Fairy Tale

This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.

Listen to a sample

What to expect

Legendary 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 ten, 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 aging 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.

(P)2022 Simon & Schuster Ltd

Critics Review

  • There is a splendid climactic battle . . . King’s delight in the world he has created is infectious and there’s much to revel in here

    Daily Telegraph
  • With ogres and castles, maidens and pots of gold, this is a fairy story through-and-through. Because it’s Stephen King’s, it’s a Once-Upon-A-Time tale like no other

    Daily Mail
  • Fairy Tale is a multiverse-traversing, genre-hopping intertextual mash-up, with plenty of Easter eggs for regular King devotees . . . allusions and homages abound . . . a page-turner driven by memorably strange encounters and well-rendered, often thrilling action

    New York Times Book Review
  • Fairy Tale is vintage, timeless King, a transporting, terrifying treat born from multiple lockdowns which, in true King style, puts its finger right on that tender point which is the threshold between childhood and growing up

    Guardian
  • The latest addictive thriller from King

    The List
  • King’s reputation precedes him, and his spellbinding new novel is magnificent and terrifying

    Living North Magazine

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.