Dolores Claiborne

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

“POWERFUL ... STARTLINGLY GOOD.”

 

 

 

“WHAT A STORYTELLER. Stephen King is a magician at creating colorful characters and at spinning a yarn that casts a spell over the reader ... One will not easily forget [Dolores] ... compelling.”

—
Nashville Banner

 

 

 

“A LITERARY TRIUMPH. The finest of King novels... a plot of enormous energy... Read this book.”

—
Milwaukee Journal

 

 

 

“A DARING PERFORMANCE... spooky ... Dolores’s voice rings true thoughout.”

—
Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

 

 

“The all-time master of horror has turned out a piece of genuine literature ... a finely wrought work ... emphasizing character.”

—
Minneapolis Star Tribune

 

“A DARK AND BROODING TALE of the psychological underbelly of a bad marriage... a morality play with an unusual heroine.”

—
Chicago Tribune

 

 

 

“Stephen King peeks beneath the simple horrors ... which makes Dolores’s story moving.”

—
The New York Times

 

 

 

“SEDUCTIVE ... SUSPENSEFUL ... Dolores is a brilliantly realized character and her struggles will hook readers inexorably.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

 

 

 

“Reality-based horror reflecting the evil that men do to women ... This time King’s boogeyman is the guy next door.”

—
New York Daily News

 

 

 

“UNFORGETTABLE ... STEPHEN KING IS A MAGNIFICENT STORYTELLER.”

 

“A terrifying tale of desperation, abuse, and revenge that showcases King’s talent as a powerful storyteller.”

—
Library Journal

 

 

 

“COMPELLING ... has a special kind of resonance that will echo for the reader long after the tale is told.”

—
Greensboro News and Record

 

 

 

“SHARP ... you feel the power of its decency.”

—
New York Newsday

 

 

 

“A FINE, SOLID, FASCINATING NOVEL, AND ARGUABLY THE BEST, MOST AFFECTING

WRITING.“

—
Locus

 

 

 

“ABSORBING ... FASCINATING ... a dark and brooding tale of a bad marriage that finally explodes in retribution and murder ... an honest and chilling story, very well told.”

—
Providence Sunday Journal

NOVELS

Carrie
’Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
THE DARK TOWER I:
The Gunslinger
Christine
Pet Sematary
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Talisman
(with Peter Straub)
It
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
The Tommyknockers
THE DARK TOWER II:
The Drawing
of the Three

THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Gerald’s Game
Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Green Mile
THE DARK TOWER IV:
Wizard and Glass
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom
Gordon
Dreamcatcher
Black House
(with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8
THE DARK TOWER V:
Wolves of the Calla

AS RICHARD BACHMAN
Rage
The Long Walk
Roadwork
The Running Man
Thinner
The Regulators

COLLECTIONS

 

Night Shift
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and
Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everything’s Eventual

SCREENPLAYS

Creepshow
Cat’s Eye
Silver Bullet
Maximum Overdrive
Pet Sematary
Golden Years
Sleepwalkers
The Stand
The Shining
Rose Red
Storm of the Century

SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Viking edition.

First Signet Printing, December 1993

Copyright © Stephen King, 1993 Illustrations copyright © Bill Russell, 1993

Map by Virginia Norey
All rights reserved

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

eISBN : 978-1-101-13817-5

 

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“What does a woman want?”

—
Sigmund Freud

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.”

—
Aretha Franklin

In the northwestern part of Maine—in the area known as the Lakes District—the small town of Sharbot curves like a crescent around a beautiful body of water called Dark Score Lake. Dark Score is one of the deepest lakes in New England—better than three hundred feet in some places. Some of the locals have been known to claim it is bottomless ... but usually only after a few beers (in Sharbot, half a dozen is considered a few).

If one were to draw a straight line across a map of the state from northwest to southeast, beginning at the tiny cartographic point which represents Sharbot and continuing through the larger dot that marks the city of Bangor, one would eventually come to the smallest dot of all—a tiny green grain standing off in the Atlantic about sixteen miles from Bar Harbor. This small green grain is Little Tall Island, population 204 in the 1990 census, down from an all-time high of 527 in the census of 1960.

These two tiny communities, exactly one hundred and forty miles apart as the crow flies, bracket the island and coastal aspects of New England’s largest state like a pair of nondescript book-ends. They have nothing whatever in common; one would be hard put, in fact, to find a citizen in either who had any knowledge of the other.