castle rock (me. : imaginary place)

When Gwendy Peterson was twelve, a mysterious stranger named Richard Farris gave her a mysterious box for safekeeping. It offered treats and vintage coins, but it was dangerous. Pushing any of its seven colored buttons promised death and destruction. Years later, the button box entered Gwendy's life again. A successful novelist and a rising political star, she was once again forced to deal with the temptation that box represented. Now, evil forces seek to possess the button box and it is up to Senator Gwendy Peterson to keep it from them. At all costs. But where can you hide something from such powerful entities? In Gwendy's Final Task, "horror giants" (Publishers Weekly) Stephen King and Richard Chizmar take us on a journey from Castle Rock to another famous cursed Maine city to the MF\\\-1 space station, where Gwendy must execute a secret mission to save the world. And, maybe, all worlds.

"Although Scott Carey doesn't look any different, he's been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn't want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis. In the small town of Castle Rock, the setting of many of King's most iconic stories, Scott is engaged in a low grade--but escalating--battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott's lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face-including his own--he tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scott's affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others"--Provided by publisher.

Cujo, a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, struggles to be the good dog he knows he is as his body and mind are ravaged by the rabies virus infecting him.

"Something evil has swept into the small Maine town of Castle Rock on the heels of the latest winter storm. Sheriff Norris Ridgewick and his team are desperately searching for two missing girls, but time is running out. In Washington, DC, thirty-seven-year-old Gwendy Peterson couldn't be more different from the self conscious teenaged girl who had once been entrusted -- or cursed -- with an extraordinary and powerful box covered with colorful buttons by a mysterious stranger dressed in black. One day, though, the button box suddenly reappears without explanation. Between this and the troubling disappearances back home, Gwendy decides she might be able to do something to help..." --.

Every day in the summer of 1974, twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson walks up the Suicide Stairs to get to up the cliffside of Castle Rock, Maine. One day at the top of the stairs, Gwendy meets a man dressed all in black who gives her a box with a lever and several buttons. If Gwendy uses the lever, all her dreams will come true--but if she uses the buttons, something else will happen. Her curiosity gets the better of her.