Desperation - by Stephen King (Paperback)

About the Book

Several cross-country travelers--including a writer, a family on vacation, and a professor and his wife--end up in the little mining town of Desperation, where a crazy policeman and evil forces compel them to fight for their lives.

Book Synopsis

Stephen King's #1 national bestseller about a little mining town, Desperation, that many will enter on their way to somewhere else. But getting out is not easy as it would seem...

"I see holes like eyes. My mind is full of them."

For all intents and purposes, police officer Collie Entragian, chief law enforcement for the small mining town of Desperation, Nevada, appears to be completely insane. He's taken to stopping vehicles along the desolate Interstate 50 and abducting unwary travelers with various unusual ploys. There's something very wrong here in Desperation...and Officer Entragian is only at the surface of it. The secrets embedded in Desperation's landscape, and the horrifying evil that infects the town like some viral hot zone, are both awesome and terrifying. But one of Entragian's victims, young David Carver, seems to know--and it scares him nearly to death to realize this truth--that the forces being summoned to combat this frightful, maniacal aberration are of equal and opposite intensity...

About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch (May 2025), the short story collection You Like It Darker (a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), Holly (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of 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 Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.