Stephen King: 11.22.63 (UK 2011)

From the Publisher:
WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a young teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, gets the chance to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting JFK in November 1963 is the premise of the brilliant new novel by STEPHEN KING: 11/22/63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless...

King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, on a fascinating journey back to the world of 1958 - from a world in 2011 of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life - a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

The novel is big, ambitious and haunting. King has probably absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation as thoroughly and imaginatively as any other writer.

Stephen King: 11.22.63. A Novel. Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 9781444727296 (November, 2011), 928 p., £19.99.

Stephen King: 11/22/63 (USA 2011)

From the Publisher:
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King's heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination -- a tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment -- a real life moment -- when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students -- a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane -- and insanely possible -- mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life -- a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.

Stephen King: 11/22/63. A Novel. Scribner's, ISBN: 9781451627282 (November, 2011), 864 p., $35.00.