It: A Novel

Stephen King's classic #1 New York Times bestseller and the basis for the massively successful films It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two as well as inspiration for HBO Max’s upcoming Welcome to Derry—about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled upon as teenagers...an evil without a name: It. Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers. Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It. “Stephen King’s most mature work” (St. Petersburg Times), “It will overwhelm you…to be read in a well-lit room only” (Los Angeles Times).

Chicago Sun-Times

“A landmark in American literature.”

Los Angeles Times

“It will overwhelm you…Characters so real you feel you are reading about yourself…scenes to be read in a well-lit room only.”

Time Magazine

“The indisputable King of Horror.”

The Washington Post Book World

“A mesmerizing odyssey of terror…King writes like one possessed, never cheats the reader, always gives full measure…He is brilliant…dark and sinister.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Vintage King…a magnum opus of terror…just a glance at the first few pages, and you can’t put this novel aside.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“A great scary book…a nightmare roller-coaster…packed with more chills than a Frigidaire… ‘It’ turns out to be the monster-dread in us all, the one that refuses to go away.”

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

“Epic…gargantuan…breathlessly accelerating suspense… King is our great storyteller…I imagine him as a possessed figure rocking over a smoking word processor, hunting for a beat his sentences can dance to, pounding the shocks and scares like a rock organist laying down the power chords.”

Kansas City Star

“A ghoul’s delight…a good old-fashioned chill and shiver fest…as creepy as the finest of that genre.”

San Jose Mercury News

“ King’s most ambitious project…reads as if written in a white heat!”

Houston Chronicle

“IT exhibits the potato chip syndrome – quite simply, you can’t read just one page and stop…It is in this novel that King comes out of the closet, a closet jammed and crowded with his own monsters.”

Fort Worth Star Telegram

“Compulsively readable.”

St. Petersburg Times

“King’s most mature work.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Chock-full of spooky stuff…a sprawling scare-fest that defines King’s recurring themes and adds a new set of ambitions to the mix.”

About the Author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Never Flinch (May 2025), the short story collection 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 and a television series streaming on Peacock). 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 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, 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.

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