{ "item_title" : "From a Buick 8", "item_author" : [" Stephen King "], "item_description" : "Ever since 1979, the state police of Troop D in rural western Pennsylvania have kept a vintage Buick Roadmaster—or what looks almost just like one—caged in Shed B out back of the barracks. That’s when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call about its driver gone missing from a gas station just down the road. Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew this one was suspect. When Rafferty vanished a few hours later, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew it was worse than dangerous—and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it. Mostly the car sleeps (that’s one way of putting it, anyway), but even as it sleeps it breathes—inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from.In the fall of 2001, Wilcox’s eighteen-year-old boy Ned starts coming by the barracks, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. Sergeant Commanding Sandy Dearborn knows it’s the boy’s way of holding on to his father, killed in the line of duty in a gruesome auto accident. Missing his father, Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family, and one day he looks through a window in Shed B and discovers the family secret. Just like his father, he wants answers. And the secret begins to stir.From a Buick 8 is a novel about the fascination deadly things have for us and about our insistence on answers when there are none. Like The Green Mile, it is set in a close knit and isolated community and exploits King’s unparalleled ability to describe the often sinister interaction of men in small groups. King completed a draft of From a Buick 8 before his own near-fatal auto accident just two years ago, and he addresses the coincidences between his life and the novel in a fascinating afterword.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/74/321/137/0743211375_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "41.00", "online_price" : "41.00", "our_price" : "41.00", "club_price" : "41.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "0.02" } }

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Stephen King steers scintillating tale

Master of horror Stephen King returns on Sept. 24 with the release of From a Buick 8, a gather-round-the-campfire tale of a sinister car. This time King transports us far from Maine back to the rural Pennsylvania of 1979. Through a series of flashbacks, 18-year-old Ned Wilcox, struggling with his father's death, picks apart the tangled web of events surrounding the horrible accident that ripped the elder Wilcox from his family. First, Ned must discover the secret inside State Police Troop D's Shed B: a vintage Buick 8 Roadmaster. It seems the Buick's owner disappeared at a service station, leaving behind the unusual vehicle, a doorway between this world and another. Troop D decided it would be better if John Q. Public never learned about the car and what it can do. After all, the first trooper on the scene vanished the same day, just like the car's mysterious driver.

As in earlier books like Cujo, plot is the driving force in this novel. This is a mature King, though, who gathers the voices of several characters to move the story, providing depth and structure to the straightforward narrative. The men (and one woman) of Troop D spin their saga in round-robin fashion for Ned, whose father was one of the original officers to discover the Buick, and the one who took the fiercest interest in its origins.

Underlying themes of loyalty and generational bonding mesh flawlessly with an eagle-eyed examination of police procedure and culture. All these elements lead ultimately to the book's central tenet: Life is full of occurrences that shape us in unimaginable ways.

In an author's note, King says he dreamed up this smoothly told tale while driving from western Pennsylvania to New York, shortly before his 1999 accident. His description of the eerie similarities between his own near-fatal misfortune and the plot of From a Buick 8 may well raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Stephen King has scared Kelly Koepke since she was a teenager reading The Shining.