by Stephen King
First published 2025
Strange advertisements appear across a dying world: "Charles Krantz. Thirty-nine great years. Thanks, Chuck!" Teacher Marty Anderson watches these bizarre tributes multiply as natural disasters ravage the planet and society collapses. The world itself seems tied to Chuck's existence, ending as his life concludes. King tells Chuck's story backward through three acts. We meet him first in middle age during a Boston business trip, where a street musician draws him into an impromptu sidewalk dance that transforms an ordinary moment into pure magic. Then we see him as a young boy living with his grandmother in a house harboring dark secrets, learning to dance and finding joy despite the shadows around him. Each reversed chapter reveals how small moments of connection and beauty shaped one unremarkable man's life. Chuck discovers that dancing can make time stop, that gray days make blue ones precious, and that chance encounters hold unexpected grace. As his story unfolds backward, the mystery deepens: why does this ordinary accountant's death signal the end of everything?
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, magical-realism
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Boston
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
128 pages · Hardcover · Hodder & Stoughton