Rose Madder

Stephen King

Jan 2016 · Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

The #1 national bestseller about a woman who escapes an abusive marriage is “one of Stephen King’s most engrossing horror novels. Relentlessly paced and brilliantly orchestrated...fueled by an air of danger immediate and overwhelming” (Publishers Weekly).

Rosie Daniels leaves her husband, Norman, after fourteen years in an abusive marriage. She is determined to lose herself in a place where he won’t find her. She’ll worry about all the rest later.

Alone in a strange city, she begins to make a new life, and good things finally start to happen. Meeting Bill is one; and getting an apartment is another. Still, it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason. Norman is a cop, with the instincts of a predator. He’s very good at finding people, even if he is losing his mind.

Fixed on revenge, Norman Daniels becomes a force of relentless terror and savageness, a man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, she must enter her own myth and become a woman she never knew she could be: Rose Madder.

“Riveting, engrossing...packed with suspense” (People), Stephen King infuses this novel with an edge-of-your-seat, chilling atmosphere. Rose Madder is “an eerie, remarkably mature and moving novel” (The Washington Post).

Ratings and reviews

A++ excellent book, about a womans struggle getting a new life to escape her cop/psycho husband and an alternative world she can transport to, inside a painting... (Strange sounding, I know) this book is one of Stephen King's best, I think it is one of his top 10 of all time. Fantastic! A++

Wow. A must read. So real, so terrifying, so awesome. This will definitely be in my collection of favorites and re-reads. Ah. Stephen King you have twisted my imagination and my sense of reality once more. I must applaud. Well done.

Stephen King is by far one of my favorite authors but this book was really disappointing. I liked some parts of the book and was even anxious to see what happens next. But overall, I was glad when I finished the book.

About the author

Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes the short story collection You Like It Darker, Holly, 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.