The Green Mile
King originally published The Green Mile as six shorter novellas. The tale of a former prison guard at a state penitentiary in 1932 who encounters a peculiar inmate, John Coffey, is categorized as magic realism after prison guard Paul Edgecombe begins to doubt that the kind-hearted Coffey actually committed his crimes.
There’s a feeling in the Green Mile that the human spirit is alive and well even under the most difficult of circumstances. I’ve heard sometimes the more difficult life becomes, the more the human spirit has a chance to shine, and I can’t think of a place where life is more difficult than on death row.
Gifted Hands autobiography
Carson publishes an autobiography entitled, Gifted Hands, telling the story of his life as a disadvantaged inner city youth through when he becomes Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
My major hope is that the message . . . will be seen by millions and millions of young people who might begin to recognize that they actually play a very major role in what happens to them in terms of the decisions that they make, regardless of the environment that they’re growing up in.
Sister Sister
Dickey follows the lives of three sisters in the book Sister Sister. This book describes the lives of three young African American women. First there is Valerie, scheming social worker Inda and broken-hearted flight attendant Chiquita. Their lives are coming together and falling apart in Los Angeles.
I actually started writing in novel form seven years before (that book was published). I was still engineering (then). I was in software development, but, there was this whole creative part of me that really just started to take control. When I was a software developer, I was doing stand-up comedy; I was doing community theater; I was doing theater; I was auditioning at every college for some student film; I was hanging out with comics—and even when you’re hanging out with comics you’re hanging out with writers.
Publishes ANSI Common Lisp
Graham publishes a reference manual for the programming language, including a guide to optimization, macros, and an appendix on debugging.
On Lisp
Graham publishes a study of advanced programming techniques using the language, with the theme of bottom-up programming.
Its examples form a library of functions and macros that readers will be able to use in their own Lisp programs.
Waiting To Exhale
Waiting To Exhale follows the friendship between four African American women who lean on each other. Each one is hoping that the man of their dreams will come along soon. This story is about the lives of Savannah Jackson, Bernadine Harris, Robin Stokes, and Gloria Matthews who reside in Phoenix, Arizona. The women support each other through personal and professional challenges and successes. They are savvy enough to manage every element of their lives, but stereotypes and bad habits seem to ditch their efforts.
I’ve had 1,500 people show up for a reading for Waiting to Exhale. Twelve hundred in Chicago, a thousand people waiting in line in Washington. I think I’ve signed more than 10,000 books, and the people who come are 90 percent black. In some cities 98 percent.
Still Talking
Rivers publishes her second memoirish tell-all, Still Talking with Richard Merryman. In her characteristic comedic vitriolic style, she talks about her husband Edgar Rosenberg’s suicide, the birth of her daughter Melissa, gossip about celebrities, and ribs on the entertainment industry, and sex.
I know nothing about sex. All my mother told me was that the man gets on top, the woman gets on the bottom. I bought bunk beds.
Disappearing Acts
McMillan’s novel Disappearing Acts follows Zora and Franklin who is having difficulty in their marriage. Zora is a beautiful teacher who married Franklin, a man who is always in between jobs. When Franklin starts to feel like he can’t provide for his family, he decides to seek solace from another woman. Although, Zora is relieved he is gone. She can’t help but to miss her husband. The two must decide if their love can overcome layoffs and faithfulness.
The Tommyknockers
After finding something mysterious buried in her back yard, Bobbi Anderson becomes obsessed with digging it up and discovering what it is. Soon, the town’s population becomes increasingly ill due to the appearance of the aliens known as the Tommyknockers.
After becoming discouraged with his progress, King parted with the manuscript, only to come back to it decades later.
That was another case of a book I tried to write a long time ago. I had the idea of the guy stumbling over the flying saucer when I was a senior in college. I had 15 or 20 pages and I just stopped. I don’t remember why.
Misery
After being saved from a car accident, novelist Paul Sheldon is taken in and nursed by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes. Under her care, he finishes the final novel in Wilke’s favorite series, starring a character named Misery. Wilkes becomes infuriated by Sheldon’s surprise death of Misery and keeps him captive until he writes another novel bringing Misery to life. King says the inspiration for Misery came from poor fan reception of his books that weren’t horror/thriller focused. It also came from King’s struggle to give up drugs and alcohol.
Take the psychotic nurse in Misery, which I wrote when I was having such a tough time with dope. I knew what I was writing about. There was never any question. Annie was my drug problem, and she was my number-one fan. God, she never wanted to leave.
Enter Talking
Rivers publishes Enter Talking, a memoir recounting her early career in television and her work on the Johnny Carson Show, and advice to wannabe media stars.
I could not endure the reality that I might end up Joan Molinsky, an unattractive, nondescript little Jewish girl, run-of-the-mill, who might just as well have stayed in Brooklyn and married the druggist and had a normal life. I had come from normal life, from real life, and nobody there had been happy. I knew I had to be special, had to have a life different from anything I had ever known, and if I ended up ordinary Joan Molinsky, I would always be unhappy and make my husband and children unhappy.
Night Shift
King publishes his first collection of short stories in ‘Night Shift’. It includes his work originally published in Cavalier, Urbis, and Penthouse magazines, along with previously unpublished works.
It
Twenty-eight years after seven teenagers battled a haunting creature that preyed on children, the group returns as adults to finish what had begun nearly three decades ago as local children begin going missing yet again. They prepare to battle what is lurking in the sewer system as they try to make sure what they thought they’d defeated before was truly vanquished once and for all. In King’s It, the creature often takes form as a clown to attract children, making King one of the first people to paint clowns as a scary figure.
As I began to grow up I began to look at kids and I noticed that kids are all terrified of [clowns]. The parents say, “Aren’t the clowns funny, Johnny?”, and Johnny’s like “No! Get me the hell out of here!”
Fatherhood
Cosby’s book Fatherhood is published and is the fastest selling book of all time. The book is ghostwritten by Schoenstein.
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz
Rivers releases her book The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz published under the Delacorte imprint. The 99-page comedic fiction is a humorous biography of “a loose woman” filled with Rivers’s off-color one-liners and social commentary with illustrations by James Sherman.
Never put off for tomorrow who you can put out for tonight – Heidi Abromowitz
Pet Sematary
After moving from Chicago to Maine, Dr. Louis Creed finds a cemetery the neighborhood kids created for the countless lives of cats and dogs a local high way has taken. Close by, Creed finds another cemetery in the form of an ancient Native American burial ground. After losing his family cat, he learns the connection between the two spooky burial plots.
Christine
King publishes a thriller of a boy’s new girlfriend and his jealousy-driven car. Dubbed Christine by it’s previous owner, the car is a junker that Arnie fixes up, accidentally making the car fall for him and ultimately try to push away any other woman in his life.
Introduction to Shaolin Kung Fu
Sifu Wong publishes his first book, an 86 page manual on Shaolin Kung Fu. Topics include techniques, forms, training methodology and advice on creating a practice routine.
One of the main aims in learning kungfu is for self-defence. In the ancient days before the invention of firearms, kungfu was often a matter of life and death for many people. That was why kungfu was so jealously guarded.
Cujo
A once-friendly St. Bernard is bitten by a rabid bat and transformed into a murderous killing machine in King’s Cujo. King wrote the book during a period in his life of heavy drinking and recalls that he doesn’t remember writing the novel.
I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page.
The Dead Zone
A school teacher gains the ability of seeing a person’s future and past by simply touching them after awakening from a five-year coma. He sees the ability as a curse, but must decide if he should do everything in his power to change the future after shaking the hand of a renowned young politician.