Stephen King

Blurb: You'll lose a lot of sleep.

Ralph does. At first he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then the hallucinations start - the colours, shapes and strange auras. Not to mention the bald doctors who always turn up at the scene of a death.

That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. When he begins to understand why his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting out of control - dangerously so. And why his home town is about to become the new Armageddon...

Insomnia is a relentless waking nightmare in which the master of horror and suspense guarantees you won't rest in peace.

ISBN: 9780340952795 (Paperback)

Year: 1994

Publisher: Hodder

Pages: 902 (Fiction)

Links

1. Wikipedia page

3. Goodreads page for the book

4. Buy from Amazon

5. Wiki on the book

Monday, May 28, 2012

The Playboy Interviews - They Played the Game (Edited by Stephen Randall)

The Playboy Interviews - They Played the Game

Edited by Stephen Randall

Blurb: In a magazine known for its photographs, the Playboy Interview stands out today as the best long-form interview in any magazine. The Interview is both incisive and entertaining, and important figures from all walks of life - many of whom honour no other interview requests - have given life - and career-altering interviews in the magazine's pages.

The Playboy Interviews: They Played the Game is the first in an ongoing series that will collect the most memorable interviews from the magazine's history. They Played the Game features some of the most revered - and reviled - American sports stars from the past six decades candidly discussing controversial issues including race, gender, drugs and sex. From Pete Rose's frank statements about gambling in sports to Mike Tyson's incendiary thoughts on the alleged rape that haunted his boxing career, from Billie Jean King's views of the changing role of women in professional sports to O.J. Simpson's raw and unsettling statements both before and after the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, there has never been a compilation of interviews quite like this one. More than simply jocks talking sports, these conversations are a fascinating reflection of the American psyche and our ever evolving cultural perceptions.

ISBN: 9781595820464 (Hardback)

Year: 2006

Publisher: Milwaukie Press

Pages: 480 (Non-Fiction)

Links

1. Buy from Amazon

3. Goodreads page

4. Commentary on the book

5. Buy from Barnes & Noble

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Stand (Stephen King)

The Stand

Stephen King

Blurb: Dark dreams that warned of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the carnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse loonms.

This is Stephen King's classic masterpiece in its original form, with a foreword by the author.

ISBN: 9780340920954 (Paperback)

Year: 1978

Publisher: Hodder

Pages: 1325 (Fiction)

Links

2. IMDB for the miniseries based on the book

3. Author's official site

4. Buy from Amazon

5. Goodreads page for the book

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The Last Train to Kazan (Stephen Miller)

The Last Train to Kazan

Stephen Miller

Blurb: As World War One rumbles to a close and Russia is wracked by bloody civil war, ex-Tsarist agent Pyotr Ryzhkov is picked up by the Bolshevik secret police. He has two choices: find the Russian Royal Family, or face the firing squad. But as he ventures into the war-torn city where they are rumoured to be held, it seems that one choice is little better than the other.

Yekaterinburg is at the end of the line - a frontier town cut off from Moscow by the White Russians and their allies. It is a nest of foreign spies armed with gold and guns, those determined to sell the family to the highest bidder and local soviets desperate to kill them. Whispers and rumour flood the city, but in the fog of war Ryzhkov knows that only the last man to see the Romanovs will ever know the truth.

ISBN: 9780007191239 (Paperback)

Year: 2007

Publisher: Harper

Pages: 420 (Fiction)

Links

1. Review of the book

2. Publisher's page for the book

4. Author's official site

5. Goodreads page

Friday, February 3, 2012

Carrie (Stephen King)

Carrie

Stephen King

Blurb: Carrie White is no ordinary girl.

Carrie White has a gift - the gift of telekinesis.

To be invited to Prom Night by Tommy Ross is a dream come true for Carrie - the first step towards social acceptance by her high school colleagues.

But events will take a decidedly macabre turn on the horrifying and endless night as she is forced to exercise her terrible gift on the town that mocks and loathes her...

ISBN: 0450025179 (Paperback)

Year: 1974

Publisher: New English Library

Pages: 222 (Fiction)

Links

2. IMDB page for the film adaption

3. Author's official page for the book

4. Buy from Amazon

5. Article on possible new film adaption of the book

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Green Mile (Stephen King)

The Green Mile

Stephen King

Blurb: The Green Mile: those who walk it do not return, because at the end of that walk is the room in which sits Cold Mountain Penitentiary's electric chair. In 1932 the newest resident on death row is John Coffey, a giant of a black man convicted of the brutal murder of two little girls. But nothing is as it seems with John Coffey, and around him unfolds a bizarre and horrifying story.

Evil murderer or holy innocent - whichever he is - Coffey has strange powers which may yet offer salvation to others, even if they can do nothing to save him.

