It’s been awhile since Stephen King has written a must-read. The horror novels have been alternating for a while with his less fantastic, more realistic fiction, and some of it has been just fine and dandy, but little has been able to match the impact of his best work from the late 70s and early 80s. With Lisey’s Story — out tomorrow — that changes. Not just a good novel, but a great one, which fuses the fantastic with the realistic in a terrifyingly effective synthesis, it tells the story of a widow whose dead husband (a writer of some repute) had dark secrets that now threaten to take her life as well. Details are not necessary, suffice it to say that other worlds are involved, and that no matter how deep into fantasy King goes, his empathy for Lisey is astonishingly powerful and unlike almost anything he’s attempted. This may still be pulp of a certain kind, but it’s an honest to God novel, one that deserves to outlive its creator by many a year.