by Stephen King
Part of Four Past Midnight
First published 1991
Sam Peebles is a perfectly ordinary businessman in Junction City, Iowa. He borrowed a couple of library books, gave a speech, and forgot to return them. That kind of thing happens to everyone. But when the Library Policeman comes looking for Sam, it becomes clear that Junction City's librarian is something far worse than strict. She is ancient, predatory, and patient, and she has been waiting for exactly this kind of small, forgivable lapse. Sam has to figure out what this creature actually is, where it came from, and how a middle-aged man with no particular heroic qualities is supposed to stop it. The deeper he digs into the library and the woman who runs it, the more the past opens up beneath him. There are children who went missing, a darkness that has been feeding on fear for a very long time, and a wound in Sam's own history he has never let himself look at directly. Overdue books turn out to be the least of his problems.
Genres: mystery, horror, adult-fiction, thriller, dark-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, psychological, suspenseful, unsettling
Tropes: ancient-evil-awakened, ordinary-person-vs-supernatural, past-trauma-revealed
Setting: Junction City, Iowa, Library
Period: 20th-century
540 pages · Audio CD · Highbridge Audio
Content warnings: child-death, death, violence