Stephen King: The Dark Half (USA 2024)

From the Publisher:
"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...

Stephen King: The Dark Half. 35th aniversary edition. Pocket Books, ISBN: 9781668052723 (November, 2024), 608 p., $11.99.

Stephen King: The Dark Half (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic "wondrously frightening" (Publishers Weekly) #1 New York Times bestseller about a writer's horrific and haunting pseudonym.

"I'm back... I'm back from the dead and you don't seem glad to see me at all, you ungrateful son of a bitch."

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...

Stephen King: The Dark Half. Pocket Books, ISBN: 9781501143779 (June, 2016), 592 p., $9.99.

Stephen King: The Dark Half (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic "wondrously frightening" (Publishers Weekly) #1 New York Times bestseller about a writer's horrific and haunting pseudonym.

"I'm back... I'm back from the dead and you don't seem glad to see me at all, you ungrateful son of a bitch."

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...

Stephen King: The Dark Half. Gallery Books, ISBN: 9781501144196 (February, 2016), 608 p., $17.00.

Stephen King: The Dark Half (UK 2011)

From the Publisher:
Creating George Stark was easy. Getting rid of him won't be...
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 super-violent 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.

Stephen King: The Dark Half. George Stark. Not a very nice guy. Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 9781444708158 (November, 2011), 480 p., £8.99.

Stephen King: The Dark Half (UK 2007)

From the Publisher:
Creating George Stark was easy. Getting rid of him won't be...
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 super-violent 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.

Stephen King: The Dark Half. Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 034095261X (November, 2007), 460 p., £7.99.

Stephen King: The Dark Half (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
Thad Beaumont would like to say he is innocent. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the series of monstrous murders that keep coming closer to his home. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the twisted imagination that produced his bestselling novels. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the voice on the phone uttering its obscene threats and demanding total surrender. But how can Thad disown the ultimate embodiment of evil that goes by the name he gave it - and signs its crimes with Thad's bloody fingerprints?

Stephen King: The Dark Half. Signet, ISBN: 0451167317 (March, 1990), 496 p., $3.95 (?).

Stephen King: The Dark Half (UK 1990)

From the Publisher:
Creating George Stark was easy. Getting rid of him won't be...
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 super-violent 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.

Stephen King: The Dark Half. Words are his power. New English Library, ISBN: 045052468X (January, 1990), 480 p., £3.99.

Stephen King: The Dark Half (USA 1989)

From the Publisher:
When Thad Beaumont wakes to the nightmare of George Stark, he hears birds, thousands of them, all cheeping and twittering at the same time, and with the sound comes a presentiment full of memory and foreboding: The sparrows are flying again.

Thad Beaumont is a writer, and for a dozen years he secretly published novels under the name of "George Stark" because he was no longer able to write under his own name. He even invented a slightly sinister author biography to satisfy the many fans of Stark's violent bestsellers. But Thad is a healthier and happier man now, the father of infant twins, and starting to write as himself again. He no longer needs George Stark, and in fact has a good reason to lay Stark to rest. So, with nationwide publicity, a bit of guilt, and a good deal of relief, the pseudonym is retired.

In the small town of Castle Rock, Maine, where Thad and Liz keep a summer home, Sheriff Alan Pangborn ponders the brutal roadside murder of a man named Homer Gamache. When Homer's pick-up truck is found, the bloody fingerprints of the perpetrator are all over it. They match Thad Beaumont's exactly. Armed with evidence, Pangborn pays the Beaumonts a visit, and suddenly he too is thrust into a dream so bizarre that neither criminal science nor his own sharp mind can make sense of it.

At the center of the nightmare is the devastating figure of George Stark, Thad Beaumont's dark half -- impossibly alive and relentlessly on the loose--a killing machine that destroys everyone on the path that leads to the man who created him. As Stark approaches, as Thad and Liz contend with the escalating horror and implacable threat of his existence and Thad reaches deep inside his own mind to mount a defense, forces gather in the air above Castle Lake, outriders of the dead to the land of the living... To whom do they belong?

Here is The Dark Half, a tale of terror so real and fascinating that Stephen King's growing legion of fans will find themselves squirming in the master's heart-stopping, blood-curdling grip -- and loving every minute of it.

Stephen King: The Dark Half. Viking, ISBN: 067082982X (November, 1989), 431 p., $21.95.