by Stephen King
Sam Peebles is a perfectly ordinary businessman living in Junction City, Iowa. He borrows two books from the local library and forgets to return them on time. It sounds like nothing. It feels like nothing. Then the library policeman comes for him. The librarian who issued Sam his card is not what she appears to be, and the debt she intends to collect has nothing to do with late fees. Sam finds himself pulled into a nightmare that reaches back into childhood terror, the kind that lives in the dark part of the mind where logic stops working. To survive, he has to face what the library policeman actually is, where it comes from, and why overdue books are only the beginning of what it wants. Stephen King builds this story out of something almost laughably small, a minor errand, a forgotten due date, a card catalog in a quiet Iowa town, and turns it into a confrontation with real dread. Sam is not a hero. He is just a man who made a small mistake and now has to pay for it in ways he never imagined possible.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, horror, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, dread-filled, psychological, suspenseful
Tropes: childhood-terror-resurfaces, debt-collection, ordinary-person-in-extraordinary-circumstances
Setting: Junction City, Iowa, Library
Period: Contemporary
203 pages · Paperback
Content warnings: child-abuse