The Shining

Jack Torrance needs a second chance. A writer with a troubled past and a temper he struggles to control, he takes a winter job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a grand old resort high in the Colorado Rockies that closes for the off-season. The empty months promise quiet, steady work on his writing, and time to mend things with his wife, Wendy, and their young son.

Then the snow arrives. As the mountain roads close and the hotel becomes the family's whole world, the Overlook starts to feel less like a refuge and more like a trap. Something in the building is waking up, and it has begun to take an interest in the people inside.

Only Danny, the Torrances' five-year-old son, can sense what is happening. His unusual gift lets him perceive things the adults around him cannot, and he sees the hotel's dark past pressing in long before anyone else will admit that anything is wrong. What he finds there is far worse than a haunted house, and the danger grows closer to home with every storm-bound day.

First published in 1977, The Shining is one of Stephen King's best-known novels. It builds its dread slowly, using isolation, family strain, and a place with a memory of its own.