To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It is a rather fast read and I wish I wouldn't have paid the amount that I did, but it was a good book. Waterfield was born in 1952, and studied Classics at Manchester University, where he achieved a first class degree in 1974.

Both MR MERCEDES and END OF WATCH received the Goodreads Choice Award for the Best Mystery and Thriller of 2014 and 2016 respectively.They tease the dog and Milo through the dump's fence until Milo insults Teddy's father, who'd stormed the beaches at Normandy during World War II and had lost his mind. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. About the Author: STEPHEN KING is the author of more than seventy books, all of them worldwide bestsellers.

While at a resting point, Gordie tells his friends another story, "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan", in which the titular Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan exacts vengeance on the town locals for ridiculing his wide girth by downing a whole bottle of castor oil before engaging in the town's annual pie-eating contest and vomiting on the previous year's champion, which causes a chain reaction that nauseates the entire audience.The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried; they are clues that could guide your enemies to a prize they would love to steal. While they play poker, Vern Tessio bursts in with exciting news: he informs his three friends that he has overheard his older brother Billy talking with his friend Charlie Hogan, about the location of the corpse of Ray Brower, a boy from Chamberlain, a town 40 miles or so east of Castle Rock, who has gone missing, while going out to pick blueberries with one of his mother's pails. I think it was the combination of it being a non-horror Stephen King book and/or because I loved the movie so much. I remember getting that feeling at around twelve, the age the boys in this book are, and I remember how unsettling that realization was.

I chose The Body as my entry book because it is lighter and because I remember seeing bits and pieces of the film adaptation Stand By Me and really liking it. In “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them.

It was wholly morbid at times and an intricate exploration into one’s own inner monsters and mortality itself. Chris had it worst (like Beverly), but Gordie's fate felt similar to Bill's - mainly because his parents weren't capable of taking care of him after the loss of another child. After a boy disappears and is presumed dead, twelve-year-old Gordie LaChance and his three friends set out to find his body along the railway tracks.

It is a fascinating, engrossing read, the one that is well worth several hours of your time, even if you have never been a fan of King.

Reiner did, after all, direct another one of my favorite 80s films (*cough cough* The Princess Bride) and is, according to Stephen King, the best choice to adapt his novels (we all know he hates Kubrick and doesn’t care for any of the tv shows inspired by his work). In high school I found my tribe but I still have fond memories of my preteen "girl gang", even if I'm no longer friends with them. Ace'd become overweight and looked somewhat haggard, having shed his tough-guy persona years before.