The Dark Half

Thad, a college professor who moonlights as a writer of pop thrillers under the pseudonym George Stark, finally writes a serious novel, and decides to stop writing shockers. But George Stark has come to life and doesn't want to die. Thad is forced to battle his own creation for the control of the mind which both must share.

“A chiller” (The New York Times Book Review) and #1 New York Times bestseller about a writer’s horrific and haunting pseudonym that destroys everyone on the path leading to the man who created him. After thirteen years of international bestseller stardom with his works of violent crime fiction, author George Stark is officially declared dead—revealed by a national magazine to have been killed at the hands of the man who created him: the once well-regarded but now obscure writer Thad Beaumont. Thad’s even gone so far as to stage a mock burial of his wildly successful pseudonym, complete with tombstone and the epitaph “Not a Very Nice Guy.” Although on the surface, it seems that Thad can finally concentrate on his own novels, there’s a certain unease at the prospect of leaving George Stark behind. But that’s nothing compared to the horror about to descend upon Thad’s new life. There are the vicious, out-of-control nightmares, for starters. And how is he able to explain the fact that everyone connected to George Stark’s untimely demise is now meeting a brutal end of their own in a pattern of homicidal savagery…and why each blood-soaked crime scene has Thad’s fingerprints all over it? Thad Beaumont may have once believed that George Stark was running out of things to say, but he’s going to find out just how wrong he is…

Twayne's United States Authors, English Authors, and World Authors Series present concise critical introductions to great writers and their works. Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an author's work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volume addresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writer's work. Each volume features: -- A critical, interpretive study and explication of the author's works -- A brief biography of the author -- An accessible chronology outlining the life, the work, and relevant historical context -- Aids for further study: complete notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography and an index -- A readable style presented in a manageable length

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “First-rate suspense.”—People Twenty years ago, top agents from the CIA and KGB banded together to bring down the Matarese Circle, an international cabal of power brokers and assassins whose sole objective was to achieve worldwide economic domination. Now the bloody Matarese dynasty is back—and the only man with the power to stop it may have already run out of time. CIA case officer Cameron Pryce is hot on the trail of the new Matarese alliance. His only chance to terminate its ruthless activities is to follow the trail of blood money and stone-cold killers right to the heart of its deadly conspiracy. From the Hamptons to London’s Belgrave Square, Matarese assassins have already struck with brutal efficiency, eliminating all who stand in their way. Their chain of violence is impossible to stop—until Pryce gets a rare break. One of the Matarese’s victims survives long enough to whisper dying words that will blow the case wide open: the top secret code name for legendary retired CIA agent Brandon Scofield—the only man who has ever infiltrated the Matarese inner circle and lived to tell about it. “Welcome to Robert Ludlum’s world . . . fast pacing, tight plotting, international intrigue.”—The Plain Dealer

The bestselling, beloved classic on how to go into the dark side of yourself to bring out the light -- now with new material. Debbie Ford believes that we each hold within us a trace of every human characteristic that exists, the capacity for every human emotion. We are born with the ability to express this entire spectrum of characteristics. But, Ford points out, our families and our society send us strong messages about which ones are good and bad. So when certain impulses arise, we deny them instead of confronting them, giving them a healthy voice, then letting them go. It is to these feelings that Ford turns our attention, these parts of our selves that don't fit the personae we have created for the rest of the world. She shows us the effects of living in the dark, of keeping all our supposedly unsavory impulses under wraps. We find ourselves disproportionately frustrated and angry at the selfishness of friends, the laziness of colleagues, the arrogance of siblings. When we are unable to reconcile similar impulses in ourselves, Ford explains, we waste our own energy judging others instead of empathizing. But most important, we deny ourselves the power and freedom of living authentically. Through the stories and exercises in The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Debbie Ford shows us not only how to recognize our hidden emotions, but also how to find the gifts they offer us. This is for fans of Marianne Williamson, Neale Donald Walsch, and Deepak Chopra. The very impulses we most fear may be the key to what is lacking in our lives.

In this gripping sci-fi noir for fans of The Martian and Quentin Tarantino, when an anarchic android begins wreaking havoc on a moon-based penal colony and bodies start turning up, an exiled detective must decide who he can trust in a city of criminals. Never bang your head against a wall. Bang someone else’s. Purgatory is the lawless moon colony of eccentric billionaire, Fletcher Brass and mecca for war criminals, murderers, and curious tourists alike. You can’t find better drugs, cheaper plastic surgery, or a more ominous travel advisory anywhere in the universe. But trouble is brewing in Brass’s black-market heaven. When an exiled cop comes to enact law and order in this wild new frontier, he finds himself the lead investigator in a series of high-profile murders that puts him toe to toe with the city’s charismatic founder and his equally ambitious daughter. Meanwhile, 2000 km away a memory-wiped android, Leonardo Black rampages across the lunar surface. Programmed with only the notorious “Brass Code”—a compendium of corporate laws that would make Ayn Rand blush—he journeys across the dark side of the moon with only one goal in mind: find Purgatory and conquer it.

Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic, terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller about a terrifying otherworldly discovery and the effects it has a on a small town. “Late last night and the night before, Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door…” On a beautiful June day, while walking deep in the woods on her property in Haven, Maine, Bobbi Anderson quite literally stumbles over her own destiny and that of the entire town. For the dull gray metal protrusion she discovers in the ground is part of a mysterious and massive metal object, one that may have been buried there for millennia. Bobbi can’t help but become obsessed and try to dig it out…the consequences of which will affect and transmute every citizen of Haven, young and old. It means unleashing extraordinary powers beyond those of mere mortals—and certain death for any and all outsiders. An alien hell has now invaded this small New England town…an aggressive and violent malignancy devoid of any mercy or sanity…

Includes the stories “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine A “hypnotic” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas—including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption—from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters. This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge—the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption. Next is “Apt Pupil,” the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. In “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.” “The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is,” hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.