The Dark Half - by Stephen King (Paperback)

About the Book

Thad, a college professor who moonlights as a writer of pop thrillers under the pseudonym George Stark, finally writes a serious novel, and decides to stop writing shockers. But George Stark has come to life and doesn't want to die. Thad is forced to battle his own creation for the control of the mind which both must share.

Book Synopsis

"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...

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.