The Talisman

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers.   His recent work includes  Never Flinch  (May 2025), the short story collection  You Like It Darker (a New York Times Book Review  top ten horror book of 2024),   Holly  (a  New York Times  Notable Book of 2023),   Fairy Tale,   Billy Summers,   If It Bleeds,   The Institute,   Elevation,   The Outsider,   Sleeping Beauties  (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy:  End of Watch,   Finders  Keepers,   and  Mr. Mercedes  (an Edgar Award winner  for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). His novel  11/22/63  was named a top ten book of 2011 by  The  New York Times  Book Review  and won the  Los Angeles Times  Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works  The Dark Tower,   It,   Pet Sematary,   Doctor Sleep, and  Firestarter  are the basis for  major motion pictures, with  It  now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient  of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the  2014 National Medal of Arts, and the  2003 National Book Foundation Medal for  Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.   He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife,   novelist Tabitha King.  

Peter Straub (1943– 2022) was the #1  New York Times  bestselling author of more than a dozen novels,   including  A Dark Matter,   The Talisman, and Black House, which he cowrote with Stephen King.   He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his novels  Lost Boy Lost Girl  and  In the Night Room, as well as for his collection  5 Stories. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of American anthology  The American Fantastic Tale.