The Stand [Kindle Edition]

In 1978, science fiction writer Spider Robinson wrote a scathing review of The Stand in which he exhorted his readers to grab strangers in bookshops and beg them not to buy it.

The Stand is like that. You either love it or hate it, but you can't ignore it. Stephen King's most popular book, according to polls of his fans, is an end-of-the-world scenario: a rapidly mutating flu virus is accidentally released from a U.S. military facility and wipes out 99 and 44/100 percent of the world's population, thus setting the stage for an apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil.

"I love to burn things up," King says. "It's the werewolf in me, I guess.... The Stand was particularly fulfilling, because there I got a chance to scrub the whole human race, and man, it was fun! ... Much of the compulsive, driven feeling I had while I worked on The Stand came from the vicarious thrill of imagining an entire entrenched social order destroyed in one stroke."

There is much to admire in The Stand: the vivid thumbnail sketches with which King populates a whole landscape with dozens of believable characters; the deep sense of nostalgia for things left behind; the way it subverts our sense of reality by showing us a world we find familiar, then flipping it over to reveal the darkness underneath. Anyone who wants to know, or claims to know, the heart of the American experience needs to read this book. --Fiona Webster

'A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel' (Sunday Times )

'One of the great storytellers of our time' (Guardian )

‘His work…plumbs, with unnerving accuracy, the hopes and fears of an entire nation’

‘As a storyteller, he is up there in the Dickens class’

‘A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel'

‘His work…plumbs, with unnerving accuracy, the hopes and fears of an entire nation'

‘As a storyteller, he is up there in the Dickens class'

First came the days of the plague…

After the days of the plague 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…

Stephen King has written some 40 books and novellas, including CARRIE, THE STAND, RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (from the collection DIFFERENT SEASONS), BAG OF BONES and ON WRITING. He won America's prestigious National Book Award. He lives with his wife, novelist Tabitha King, in Maine, USA.