Hodder & Stoughton Fairy Tale : The No. 1 Sunday Times seller

'Fairy Tale is vintage, timeless King, a transporting, terrifying treat' - Guardian'A blazing flash of creativity . . . King's best book in over a decade' - EsquireLegendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher - for their world or ours.Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student.But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink.Charlie learned how to take care of himself - and his dad.Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her ageing master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard.Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe.What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world. King's storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale about another world than ours, in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy - and his dog - must lead the battle.