"An unforgettable, unflinching glimpse into a mind driven to murder" (San Francisco Chronicle)-the #1 national bestseller from Stephen King about a housekeeper with a long-hidden secret from her past…one that tests her own will to survive.

Dolores Claiborne is suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, and when the police question her, she tells the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband thirty years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera's physical and mental decline and how she became emotionally demanding in recent years.

Given a voice as compelling as any in contemporary fiction, the strange intimacy between Dolores and Vera-and the link that binds them-unfolds in Dolores's account. It shows, finally, how fierce love can be, and how dreadful its consequences. And how the soul, harrowed by the hardest life, can achieve a kind of grace.

Hailed by Entertainment Weekly as a "tour de force, Dolores Claiborne is "a literary triumph. The finest of King novels…a plot of enormous energy…Read this book" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).