Needful Things
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4.6 • 44 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic #1 New York Times bestseller about a mysterious store than can sell you whatever you desire—but not without exacting a terrible price in return.
The town of Castle Rock, Maine has seen its fair share of oddities over the years, but nothing is as peculiar as the little curio shop that’s just opened for business here. Its mysterious proprietor, Leland Gaunt, seems to have something for everyone out on display at Needful Things…interesting items that run the gamut from worthless to priceless. Nothing has a price tag in this place, but everything is certainly for sale. The heart’s desire for any resident of Castle Rock can easily be found among the curiosities…in exchange for a little money and—at the specific request of Leland Gaunt—a whole lot of menace against their fellow neighbors. Everyone in town seems willing to make a deal at Needful Things, but the devil is in the details. And no one takes heed of the little sign hanging on the wall: Caveat emptor. In other words, let the buyer beware…
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Stephen King’s 1991 horror epic is an ingeniously macabre ode to rural America’s secret depravities. Set in Castle Rock, Maine—King’s oft-revisited version of Peyton Place—Needful Things introduces shadowy shopkeeper Leland Gaunt, who grants invaluable material wishes and charges next to nothing…unless you count his seemingly innocuous assignments to play small pranks on neighbors. But this is Stephen King, and Gaunt’s juvenile tricks somehow escalate into grotesque acts of interpersonal violence. Long before the first axe falls, King’s gift for conjuring a creeping sense of unease is on full display.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With the ``Last Castle Rock Story'' King bids a magnificent farewell to the fictional Maine town where much of his previous work has been set. Of grand proportion, the novel ranks with King's best, in both plot and characterization. A new store, Needful Things, opens in town, and its proprietor, Leland Gaunt, offers seemingly unbeatable (read: Faustian) bargains to Castle Rock's troubled citizens. Among them are Polly Chalmers, lonely seamstress whose arthritis is only one of the physical and psychic pains she must bear; Brian Rusk, the 11-year-old boy whose mother is not precisely attentive; and Alan Pangborn, the new sheriff whose wife and son have recently died. These are only three of the half-dozen or so brilliantly drawn people met in the novel's one-month time span. As the dreams of each strikingly memorable character, major and minor, inexorably turn to nightmare, individuals and soon the community are overwhelmed, while the precise nature of Gaunt's evil thrillingly stays just out of focus. King, like Leland Gaunt, knows just what his customers want. 1.5 million first printing; BOMC main selection.
Customer Reviews
The Hurt
Come see me fella
I have wares for you
It does not matter
What is true
For I can see
Into your heart
Yes I can feel
The darker part
A bargain yes
That’s what you want
I’m your best friend
I’m Leland Gaunt
A small favour
Innocent yes
Enjoy yourself
But don’t confess
Then this object
Your needful thing
Will quiet your brain
That’s what I bring
A soul what use
I ask you now
Listen to me
Kneel and bow
Hurt is my tool
Can you resist
Or pay my price
That is my wish.