Stephen King
Stephen King (September 21, 1947 - ) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, memoirist, graphic literature writer, and singular force to be reckoned with in publishing, book selling, and popular entertainment. He is the author of 61 novels (at the present moment) and over 200 short stories. His range of style and subject is underrated by assumptions of reviewers and readers who prefer (or abhor) one “Stephen King” over another “Stephen King.” I would suggest that there are few writers, no matter what pretensions they or their readers have, who have provided a more comprehensive analysis of post-WWII America into the 21st Century. King pursues relentlessly our fears, our paranoias, our comforts, our dreams, our nightmares, our obsessions, our moments of grace. He is breathtakingly familiar with our materialistic dependencies, sometimes to a satirical extent, sometimes as a secular hymn to his love of American culture. Always, however, King is curious about people, the everyday remarkable and interesting people who live in his and our world. He sees how they act, imagines what they think, deduces what they believe — and then he tests them. And us.
I remember seeing the all-black-but-one-red-blood-drop cover of ‘Salem’s Lot in a book kiosk in Dulles International Airport when I was a kid. That hooked me. It is still one of the scariest books I know. As a bookseller I have sold King for 40 years as of 2022. He never gets old. Enjoy — if you dare.
Thinner
Thinner
This “superbly crafted…extraordinary” (Booklist) #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, “pulsates with evil…[and] will have you on the edge of your seat” (Publishers Weekly).
Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper-class excess. He’s got it all—an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family…and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections and gets off with a slap on the wrist…much to the fury of the woman’s mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: “Thinner.”
Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly—and rapidly—by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck…unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what’s happened to him before he utterly wastes away…