Haunted Heart: The life and times of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak

Rogak, whose previous subjects include Barack Obama and Dan Brown, has sifted though the cuttings, interviews and reviews to produce this workmanlike, chronological account of the great man's life story, a supplement to his own fine memoir, On Writing, published in 2000.

The most formative influences on Stephen King's life and writing came early: his father Donald walked out on him, his mother and his adopted older brother when King was two years old, and the family existed in relative poverty, moving from place to place, while his mother took menial jobs and lived off relatives. She was a great story-teller, though, and King loved books.

Tall, awkward and seriously shortsighted, he went to the University of Maine at Orono to study English in 1966. There he started selling short stories to magazines and also met his future wife, Tabitha Spruce, who was from a modest Maine background too. The pair clicked from the start. She gave birth to their first child Naomi in 1970 and they married the following year, taking turns working shifts at a laundromat and Dunkin' Donuts to make ends meet.

It was Tabitha who, a couple of years later, hauled the script of Carrie out of the rubbish bin and told him it was good enough to publish. As Rogak chronicles, it was just the beginning; Salem's Lot — a modern reworking of the Dracula story — came next.

Apparently, King's editor wanted him to change a scene where a character, Jimmy Cody, is eaten alive by rats. "I had them swarming all over him like a writhing, furry carpet ... and when he tries to scream ... one of them scurries into his open mouth and squirms as it gnaws out his tongue," Steve said. "I loved the scene, but Bill made it clear that no way would Doubleday publish something like that, and I came round eventually and impaled poor Jimmy on knives. But, shit, that just wasn't the same." This is just one of many characterful quotes Rojak includes.

Through the Seventies and early Eighties, success followed success with novels such as The Shining, The Stand and Misery. But he was also hitting the bottle big-time and snorting so much cocaine that he frequently blacked out. When The Tommyknockers, a Forties-style sci-fi tale, came out in 1987, it was, according to Rogak, lambasted by the critics. "Of course, the trouble could have come because Steve had hit bottom in his drug addiction and alcoholism," she suggests tentatively. Eventually Tabitha issued an ultimatum that he should give up or get out although it took another two years for him to sober up completely.

While some critics suggested that his writing suffered as a result, Rogak doesn't go there. She's a deliverer of the facts, not an inquisitive investigator — but by adding King's own voice on almost every page she brings her subject to life and makes you want to re-read his novels.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

'I'm afraid of everything.' Stephen King Since Stephen King's wife fished his first novel Carrie out of the waste paper basket, King has written more than 50 books, selling 300 million copies worldwide. Here, for the first time, is the ultimate biography of this prolific and widely-loved writer. From King's childhood to becoming a successful writer, the author has interviewed friends, relatives and stars who know him. She follows the effects of abandonment by his father at an early age ('We were ashamed not to have a father'), and his mom giving him a nickel for every story he wrote. At the age of four he saw a neighbouring boy get hit by a freight train. At 13, he was sent to his grandmother's room to wake her but instead found her cold, lifeless body. His local Bookmobile which visited every week allowed him to take out Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft and he ran through the classics of horror. Haunted Heart is the story of one of the greatest horror writers, and his trials both as a young boy and, now 70, an ageing citizen. It covers everything from his love of buying scratch cards to the real-life stories and events that have provided the backdrop to many of his novels. Lisa Rogak is the co-author of Barack Obama: In His Own Words, The Man Behind The Da Vinci Code: An unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown amongst many other titles. Her works have been reviewed and otherwise mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Family Circle, and hundreds of other publications. She lives in Lebanon, New Hampshire.