"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.
