by Stephen King
First published 1983
January. A railroad worker is alone in the snow when something tears open his throat. He is the first. In February it is a woman in her own bedroom. By the time spring arrives, the people of Tarker Mills, Maine have learned to dread the full moon the way other towns dread flood season. They board up their fear and go quiet once a month, hoping the creature will find someone else. Marty Coslaw is eleven years old, confined to a wheelchair, and one of the few people in Tarker Mills who gets a clear look at the werewolf and lives. He knows what it is. He knows roughly what it can do. What he does not know is who it is when the moon is thin and the streets are ordinary again. The monster wears a human face the other twenty-nine days of the month, walks among neighbors, maybe sits in a familiar pew on Sunday. Marty carries this knowledge alone, and it costs him. The book moves through a full calendar year, one kill per month, tightening the circle around Marty and around the truth of what hides inside Tarker Mills.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, coming-of-age, mystery, horror, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, dread-filled, eerie, suspenseful, tension-building
Tropes: hidden-monster, isolated-community, unreliable-identity, young-protagonist-with-knowledge
Setting: Tarker Mills, Maine
Period: 20th-century
128 pages · Paperback · Signet Books
Content warnings: death, gore, graphic-violence, murder