Duma Key. Stephen King (First Edition Hardback) 2008

DUMA KEY by Stephen King.

Edgar Freemantle reached a T-junction in his life's journey when a freak accident cost him his arm...and his marriage. He takes the turning marked Florida - home, as they say, of the newly wed, or nearly dead.

But rather than choosing a typical holiday location, Freemantle is drawn to a beautiful, eerily remote stretch of lasnd off Florida's West Coast: Duma Key, a tangle of banyans, palms and pines next to a deserted beach - uninhabited bar a few houses owned by an old lady named Elizabeth, once a famous patron of thr arts.

Encouraged by his youngest daughter, Freemantle discovers a unique talent for painting, starting with the fabulous sunsets. But soon he finds himself experiencing weird phantom pains in his missing arm. And something strange and disturbing is happening with his pictures:  they are becoming predictive, even dangerous to those who buy them.

Freemantle must team up with his fellow resident, Wireman, to chart his way through the increasingly disturbing mystery of Duma Key, where out-of-season hurricanes tear lives apart and a powerful undertow lures lost and tormented souls. Eventually, they will have to discover what really happened to Elizabeth's twin sisters, who disappeared in the 1920s - and the haunting secret to which this strange old lady holds the key.

A FIRST EDITION hardback published in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton (£18.99 r.r.p.).