Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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#1 BESTSELLER  NOW A PARAMOUNT+ LIMITED SERIES  Stephen Kings apocalyptic vision of a world blasted by plague and tangled in an elemental struggle between good and evil remains as rivetingand eerily plausibleas when it was first published.

One of The Atlantics Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years! This edition includes all of the new and restored material first published in The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition.

A patient escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emergeMother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious Dark Man, who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between themand ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

Review: The Stand is a book that has sat on my bookshelf for years, untouched and waiting for that day when I’m ready to tackle it. A couple of weeks ago, that day came and do I wish I had read it sooner, laws yes, M-O-O-N that spells sooner. For me, it is easily the best Stephen King book I have read as it has the familiar ordinary people with plausible back stories thrown into extraordinary circumstances which bring out the very best and very worst in people. In this book, Maestro King decides to kill off 99.6% of the world’s population and broadly divide the survivors into ordinary folk who are drawn to a seemingly benevolent force and (mostly) ordinary folk drawn to a seemingly malign force and basically see who makes a better fist of it. I won’t give any clues as to what happens next except to say bad stuff ensues and it boils down to a battle of well-meaning people with free will on one side and weak-willed people being coerced into bad things on the other. Ultimately, it asks the question of when would you take a stand against evil?

The author has drawn up an impressive ensemble cast for this epic work with the good folk led by a good ol’ boy from East Texas, a feckless musician, a naive young mother-to-be, an aging academic and a deaf-mute drifter, all guided by seemingly messianic 108 year old woman. The dark side is mob of mostly not so bad types but under the thumb of a demonic terror who haunts the dreams of the survivors, aided by a reluctantly cannibalistic thief and murderer and an insane arsonist with an eye for the spectacular. Somewhere in between there are people disaffected with their lot and shift between the two sides. As such it’s a story of hope, betrayal, friendship, love, loss and jealousy against the backdrop of seemingly deserted world where anything can happen as everything is just lying around waiting to be picked up, including food, booze, resources, houses, cars, toys, guns, atom bombs, etc. It’s really rather good.

Stephen King effectively gives his cast the chance to wipe the slate clean and some characters do exactly seek to do that, but they tend to be the ones who turn to the dark side, whereas the ones who carry the past with them and acknowledge their failings and seek to atone for them are the ones who try to do the right thing. The male characters are better drawn than the female ones on the whole and I have to say that the female characters were a bit of a drag at times, but for the most part the characters are the real heart of this book. The empty sandbox world with seemingly familiar things in it presents as being threatening and full of dread and uncertainty. It also dawns on the reader that there’s a lot of bad stuff out there which could do enormous harm in the wrong hands and I found myself jumping ahead as to what the “bad side” might be up to and you can immediately see how cold war paranoia is so addictive and unsettling.

The Stand is not a flawless novel by any means. The ease with which the overwhelming majority of the survivors seem to get over the loss of loved ones and society in general is a tad too easy, the female characters are fairly weak, outside of America nothing is mentioned of the outside world, there are only a very small number of children mentioned, etc. The story is also dated in that it was written pre-internet and modern social networking so the big plague cover-up would be harder to achieve now. That said, it remains a truly great story that involves the reader on an emotional and spiritual level as well as making for a mighty fine adventure story. If you only read one Stephen King book then let this be the one, so read it! M-O-O-N, that spells read it, laws yes!

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes NEVER FLINCH, YOU LIKE IT DARKER (a New York Times Book Review top ten horror book of 2024), HOLLY (a New York Times Notable Book of 2023), FAIRY TALE, BILLY SUMMERS, IF IT BLEEDS, THE INSTITUTE, ELEVATION, THE OUTSIDER, SLEEPING BEAUTIES (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: END OF WATCH, FINDERS KEEPERS, and MR. MERCEDES (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel). His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. His epic works THE DARK TOWER, IT, PET SEMATARY, DOCTOR SLEEP, and FIRESTARTER are the basis for major motion pictures, with IT now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. He is the recipient of the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

NOTE: This is an original  book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. Note: Jack founded the Michelin Guide ‘Midsummer House’- Cambridge’s paramount restaurant. This dining experience is hidden amongst the grassy pastures and grazing cattle of Midsummer Common and perched on the banks of the River Cam. 

In 2008, Jack was one of the co-founders of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, alongside other members of the Department, and acted as the Foundation’s Chair. The project’s original goals were modest: to build and distribute low-cost computers for prospective applicants to our Computer Science degree. Initially the project was a “success disaster”, as Jack would say, as demand far outstripped the low-scale manufacturing plans. Ultimately the Raspberry Pi became the UK’s most successful computer with more than 60 million sold to date. Jack was drawn to the educational possibilities of the Raspberry Pi, its potential uses in emerging economies and the way it could support self-directed learning.