The Dark Half
by Stephen King

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In 1985, 39-year-old Stephen King announced in public that his pseudonymous alter ego, Richard Bachman, was dead. (Never mind that he revived him years later to write The Regulators.) At the beginning of The Dark Half (1989), 39-year-old writer Thad Beaumont announces in public that his own pseudonym, George Stark, is dead. 

Now, King didn't want to jettison the Bachman novel, titled Machine Dreams, that was he working on. So he incorporated it in The Dark Half as the crime oeuvre of George Stark, whose recurring hero/alter ego is an evil character named Alexis Machine.

Thad Beaumont's pseudonym is not so docile as Stephen King's, though, and George Stark bursts forth into reality. At that point, two stories kick into gear: a mystery-detective story about the crime spree of George Stark (or is it Alexis Machine?) and a horror story about Beaumont's struggle to catch up with his doppelganger and kill him dead.

This is not the first time that Stephen King has written a dark allegory about the fiction writer's situation. As the New York Times writes, "Misery (1987) is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience, which holds him prisoner and dictates what he writes, on pain of death. The Dark Half is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his creative genius, the vampire within him, the part of him that only awakes to raise Cain when he writes, the fratricidal twin who occupies 'the womblike dungeon' of his imagination." 
--Fiona Webster 

On The Flap

When Thad Beaumont wakes to the nightmare of George Stark, he hears birds, thousands of them, all cheeping and twittering at the same time, and with the sound comes a presentiment full of memory and foreboding: The sparrows are flying again.

Thad Beaumont is a writer, and for a dozen years he secretly published novels under the name of "George Stark" because he was no longer able to write under his own name.  He even invented a slightly sinister author biography to satisfy the many fans of Stark's violent bestsellers.  But Thad is a healthier and happier man now, the father of infant twins, and starting to write as himself again.  He no longer needs George Stark, and in fact has a good reason to lay Stark to rest.  So, with nationwide publicity, a bit of guilt, and a good deal of relief, the pseudonym is retired.

In the small town of Castle Rock, Maine, where Thad and Liz keep a summer home, Sheriff Alan Pangborn ponders the brutal roadside murder of a man named Homer Gamache.  When Homer's pick-up truck is found, the bloody fingerprints of the perpetrator are all over it.  They match Thad Beaumont's exactly.  Armed with hard evidence, Pangborn pays the Beaumonts a visit, and suddenly he too is thrust into a dream so bizarre that neither criminal science nor his own sharp mind can make sense of it.

At the center of the nightmare is the devastating figure of George Stark, Thad Beaumont's dark half -- impossibly alive and relentlessly on the loose -- a killing machine that destroys everyone on the path that leads to the man who created him.  As Stark approaches, as Thad and Liz contend with the escalating horror and implacable threat of his existence and Thad reaches deep inside his own mind to mount a defense, forces gather in the air above Castle Lake, outriders of the dead to the land of the living. ... To whom do they belong?

Here is The Dark Half, a tale of terror so real and fascinating that Stephen King's growing legion of fans will find themselves squirming in the master's heart-stopping, blood-curdling grip -- and loving every minute of it.

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All formats
 
Print
The Dark Half (1989) -
Library Binding (1999), Mass Market Paperback (1994), Paperback (1994), Hardcover (1992), Large Print Hardcover (1991), Large Print Paperback (1991)
Digital
The Dark Half -
Microsoft Reader Download, Adobe Reader Download
Audio
The Dark Half (unabridged) -
Audible.com, Compact Disc, Audio Cassette
Video
The Dark Half (1993) -
VHS (2001), VHS (1998), DVD (2001)
Stephen King DVD Collector Set (Misery / The Dark Half / Needful Things / Carrie)
DVD (2003)