If It Bleeds
a stand-alone sequel to the No. 1 bestseller The Outsider, plus three irresistible novellas
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller featuring a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider as well as the novella 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', soon to be a Netflix original film starring Donald Sutherland and Jaeden Martell!
News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.
Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realises something is not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds', a stand-alone sequel to the No. 1 bestselling THE OUTSIDER featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case - and also the riveting title story in Stephen King's brilliant new collection.
Dancing alongside are three more wonderful long stories from this 'formidably versatile author' (The Sunday Times) - 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', 'The Life of Chuck' and 'Rat'. All four display the richness of King's storytelling with grace, humour, horror and breathtaking suspense. A fascinating Author's Note gives us a wonderful insight into the origin of each story and the writer's unparalleled imagination
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The four never-before-published novellas in this collection represent horror master King at his finest, using the weird and uncanny to riff on mortality, the price of creativity, and the unpredictable consequences of material attachments. A teenager discovers that a dead friend's cell phone, which was buried with the body, still communicates from beyond the grave in "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," which reads like a Twilight Zone episode infused with an EC Comics vibe. In the profoundly moving "The Life of Chuck," a series of apocalyptic incidents bear out one character's claim that "when a man or a woman dies, a whole world falls to ruin." "Rat" sees a frustrated writer strike a Faustian bargain to complete his novel, and in the title story, private investigator Holly Gibney, the recurring heroine of King's Bill Hodges trilogy and The Outsider, faces off against a ghoulish television newscaster who vampirically feeds off the anguish he provokes in his audience by covering horrific tragedies. King clearly loves his characters, and the care with which he develops their personalities draws the reader ineluctably into their deeply unsettling experiences. This excellent collection delivers exactly the kind of bravura storytelling King's readers expect.
