Scribner announced Stephen King’s next novel this morning. The title is 11/22/63 and it will be in stores on November 8, 2011. A palindromic date (11/8/11) in the US. Here is the book’s description:
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. If you had the chance to change history, would you? Would the consequences be worth it?
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
See King’s website, Scribner’s website and Hodder & Stoughton’s website for more.
At the Academy Awards last weekend, MTV asked Brian Grazer for news about casting for the Dark Tower film adaptation. Grazer said, “[Javier Bardem] is locked in psychologically,” Grazer said. “He really wants to do it, so we’re absolutely rooting for him to do it.” Until they cast Roland, they aren’t pursuing actors for any other roles, Grazer said.
King has been selected as the 2011 recipient of the Mason Award from the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He will be presented the award at a ceremony on September 23, 2011 and will be speaking and/or reading for approximately 30-45 minutes. Details regarding the speech and a possible signing to follow are still being negotiated. More information, including how to secure tickets for the event, will be posted here.
Full Dark, No Stars was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Collection. Winning titles will be announced at the Stoker Weekend in Long Island NY, June 16-19, 2011.
