Carrie

A superb novel set in classic Stephen King territory - a small new England town about to be engulfed by terror. Turn off the television - in fact, why don't you turn off all the lights except for the one over your favourite chair? - and we'll talk about vampires here in the dim. I think I can make you believe in them. Stephen King, from the introduction. Salem's Lot is a small New England town with the usual quota of gossips, drinkers, weirdos and respectable folk.

Misery Chastain was dead. Paul Sheldon had just killed her - with relief, with joy. Misery had made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of best sellers. And now he wanted to get on to some real writing. That's when the car accident happened, and he woke up in pain in a strange bed. But it wasn't the hospital. Annie Wilkes had pulled him from the wreck, brought him to her remote mountain home, splinted and set his mangled legs. The good news was that Annie was a nurse and had painkilling drugs. The bad news was that she was Paul's Number One Fan.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.... He was not a werewolf, a vampire, a ghoul, or an unnameable creature from the enchanted forest or snow wastes; he was only a cop.... Cujo is a huge Saint Bernard dog, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. Then one day Cujo chases a rabbit into a bolt-hole. Except it isn't a rabbit warren anymore. It is a cave inhabited by rabid bats. And Cujo falls sick. Very sick.

Danny is only five years old, but in the words of old Mr Hallorann he is a 'shiner', aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, Danny's visions grow out of control. As winter closes in and blizzards cut them off, the hotel seems to develop a life of its own. It is meant to be empty. So who is the lady in Room 217, and who are the masked guests going up and down in the elevator? And why do the hedges shaped like animals seem so alive?

Dolores Claiborne has a confession to make.... She will take her time. Won't be hurried. Will do it her way, sparing neither details nor feelings. Hers or anyone else's. This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that takes you to the edge of darkness. Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell, and you'd better pay attention - or else.

Christine was eating into his mind, burrowing into his unconscious. Christine, blood red, fat, and finned, was 20. Her promise lay all in her past. Greedy and big, she was Arnie's obsession, a '58 Plymouth Fury. Broken down but not finished. There was still power in her - a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting. A malign power that corroded the mind and turned ownership into possession.

"You're a firestarter honey.... just one big zippo lighter." A year ago, he was an upstanding instructor of English at Harrison State College. Now Andy is on the run with his daughter, a pigtailed girl named Charlie. A girl with an unimaginably terrifying gift. A gift which could be useful to corrupt authorities. Soon Charlie will be caught up in the menace of a fateful drug experiment and a sinister government ploy….

The house looked right, felt right to Dr Louis Creed. Rambling, old, unsmart and comfortable. A place where the family could settle, the children grow and play and explore. The rolling hills and meadows of Maine seemed a world away from the fume-choked dangers of Chicago. Only the occasional big truck out on the two-lane highway, grinding up through the gears, hammering down the long gradients, growled out an intrusive threat. But behind the house and far away from the road: that was safe.

At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, along the lonely stretch of cells known as the Green Mile, killers such as "Billy the Kid" Wharton and the possessed Eduard Delacroix await death strapped in "Old Sparky". Guards as decent as Paul Edgecombe and as sadistic as Percy Wetmore watch over them.

Everything is familiar. But everything has changed. Coming back to the little community is like walking into a nightmare for Jim Gardener, poet, drunk, potential suicide. It all looks the same: the house; the furniture; Jim's friend, Bobbi; her beagle (though ageing); even the woods out at the back. But it was in the woods that Bobbi stumbled over the odd, part-buried object and felt a peculiar tingle as she brushed the soft earth away. Everything is familiar. But everything is about to change.

There was a new shop in town. Run by a stranger. Needful Things, the sign said. The oddest name. A name that caused some gossip and speculation among the good folks of Castle Rock, Maine, while they waited for opening day. Eleven-year-old Brian Rusk was the first customer and he got just what he wanted, a very rare 1956 Sandy Koufax baseball card. Signed. Cyndi Rose Martin was next. A Lalique vase. A perfect match for her living room decor. Something for everyone.

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine, was just their hometown: familiar, well ordered for the most part. A good place to live. It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing....

First came the days of the plague. Then came the dreams. 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 charnel house and Prince of Evil. His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms. For hundreds of thousands of fans who read The Stand in its original version and wanted more, this new edition is Stephen King's gift.

A collection of tales to invade and paralyse the mind as the safe light of day is infiltrated by the shadows of the night. As you listen, the clutching fingers of terror brush lightly across the nape of the neck, reach round from behind to clutch and lock themselves, white-knuckled, around the throat.This is the horror of ordinary people and everyday objects that become strangely altered; a world where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where the familiar and the friendly lure and deceive.

The sparrows are flying again. The idea - unbidden, inexplicable - haunts the edge of Thad Beaumont's mind. Thad should be happy. For years now it is his secret persona, George Stark, author of superviolent pulp thrillers, who has paid the family bills. But now Thad is writing seriously again under his own name, and his menacing pseudonym has been buried forever. And yet...the sparrows are flying again, and something is terribly wrong in Thad Beaumont's world.