The Stephen King Companion

The Stephen King Companion is an authoritative look at King’s personal life and professional career, from Carrie to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.

King expert George Beahm, who has published extensively about Maine’s main writer, is your seasoned guide to the imaginative world of Stephen King, covering his varied and prodigious output: juvenalia, short fiction, limited edition books, bestselling novels, and film adaptations. The book is also profusely illustrated with nearly 200 photos, color illustrations by celebrated “Dark Tower” artist Michael Whelan, and black-and-white drawings by Maine artist Glenn Chadbourne.

Supplemented with interviews with friends, colleagues, and mentors who knew King well, this book looks at his formative years in Durham, where he began writing fiction as a young teen, his college years in the turbulent sixties, his struggles with early poverty, working full-time as an English teacher while writing part-time, the long road to the publication of his first novel, Carrie, and the dozens of bestselling books and major screen adaptations that followed.

For fans old and new, The Stephen King Companion is a comprehensive look at America’s best-loved bogeyman.

Author Biography

GEORGE BEAHM has published more literary companions than any other writer, as well as more than thirty books on pop culture icons such as J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. His books have been translated into more than two dozen languages worldwide and have appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly. A former Army major in the field artillery who served on active duty, in the National Guard, and in the Army Reserve, Beahm lives in southeast Virginia with his wife.

Illustrator Michael Whelan is the first living artist to have been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Some of his best-known covers are on Stephen King books, and he also created interior images for King’s The Dark Tower and The Gunslinger. Whelan’s work has won dozens of awards, including a “SuperHugo” for Best Artist of the Last 50 Years.

Glenn Chadbourne has created covers and illustrations for books and magazines such as Cemetery Dance Publications, Subterranean Press, and Earthling Publications. Chadbourne is best known for illustrating The Secretary of Dreams, a graphic collection of Stephen King stories.