From a Buick 8 - Softcover

In Stephen King's From a Buick 8, a group of Pennsylvania State Troopers find, and keep secret, the Buick 8, a "car" that is a portal between our world and some world far more horrid. Animals and occasionally people disappear around the Buick 8 and every so often something unpleasant comes through from the other side. The alien monsters here are creatures of pure disgust; King terrifyingly argues here that somewhere in the universe there are things for which we can have no fellow-feeling. All of the narrators are marked by the Buick 8--it is a focus for personal disaster--but they believe, rightly, that they are the competent authorities, that to hand it over would make things worse. After the death of one of the original Troopers, the rest gather round his teenage son, and tell him the tale; this is a book about storytelling and about listening and about not hearing what you are told. As such, it is a worthy fictional companion to King's excellent On Writing; significantly, its considerable strengths come partly from King's imagination, partly from the technical mastery that lets him play the narrators off against each other, and partly from research, from King's own capacity to listen to real cops. --Roz Kaveney

'A beautiful excursion into new narrative territory showing an accomplished storyteller making unusual choices and resisting the obvious at every turn...a portal into King's incredible imagination' Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday on FROM A BUICK 8

'Excellent on police lore and procedure...enriched by a double plot that shows men ageing, changing and disappearing over two decades...Impressive in its handling of narrative voice and structure as well as character' The Sunday Times on FROM A BUICK 8

'A voice as distinctive as it is compelling' Scotsman on FROM A BUICK 8

'Stephen King is blessed with an apparently inexhaustible imagination and a talent for storytelling that shows little sign of waning. In his hands at least, the art is far from being lost' Daily Mail on EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL

'Still on top of his game...An unusual and disturbing mix that no other modern writer could pull off' The Times on EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL

'Astonishingly good' - Independent on HEARTS IN ATLANTIS

'Accomplished...unputdownable...his mesmerising best' - Observer on BAG OF BONES

'King has inspired a whole generation to read. He's made them read good, witty prose...a fabulous teller of stories who can create an entire new world and make the reader live in it' - Express on DREAMCATCHER