Carrie

[A] genius for storytelling One of the few horror writers who can truly make the flesh creep Guaranteed to chill you * New York Times * How can it be that it was published 50 years ago? Even though it was written in an age before smartphones and social media, the specific teenage-girl pain of the novel feels fresh and stinging . . . Carrie reads like a book written without fear, the calling card of a writer with immense storytelling power . . . One of my favourite things about the novel is its unusual scrapbook effect. Interspersing the story with snippets and clippings from fictionalised articles about the "Carrie phenomenon", King creates a sense of foreboding . . . a great work: haunting, hard to stop reading, close to the bone. And still exhilarating, half a century later * INDEPENDENT * King is telling us something about the alienation of the outsider, and the cruelty of those who keep them out. But morality aside, it's a revenge fantasy. That's the enduring appeal of Carrie. When King was first conceptualising Carrie, a character he said was inspired by a few tortured and abused girls he knew in his childhood and in his adult life as a teacher, he could never have known how powerful of an archetype he was articulating in her... This is a thriving narrative, but before there was that Texan star Pearl and that Promising Young Woman, there was the girl who could move things with her mind. There was Carrie * Varsity *

STEPHEN KING is the author of more than seventy books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His crime thrillers featuring Holly Gibney include Mr Mercedes, winner of the Edgar Award for best novel, and The Outsider, both of which were adapted into successful TV series, as well as Finders Keepers, End of Watch and the title story from If It Bleeds. Many of his titles are the basis for major motion pictures including IT, Stand By Me (adapted from The Body) and The Shawshank Redemption, which is IMDb's top-rated movie of all time. King is the recipient of The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence 2022, the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.