Second Audio Excerpt from Full Dark, No Stars; Liner Notes for 1922 and Big Driver

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The second audio excerpt from Stephen King’s upcoming Full Dark, No Stars is now available from the book’s official website, this time from “Big Driver”, along with author King’s liner notes for that novella as well as “1922”. In addition, we have expanded synopses for both stories.

Second Audio Excerpt from Full Dark, No Stars; Liner Notes for 1922 and Big DriverAs a reminder, the narrators for the audio edition of Full Dark, No Stars are Craig Wasson (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) and Jessica Hecht (Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take). To listen to the excerpt, either click the image to the right or visit the official Full Dark, No Stars website, where you can also read along with the excerpt.

You’ll find the liner notes below the two new synopses (expanded versions of “Fair Extension” and “A Good Marriage” are forthcoming) and a short commercial:

  • “1922” – “I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger…” writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up “1922,” the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. (Listen to an excerpt here.)
  • “Big Driver” – In “Big Driver,” a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.
  • “Fair Extension” – Harry Streeter, who is suffering from cancer, decides to make a deal with the devil, but as always, there is a price to pay.
  • “A Good Marriage” – Darcy Anderson learns more about her husband of over twenty years than she would have liked to know when she stumbles literally upon a box under a worktable in their garage.

  • Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars – Commercial
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    Liner Notes for “1922”:
    “Murder will out.” Heard it before? Me, too. But a cynic (or a police officer) might point to all the murders marked UNSOLVED…and that doesn’t even include the murders that are never discovered. Still, I wonder. I think of murder—especially one that’s premeditated—as a kind of corrupting ink that overspreads lives, darkening them. “1922” is a story about guilt, remorse, and corruption. It’s also about ghosts. Wilf James plots the murder of his wife and enlists his young son as his accomplice. Once Arlette is dead and buried, all should be well. But the suspicious county sheriff who comes sniffing around the James farm is the least of their problems. Arlette may be dead, but she’s most certainly not gone. The Hemingford County farm they killed for is now haunted, either by Arlette’s ghost or by the terrible guilt of what they have done. Either way, the rats have arrived, and they’ve started gnawing at the foundation of the quiet country life father and son killed for. When you finish this story, you may want to sleep with the lights on for awhile. I know I did.

    Liner Notes for “Big Driver”:
    In 1974, Charles Bronson starred in a movie called Death Wish. Driven insane with grief and rage following the death of his wife, Bronson’s character goes on a vigilante rampage against street-punks in New York City. The movie became a talking-point ten years later, when an unassuming young fellow named Bernard Goetz shot four would-be muggers on the New York subway. Since then, there have been a number of “American vigilante” movies, including one mentioned in this story, The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster. After being raped and left for dead, the heroine of “Big Driver” goes on a similar rampage. I think most of us would cheer her on. There’s something intensely satisfying about what used to be called “private justice.” But as Tess finds out, things that look simple on the surface can sometimes turn out to be a lot more complex, and by then, it’s usually too late to turn back. So here’s the question: once you pick up the gun, can you ever put it back down? “Big Driver” may not answer the question to your satisfaction, but it might make you think twice about the price of revenge.

    Debi Moore

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