On Christmas Eve 1957, alone in the cockpit of his Vampire, an RAF pilot is returning from Germany to Lakenheath on leave - 66 minutes of trouble-free, routine flying. Then, out over the North Sea, the fog begins to close in, radio contact ceases, and the compass goes haywire.
Theresa was a quietly satisfied young teacher by day. But when the sun went down, her life was an endless, faceless whirl of bars and beds and men she'd never seen before and wouldn't see again. If she couldn't find love, she took chances on men who were better than no men at all. And learned, with each new night and each new nightmare, that finding her man was only the beginning.
The extraordinary (Booklist) novel of a cursed man's quest to find the source of his nightmare and to reverse it before he becomes...nothing at all. This #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, pulsates with evil...[and] will have you on the edge of your seat (Publishers Weekly). You can't do anything... It's gone too far. You understand, Halleck? Too...far. Attorney Billy Halleck seriously enjoys living his life of upper- class excess. He's got it all---an expensive home in Connecticut, a loving family...and fifty extra pounds that his doctor repeatedly warns will be the death of him. Then, in a moment of carelessness, Halleck commits vehicular manslaughter when he strikes a jaywalking old woman crossing the street. But Halleck has some powerful local connections, and gets off with a slap on the wrist...much to the fury of the woman's mysterious and ancient father, who exacts revenge with a single word: Thinner. Now a terrified Halleck finds the weight once so difficult to shed dropping effortlessly--and rapidly--by the week. Soon there will be nothing left of Billy Halleck...unless he can somehow locate the source of his living nightmare and reverse what's happened to him before he utterly wastes away...
Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and nine other writers from the legendary Detection Club collaborate in this fiendishly clever but forgotten crime novel first published 80 years ago.