"The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted." King's new novelÄwhich begins with that sentenceÄhas teeth, too, and it bites hard. Readers will bite right back. Always one to go for the throat, King crafts a story that concerns not just anyone lost in the Maine-New Hampshire woods, but a plucky nine-year-old girl, and from a broken home, no less. This stacked deck is flush with aces, however. King has always excelled at writing about children, and Trisha McFarland, dressed in jeans and a Red Sox jersey and cap when she wanders off the forest path, away from her mother and brother and toward tremendous danger, is his strongest kid character yet, wholly believable and achingly empathetic in her vulnerability and resourcefulness. Trisha spends nine days (eight nights) in the forest, ravaged by wasps, thirst, hunger, illness, loneliness and terror. Her knapsack with a little food and water helps, but not as much as the Walkman that allows her to listen to Sox games, a crucial link to the outside world. Love of baseball suffuses the novel, from the chapter headings (e.g., "Bottom of the Ninth") to Trisha's reliance, through fevered imagined conversations with him, on (real life) Boston pitcher Tom Gordon and his grace under pressure. King renders the woods as an eerie wonderland, one harboring a something stalking Trisha but also, just perhaps, God: he explicitly explores questions of faith here (as he has before, as in Desperation) but without impeding the rush of the narrative. Despite its brevity, the novel ripples with ideas, striking images, pop culture allusions and recurring themes, plus an unnecessary smattering of scatology. It's classic King, brutal, intensely suspenseful, an exhilarating affirmation of the human spirit. 1,250,000 first printing; major ad/promo; BOMC and QPB featured alternates; simultaneous audiocassette and CD, read by Anne Heche. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Riddle me this: What do Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King have in common? --Bonnie SmothersAdult Books

YA-Tired of the continual bickering between her mother and her older brother, nine-year-old Trisha lags behind them on the Appalachian Trail, leaves the path to go to the bathroom, takes a shortcut, and is promptly lost. She follows a stream searching for other people or a road, but unknowingly hikes further and further away from civilization. Her time alone is spent searching for food, mulling over her parents' divorce, and listening to Red Sox games on her Walkman radio. Relief pitcher for the Sox, Tom Gordon, becomes her imaginary companion and provides the comfort she needs to overcome her fears and loneliness so that she can concentrate on staying alive. One feels Trisha's terror as she endures drenching thunderstorms, tromps through mud-sucking swamps, sees gutted deer carcasses, and falls down rocky slopes. Will she survive? Readers aren't sure and the tension builds as hunger and weakness wear her down. Excitement, fear, and anxiety, coupled with vivid descriptions of the Maine-New Hampshire forests alongside the normalcy of listening to play-by-play baseball games, add up to a top-notch read.-Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.