ISBN: 9781407231013 (Paperback)

Year: 1996

Publisher: Orion Books

Pages: 433 (Fiction)

Links

5. IMDB page for the film adaption of the book

4. Study guide for the book

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Song of Susannah: The Dark Tower VI (Stephen King)

Song of Susannah: The Dark Tower VI

Stephen King

Blurb: Roland Deschain, gunslinger, hero, continues his perilous adventures in search of the key to the quest that will define his life.

Roland's loyal followers Jake, Father Callahan and Oy set out to break Susannah's date with destiny in New York.

Meanwhile, Roland and Eddie brave the state of Maine in the summer of 1977. It is a frightful world where bullets are flying. A world inhabited by the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot...

Driven by revelation and suspense, this pivotal instalment in this magnificent epic will leave readers gasping to read the electrifying conclusion, The Dark Tower.

ISBN: 9780340827208 (Paperback)

Year: 2004

Publisher: Hodder

Pages: 436 (Fiction)

Links

2. Buy from Amazon

3. Author's official page

4. Review of the book

5. Another review

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Blaze (Stephen King / Richard Bachman)

Blaze
Richard Bachman / Stephen King

Blurb: Once upon a time, a fellow named Richard Bachman wrote Blaze on an Olivetti typewriter, then turned the machine over to Stephen King, who used it to write Carrie. Bachman died in 1985 ('cancer of the pseudonym') but this last gripping Bachman novel resurfaced after being hidden away for decades - an unforgettable crime story tinged with sadness and suspense.

Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., was always a small-time delinquent. None too bright either, thanks to the beatings he got as a kid. Then Blaze met George Rackley, a seasoned pro with a hundred cons and one big idea. The kidnapping should go off without a hitch, with George as the brains behind their dangerous scheme. But there's only one problem: by the time the deal goes down, Blaze's partner in crime is dead. Or is he?

ISBN: 9781416555049 (Paperback)
Year: 2007
Publisher: Pocket Books
Pages: 373 (Fiction)

Links
1. Wikipedia page for the book
2. Author's page for the novel
3. Google books page
4. Review of the book
5. Buy from Amazon

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Lisey's Story (Stephen King)

Lisey's Story
Stephen King

Blurb: 'To the public eye, the spouses of well-known writers are all but invisible, and no one knew it better than Lisey Landon.' That is until the maddeningly humid, maddeningly muggy day her husband Scott, a celebrated, award-winning novelist, inaugurated the site of a new library. The day that started with a broken toothglass...

Years later, Lisey is ruminating on their marriage of profound, sometimes frightening intimacy. Lisey has always known there was a powerful place where her husband ventured to face his demons. Now it's Lisey's turn. And what begins as a widow's effort to sort through her husband's effects becomes a perilous journey into the heart of darkness.

Lisey's Story is a beautifully textured suspense narrative about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness and the secret language of love.

ISBN: 0340898941 (Paperback)
Year: 2006
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Pages: 562 (Fiction)

Links
1. Wikipedia page for the book
2. Review of the book
3. Another review
4. Buy from Amazon
5. Author's official page

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The Gunslinger - The Dark Tower #1 (Stephen King)

The Gunslinger - The Dark Tower #1
Stephen King

Blurb: This newly revised and expanded edition of The Gunslinger, for which Stephen King has written a special introduction and forward, is the mesmerising first book in his spectacular, epic Dark Tower series.

In The Gunslinger, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own.

In his first step towards the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower, Roland encounters an alluring woman named Alice, begins a friendship with Jake, a kid from New York, and faces an agonising choice between damnation and salvation as he pursues the Man in Black.

Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter.

Set in a world of extraordinary circumstances, filled with stunning visual imagery and unforgettable characters, The Dark Tower series is Stephen King's most visionary piece of storytelling that may well be his crowning achievement.

ISBN: 9780340832233 (Paperback)
Year: 1982
Publisher: New English Library
Pages: 238 (Fiction)

Links
1. Wikipedia page for the book
2. Buy from Amazon
3. Author's official page for the series
4. Goodreads page
5. Comic book adaption of the book

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Full Dark, No Stars (Stephen King)

Full Dark, No Stars

Stephen King

Blurb: What tips someone over the edge to commit a crime?

For a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead.

A cozy mystery writer plots a savage revenge after a brutal encounter with a stranger.

Harry Streeter gets the chance to cure himself from illness - if he agrees to impose misery on an old rival.

And Darcy Anderson discovers a box containing her husband's dark and terrifying secrets - he's not just the man who keeps his nails short and collects coins. And now he's heading home...

ISBN: 9781444712568 (Paperback)

Year: 2011

Publisher: Hodder

Pages: 453 (Fiction)

Links