The Regulators

Now available for the first time in a mass market premium edition�master storyteller Stephen King presents the classic, terrifying New York Times bestseller of those caught between the surreal forces of good versus evil in a small suburban Ohio town. �The red van rolls past�humming and glinting. �Things are happening fast now, although no one on Poplar Street realizes it yet.� It�s a gorgeous midsummer afternoon along Poplar Street in the peaceful suburbia of Wentwort, Ohio, where life is as pleasant as you ever dreamed it could be. But that�s all about to end in blaze of gunfire and sudden violence, forever shattering the tranquility and the good times here. For the physical makeup of Poplar Street itself is now being transformed into a surreal landscape straight out of the active imagination of the innocent and vulnerable Seth Garin�an autistic boy who�s been exposed to and possessed by a horrific, otherworldly force of evil, one with sadistic and murderous intent and who is willing to use whatever means necessary to grow ever stronger. ** Amazon.com Review Richard Bachman is really Stephen King, and The Regulators is a kind of companion novel to Desperation, which was published simultaneously. These books mark the return of the Stephen King of old; the Stephen King of The Stand and Pet Sematary, where good and evil were at war and blood and gore flowed through the pages. The companion novels center around a new personification of evil that goes by the name of Tak, unearthed by an evil mining company that's destroying the earth in the name of profit. In each, the characters and situations are altered as King plays with questions of identity and form. But the real point here is what's on Tak's mind? Does it want to "Eat pork rinds? . . . Screw some NFL cheerleaders? . . . Rule the earth?" From Publishers Weekly Why revive the Bachman byline more than a decade after Stephen King was found lurking behind it? Not for thematic reasons. This devilishly entertaining yarn of occult mayhem married to mordant social commentary is pure King and resembles little the four nonsupernatural (if science-fictional) pre-Thinner Bachmans. The theme is the horror of TV, played out through the terrors visited upon quiet Poplar Street in the postcard-perfect suburban town of Wentworth, Ohio, when a discorporeal psychic vampire settles inside an autistic boy obsessed with TV westerns and kiddie action shows and brings screen images to demented, lethal life. The long opening scene, in which characters and vehicles from the TV show Motokops 2200 (think Power Rangers) sweep down the street, spewing death by firearm, is a paragon of action-horror. The story rarely flags after that, evoking powerful tension and, at times, emotion. The premise owes a big unacknowledged debt to the classic Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"; echoes of earlier Kings resound often as well?the psychic boy (The Shining), a writer-hero (Misery, The Dark Half), etc. But King makes hay in this story in which anything can happen, and does, including the warping of space-time and the savage deaths of much of his large cast. The narrative itself warps fantastically, from prose set in classic typeface to handwritten journals to drawings to typewritten playscript and so on. So why the Bachman byline? Probably for fear that yet another new King in 1996 in addition to six volumes of The Green Mile and Viking's forthcoming Desperation might glut the market. Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is certain: call him Bachman or call him King, the bard of Bangor is going to hit the charts hard and vast with this white-knuckler knockout. Main selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild and Science Fiction Book Club. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.� The battle against evil has begun in this "devishly entertaining" (Publishers Weekly) story of a suburban neighborhood in the grip of surreal terror--a #1 national bestseller from Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman. Peaceful suburbia on Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio, takes a turn for the ugly when four vans containing armed "regulators" terrorize the street's residents, cold-bloodedly killing anyone foolish enough to step outside their homes. Houses mysteriously transform into log cabins and the street now ends in what looks like a child's hand-drawn western landscape. Masterminding this sudden onslaught is the evil creature, Tak, who has taken over the body of an autistic eight-year-old boy, Seth Garin. "A rip-roaringly violent thriller whose main action takes place in little more than an hour and a half" (Booklist), The Regulators features an introduction by Stephen King on "The Importance of Being Bachman." The Regulators is a novel by American author Stephen King, writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1996 at the same time as its "mirror" novel, Desperation. The two novels represent parallel universes relative to one another, and most of the characters present in one novel's world also exist in the other novel's reality, albeit in different circumstances. Additionally, the hardcover first editions of each novel, if set side by side, make a complete painting, and on the back of each cover is also a peek at the opposite's cover.