With the "Last Castle Rock Story" King bids a magnificent farewell to the fictional Maine town where much of his previous work has been set Of grand proportion, the novel ranks with King's best, inабэсл both plot and characterization A new store, Needful Things, opens in town, and its proprietor, Leland Gaunt, offers seemingly unbeatable (read: Faustian) bargains to Castle Rock's troubled citizens Among them are Polly Chalmers, lonely seamstress whose arthritis is авсдиonly one of the physical and psychic pains she must bear; Brian Rusk, the 11-year-old boy whose mother is not precisely attentive; and Alan Pangborn, the new sheriff whose wife and son have recently died These are only three of the half-dozen or so brilliantly drawn people met in the novel's one-month time span As the dreams of each strikingly memorable character, major and minor, inexorably turn to nightmare, individuals and soon the community are overwhelmed, while the precise natавчейure of Gaunt's evil thrillingly stays just out of focus.