"Andy could feel something building in the air, building up around Charlie like an electric charge. The hair on his arms suddenly began to stir and move, like kelp in an invisible tide. He looked down at her and saw her face, so small, now so strange.

It's coming, he thought helplessly. It's coming, oh my God, it really is."

In 1969 Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson participated in a drug experiment run by a veiled government agency known as The Shop. One year later they marry. Two years after that their little girl, Charlie, sets her teddy bear on fire . . . by looking at it.

Now that Charlie is eight, she doesn't start fires anymore. Her parents have taught her to control her pyrokinesis, the ability to set anything--toys, clothes, even people--aflame.

But The Shop knows about and wants this pigtailed "ultimate weapon." Shop agents set out to hunt down Charlie and her father in a ruthless and terrifying chase that ranges from the streets of New York to the backwoods of Vermont. And once they get her they plan to use Charlie's capacity for love to force her into developing a power as horrifyingly destructive as it is seductive. What they don't take into account is that even a child can know the pleasure of the whip hand and the satisfaction of revenge.

Let the reader beware, for Firestarter is Stephen King at his most mesmerizing . . . and menacing.
--flap