Four Past Midnight

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444723596 ISBN 13: 9781444723595

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012

At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instant of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and switch you into a new and terrifying world. FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT: four heart-stopping accounts of that moment when the familiar world fractures beyond sense, the fragments spinning away from the desperate, clutching reach of sanity . . .

About the Author:

STEPHEN KING is a master of the novella and short narrative form. As he describes it: 'A short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.' King's novellas and stories are among his most popular and some have been turned into celebrated films including STAND BY ME and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

From AudioFile:

Stephen King stretches this short story into a novella. A young boy gets a mysterious Polaroid camera that only takes pictures of a mean dog. The magic camera is creating a portal so that the mean dog can come to Earth and eat people. The boy stops him. The end. The book is saved by narrator Tim Sample's relentless efforts to wring suspense from the many scenes that are not suspenseful, just drawn out descriptions of mundane things. Sample speaks urgently at the right times, but sometimes even that--combined with suspenseful music--isn't enough. King's novella would benefit from a brutal editor hacking away the nonessentials. It's one of his lesser works. M.S. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine