Misery had me on edge for days after I finished it. The novel is something else—an airless, claustrophobic portrait of an egotistic writer pushed to the edge of madness by pain, pills, incarceration, the expectations of his reading public, and a deadline like he's never known before. In the book, our hero is as threatened by the demons within as he is by the madwoman beside his bed. Like him, you, the reader, can't wait to escape; yet you can no more walk away from Mr. King's tightly spun yarn than Paul can walk away from his captor.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Sleeping Beauties (co-written with his son Owen King), End of Watch, and a short story collection.