Fairy Tale (Simon & Schuster)

Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher-for that world or ours.Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student.

But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself-and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard.

Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe.

What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.King's storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy-and his dog-must lead the battle.Early in the Pandemic, King asked himself: "What could you write that would make you happy?""As if my imagination had been waiting for the question to be asked, I saw a vast deserted city-deserted but alive.

I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street. I saw smashed statues (of what I didn't know, but I eventually found out). I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds.

Those images released the story I wanted to tell."