Misery is a novel by Stephen King, written in 1987. The story begins with Paul Sheldon slowly waking out of a coma. Gradually, his memory returns to him: he is a wildly popular romance novelist (the main character of which is named Misery Chastain) who has crashed his car in a winter storm and has been badly injured. His rescuer, Annie Wilkes, is a trained nurse and has taken him to her secluded country home to be cared for by her personally. As luck would have it, Annie is Paul's "number one fan" and eagerly awaits all his publications. As time passes, however, Paul realizes that there is a flip side of the coin as well: Annie is psychotic and has no intention of letting him go.

King has stated that he intended for Misery to be the next Richard Bachman novel, following Thinner.

The novel was adapted into the screenplay for a 1990 American film of the same name, directed by Rob Reiner. James Caan and Kathy Bates star as Paul and Annie, respectively. Richard Farnsworth also appears. The film was a critical and commercial success, making $61,276,872 (USA) domestically on a $20,000,000 budget. Kathy Bates won the Academy Award for Best Actress: she thereafter vaulted into the first rank of Hollywood actresses.

Annie Wilkes was voted the 17th greatest villain of all-time by the American Film Institute in their special feature AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains.

The book tied with the Robert R. McCammon novel Swan Song for the first Bram Stoker Award for best novel.

ISBN numbers

• ISBN 0606038590 (prebound, 1987)
• ISBN 0670813648 (cloth text , 1987)
• ISBN 0451169522 (mass market paperback, 1988)
• ISBN 8401499976 (hardcover, 1992)
• ISBN 0573018502 (hardcover, 1999)
• ISBN 074323359X (mass market paperback, 2002)
• ISBN 0786250208 (laminated, 2003)

External links

• American Film Institute