![]() ![]() But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil, will do your dreaming for you. Fair warning: You will lose a good deal of sleep. In story after story, several published here for the first time, he will take you to places you've never been before, places that are both dark and vividly illuminated. ![]() There's something here for readers of every stripe and predilection-classic tales of the macabre and the monstrous, cutting-edge explorations of the borderlands between good and evil, brilliant pastiches of Chandler and Conan Doyle, even a teleplay and a non-fiction bonus, a heartfelt piece of Little League baseball that first appeared in The New Yorker. ![]() The long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the no-holds-barred force of his storytelling have never been so richly demonstrated. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? First there was Night Shift (1978), then Skeleton Crew (1985), and now Stephen King is back with a third collection of stories-a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume, with passages leading every which way to hell. Meanwhile the legend of Castle Rock returns. ![]() Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Flies settle and die on an old pair of sneakers in New York, and the Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. ![]()
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![]() As in Rashomon, the truth proves elusive, shifting, and often unwelcome. But as Ellie befriends Katie, unsettling inconsistencies in the latter’s story emerge. ![]() ![]() Ellie moves in with the Fishers to prepare Katie’s defense, a device that allows Picoult ( Keeping Faith, 1999, etc.) to juxtapose the devout Amish (or Plain Folk) and their spartan way of life with city-slicker Ellie. Leda, also Amish, prevails upon an initially reluctant Ellie to defend Katie. Enter Ellie Hathaway, a 39-year-old (and single) Philadelphia defense attorney visiting her aunt Leda. A medical exam reveals that Katie has just given birth, but she insists she has never been pregnant. In the Amish community of Paradise, Pennsylvania, 18-year-old Katie Fisher, unwed, is the chief suspect in the death by asphyxiation of a newborn found in the Fisher family’s barn. With one crucial distinction: the defendant is Amish. An uneven reworking of tabloid headlines: a young woman is charged with infanticide, and a hard-boiled attorney agrees to defend her. ![]() |