Needful Things

When the mysterious newcomer Leland Gaunt opens a store called Needful Things, the townspeople of Castle Rock, Maine, all find treasures for sale that they simply can't live without. Gaunt's prices are low, but the cost to each character is very high. Not all authors can read their own work, and while King is no master narrator, there's a wonderful and charming air of honesty about his voice that lends a new layer to this disturbing novel. Sometimes rushed, sometimes awkward, King nevertheless sounds as if he's having a great time voicing his own characters, giving them each distinct personalities. Best of all, his slightly imperfect narration style lends intimacy to the recording, as if King were sitting down with you himself, telling you all about what happened one night in a small Maine town. A.A. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

September 30, 1991
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.