Needful Things

This article is about the Stephen King novel. For the movie based on this story see Needful Things (film). Needful Things is a 1991 horror novel by Stephen King. The story is set in the small fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, where a new shop named "Needful Things" opens, to the curiosity of the townspeople. The story starts out in first person with the narrator greeting the reader and moves to third-person, introducing each of the book's div... more

This article is about the Stephen King novel. For the movie based on this story see Needful Things (film). Needful Things is a 1991 horror novel by Stephen King. The story is set in the small fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, where a new shop named "Needful Things" opens, to the curiosity of the townspeople. The story starts out in first person with the narrator greeting the reader and moves to third-person, introducing each of the book's diverse cast of characters and their complicated histories. Castle Rock's citizens then begin to come into Needful Things, each of them drawn by an item they want more than anything else. They are all greeted by the seemingly kind old man claiming to be from Akron, Ohio (a possible reference to Acheron), Leland Gaunt, and they all ignore the sign hanging in his shop, "Caveat emptor" ("Let the buyer beware"). One person after another buys the treasures he has in stock, paying surprisingly low prices and performing small "favors" (pranks) at his... less