Sleeping Beauties: A Novel - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501198645 ISBN 13: 9781501198649

Synopsis

In this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare.

One woman, the mysterious "Eve Black," is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.

Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women's prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.

About this title

Review

No longer content with dominating the horror genre for decades, Stephen King now seems set on creating top-notch chillers as a family business....kick-started by a very Kingish high concept...made immersively believable by the usual Kingian control of a vast cast of brilliantly drawn characters. Bravo (Daily Mail)

'A beauty of a horror tale...The first epic collaboration between Stephen King and son Owen King is ambitious, heartbreaking and, when it comes to its central horrors, all too timely...The Kings create a thought-provoking work that examines a litany of modern-day issues (USA Today)

A bulging, colourful epic; a super-sized happy meal, liberally salted with supporting characters and garnished with splashes of arterial ketchup. (Xan Brooks Guardian)

Easily devoured, and I look forward to the next book from either or both Kings eagerly.... One of my favourite books of the year. (Sci-Fi Bulletin)

This delicious first collaboration between Stephen King (Doctor Sleep) and his son Owen (Intro to Alien Invasion) is a horror-tinged realistic fantasy that imagines what could happen if most of the women of the world fall asleep, leaving men on their own...The authors' writing is seamless and naturally flowing...once the action begins, it barrels along like a freight train' (Publishers Weekly)

The prose never loses its vitality and humour; the ideas are always intriguing; and there's no gainsaying the adventurousness and ambition (The Times)

Book Description

A spectacular father/son collaboration like no other, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

About this edition

• ISBN 10: 1501198645
• ISBN 13: 9781501198649
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback