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More than 50 years into his storied career, Stephen King has landed another bestseller.
King, the popular horror and suspense novelist, released his latest book Holly on September 5 and it quickly shot to number one on Amazon’s bestsellers chart.
Holly, follows the character of Holly Gibney, who first made an appearance in 2014’s Mr. Mercedes and has since appeared in many of King’s works, including the 2020 novella, If It Bleeds. The new book follows the private detective as she tries to untangle a series of mysterious disappearances in a small midwestern town. While the character teamed up with Bill Hodges in 2015’s Finders Keepers, Holly is completely on her own this time, relying on her own instincts to solve a ruthless crime while dealing with a seemingly unraveling world around her (more on that later).
Listed at a suggested retail price of $30, Amazon has Holly on hardcover on sale for just $19 right now — a 35% discount. You can also listen to Holly on audiobook narrated by King. Amazon has a 30-day free trial to Audible here that you can use to listen to the Holly audiobook online for free.
Amazon
Holly $19.46 on Amazon.com
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, King says he was drawn to developing another story for the character of Holly because he felt like there was more to explore with her tics and eccentricities. “I like her so much because she’s such a weird combination of insecurity and OCD and detective ability,” he says. “You get to know characters and some you don’t want to go on with. And some of them… I really wanted to see what she was up to.”
As King adds in the accompanying publisher’s notes for Holly, “I could never let Holly Gibney go. She was supposed to be a walk-on character in Mr. Mercedes and she just kind of stole the book and stole my heart.”
While much of King’s work takes place in a supernatural realm, the author’s new book is (mostly) centered in the present, with the characters dealing with Covid, and Holly’s Covid-denier mom — spoiler alert — eventually succumbing to the disease. While the book still has paranormal themes (think cannibalistic professors and things that go bump in the night), King says he wanted Holly to be “a time capsule of a particular time when I was writing the book.”
Of course, readers will have to devour the book to see what role — if any — Covid plays in the plot line, but publisher Scribner assures fans that the book still has all the familiar trappings of a Stephen King classic. “In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries,” reads the book description. “And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork.”
Holly is now available on Amazon as a hardcover book, for Kindle and as an audiobook. Read the book here.
